ABSTRACT

Carol Becker, preeminent arts educator and contributor to leading art magazines, offers a beautifully poignant meditation on the role of place in artistic creativity. She focuses on place as a historical, physical entity and a conceptual site where ideas come into meaning. The book explores places from the coal-mining towns of western Pennsylvania, to the Birla House where Gandhi was shot, to the sinking city of Venice. A cross between theory, memoir, and history, her writing creates the experiential effect of being in specific places as well as imagining the evolution of ideas as they are manifested in museums and often become agents for social change.

chapter |4 pages

Prologue

Wandering Monks and Peripatetic Birds

chapter 1|24 pages

Defining Place

Crown Heights and the Coal Mines of Western Pennsylvania

chapter 1|24 pages

Museums and the Neutralization of Culture

A Response to Adorno

chapter 3|22 pages

Countervaillance

Educating Creative Practitioners

chapter 4|11 pages

Beyond Categorization

Art's Shifting Landscape

chapter 5|17 pages

Where the Green Ants Dream

Aspects of Community in Six Parts

chapter 6|16 pages

Pilgrimage to My Lai

chapter 7|8 pages

Archives of Apartheid

chapter 8|21 pages

Gandhi's Body

chapter 9|10 pages

Acqua Alta