Book Co-Edited by Professor Luxenberg Named Outstanding Title by Choice

The School of Art is pleased to share that Freemasonry and the Visual Arts, co-edited by Dr. Aliza Luxenberg, has been selected as an Outstanding Title by Choice, the leading academic librarians’ journal. Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives, edited with Reva Wolf, is the product of Luxenberg’s most recent research. 

In Freemasonry and the Visual Arts, Nan Wolverton writes that Freemasonry, the world’s oldest and largest fraternity, has been dedicated from its beginnings to “promoting the enlightened belief that men could create a better world through reason, harmony, and right conduct” (p. 120). The 11 essays, together with the comprehensive introduction by Wolf (SUNY, New Paltz) and Luxenberg (Univ. of Georgia), illustrate the significant impact the fraternity has had on the visual arts from the Enlightenment to the present in England, Continental Europe, and the US. The collection is an example of a recent upsurge of scholarly interest in Freemasonry, which has taken the “craft” from the obscurity of esoterica to a legitimate subject of interest for cultural, historical, and sociological study. Covering an impressive range of arts, essays touch on Meissen porcelain, etchings and engravings by Hogarth and Paul Revere, paintings by Goya and Copley, photographic portraiture of African American masons, and even masonic folk art in contemporary Haitian voodooism.

Dr. Alisa Luxenberg, Professor of Art History, teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in 18th- and 19th-century European art and the early history of photography. Her research has addressed Franco-Spanish artistic confrontation and exchange, modes of realism, and intersections between art, science, and technology. She is the author of two books: The Galerie Espagnole and the Museo Nacional, 1835-1853: Saving Spanish Art, or The Politics of Patrimony (Ashgate, 2008); and, Secrets and Glory: baron Taylor and his ‘Voyage pittoresque en Espagne’ (Centro de Estudios Europea Hispánica, 2013). Having participated in the organization of several exhibitions, she contributed essays in their accompanying catalogues, such as, Spain, Espagne, Spanien (New York, 1993); Spain in the Age of Enlightenment (Indianapolis, 1997); Mehr Licht: Europa um 1770 (Frankfurt am Main, 1999); and, La Commune photographiée (Paris, 2000).