Visualizing Modernity: Jazz Age Illustration in America

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$10 plus admission; Free for Members, Reservations required

Heather Campbell Coyle, Curator of American Art at the Delaware Art Museum, will explore Jazz Age Illustration, the first exhibition to survey the art of American illustration in the 1920s and '30s. Dr. Coyle will explore how jazz music invented by African American m usicians and appropriated by White musicians became the soundtrack and met aphor of a vibrant era marked by dramatic cultural change and the expansio n of the popular press. In magazines, newspapers, books, posters, and sheet music, illustrators recorded the rise of jazz musicians, flappers, and film stars, and their works were seen by millions of Americans each month. Increased demand for illustration opened the field to more women a nd African American artists, and publishers embraced a range of styles from the realism of Norman Rockwell to the Harlem Renaissance's cultural exp ression of Black identity and Art Deco design.

Heather C ampbell Coyle is Curator of American Art at the Delaware Art Museum, where she has worked for over 20 years. Dr. Coyle has curated dozens of major exhibitions and produced several significant exhibition catalogues. She le ctures and researches primarily on American art, illustration, and photography from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and has publ ished extensively on the work of John Sloan and Howard Pyle. Her latest ex hibition and book project, Jazz Age Illustration explores American illustration from the 1920s and 1930s, bringing together imagery from popular magazines, newspapers, novels, children's books, sheet music, posters , and consumer products.