Center for Historic American Visual Culture

Since its inception in 2005, the Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) has become an epicenter for cross-disciplinary study. CHAViC’s mission is to promote the extraordinary graphic arts collection at AAS, which includes historic prints, drawings, maps, photography, games, and a wide variety of ephemera. Relevant materials in the library’s four other curatorial areas (printed books, manuscripts, periodicals, and children’s literature) make the Society an unparalleled resource for scholars of visual studies, art history, material culture studies, architectural history, theater and performance studies, and popular culture. By promoting these collections, and by nurturing new research topics and fields of intellectual inquiry, CHAViC demonstrates that the graphic arts and visual media are irreplaceable sources for understanding the American past.

The Center supports advanced study through seminars, conferences, and public programs, both virtual and in-person at Antiquarian Hall. Recent activities of note include the exhibition Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere and the 2020 symposium Revere in Perspective, organized by CHAViC in collaboration with other institutional partners. Past conferences have addressed topics such as cheap print and the movement of images across visual media. Additionally, AAS regularly hosts public programs that feature innovative scholarship in visual and material culture.

In addition to the scholarly and public programs, CHAViC promotes access to images in the Society’s collections through GIGI, the AAS digital asset database which stores thousands of digitized images from the AAS collections. GIGI was named in honor of Georgia "Gigi" Barnhill, the Society’s Curator Emerita of Graphic Arts and the founder of CHAViC. Before the era of digitization, whenever researchers needed a particular illustration or image to augment their work, the phrase “go ask Gigi” was offered as the solution. Now researchers and the public can access digitized graphic arts materials through GIGI free of charge, and from anywhere in the world. For instructions on how to access GIGI, see the associated page What's in GIGI. 

A signature program of CHAViC are the summer seminars, regularly offered since 2009. Each seminar assembles faculty and students from the U.S. and abroad for intensive five-day programs of study that address a pressing topic in pre-1900 visual culture. Recent seminars have examined disability in early America, political caricature, theater and spectatorship, race, the environment, domesticity, and science and technology. CHAViC seminars are convened by recognized leaders in the field, including Wendy Bellion, Catherine E. Kelley, Nancy Siegel, Joshua Brown, and Georgia Barnhill.

For questions about CHAViC, please contact contact John J. Garcia, Director of Scholarly Programs and Partnerships at jgarcia [at] mwa.org (jgarcia[at]mwa[dot]org) or (508) 471-2134. To receive notifications about upcoming programs, join our mailing list.

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