VIRTUAL EVENT: Printcraft: The Art of Playing with Pictures in Nineteenth-Century America

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Virtual Event: Printcraft: The Art of Playing with Pictures in Nineteenth-Century America 

with Christina Michelon

Printed material–ranging from illustrated books and fine engravings to greeting cards, chromos, magazines, printed fabrics and wallpapers – enveloped the American home over the course of the nineteenth century. In her presentation, assistant curator Christina Michelon will introduce some of the ways that people creatively processed this abundance of graphic material through what she calls “printcrafting.” Dr. Michelon will demonstrate how makers, especially women and children, used mass-produced materials and collage-like techniques such as scrapbooking, decoupage, and patchwork to assert their agency and individuality.

 

Christina Michelon, PhD is Assistant Curator of Special Collections at the Boston Athenæum. She specializes in nineteenth-century American visual and material culture and received her PhD in Art History from the University of Minnesota. Prior to joining the Athenaeum, she completed a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library. Her research has also been supported by the Smithsonian Institution, Henry Luce Foundation and American Council of Learned Societies, the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design, the Chipstone Foundation, and the Library Company of Philadelphia.