Kirk
Savage Is Awarded the 22nd Annual Eldredge Prize for
His Book about the National Mall and the Transformation of Memorial Spaces
The
Smithsonian American Art Museum has awarded the 2010 Charles C. Eldredge Prize
for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art to Kirk Savage for his book Monument
Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the
Memorial Landscape (University of California Press, 2009). It is recognized
as a “beautifully written and cogently argued book that recounts the
creation and re-creation of the memorial landscape of Washington, D.C., where
generations of designers, engineers and artists have given concrete form to the
imagined community of the nation.”
The
three jurors who awarded the $3,000 prize were Patricia Hills, professor of
American art at Boston University; Margaretta M. Lovell, the Jay D. McEvoy Jr.
Professor of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley; and
Roberta K. Tarbell, visiting scholar at the
Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
“Kirk
Savage has written a compelling book about the history of one of the most
important civic spaces in the United States that contributes an important
perspective to the ongoing discussion of the role of the National Mall,”
said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian
American Art Museum.
The
jurors wrote, “In part by design, in part by happenstance, the evolution
of the Mall has been, Savage argues, a two-century tale of eloquent, shifting
national self-definition. A relic-less site of civic pilgrimage, this public
space with its monuments, vistas, urban forests and mass demonstrations, has
proven a powerful battle ground of warring ideologies but also a site of
national consensus-building. Anchored by accounts of the creation, reception
and subsequent history of three very different monuments—the assertive
Washington monument, the classicizing Lincoln Memorial and the minimalist
Vietnam Veterans Memorial, as well as the abstract greensward they punctuate
and define, Savage’s discussion is wide ranging and deeply
nuanced.”
Savage
is professor and department chair in the history of art and architecture at the
University of Pittsburgh. He earned a doctorate degree from University of
California, Berkeley in 1990. Savage began writing about public monuments and
public space in the United States when he was a freelance writer in the early
1980s. His 1997 book Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument
in Nineteenth-Century America won the John Hope Franklin Prize for best
book published in American studies in 1998.
The
Eldredge Prize, named in honor of the former director of the museum
(1982-1988), is sponsored by the American Art Forum, a patrons’ support
organization. This annual award, initiated in 1989, seeks to recognize
originality and thoroughness of research, excellence of writing and clarity of
method. Single-author, book-length publications in the field of American art
history appearing within the three previous calendar years are eligible. Dec. 1
is the deadline for 2011 nominations.
Recent
Eldredge Prize recipients include Cécile Whiting (2009) for her book Pop
L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960s (University of California Press, 2006)
and JoAnne M. Mancini (2008) for Pre-Modernism: Art-World Change and
American Culture from the Civil War to the Armory Show (Princeton
University Press, 2005). A complete list of past winners is available on the
museum’s website at americanart.si.edu/research/awards/eldredge/.
The
museum’s research programs include fellowships for pre- and postdoctoral
scholars, extensive photographic collections documenting American art and artists,
and unparalleled art research databases. An active publications program of
books, catalogs and the journal American Art complements the
museum’s exhibitions and educational programs.
Eldredge
Prize Lecture
On
Wednesday, Dec. 1, at 4 p.m., Savage will present the annual Eldredge Prize
lecture in the museum’s Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium. A reception follows
the event. The lecture and reception are free and open to the public.