Terms of the Day for November 19

• Third-wave Feminism – a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study, whose exact boundaries in the history of feminism are a subject of debate, but are generally marked as beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to the present.  The movement is marked by the notion that women are of "many colors, ethnicities, nationalities, religions and cultural backgrounds"
• Guerrilla Girls – an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality within the fine arts to light. Members are known for the gorilla masks they wear to remain anonymous.

Terms of the Day for November 12

• Cultural Colonialism - the practice of promoting and imposing a culture, usually of politically powerful nations over less potent societies. 
• Cultural Cringe – the concept of an internalized inferiority complex that causes people in a country to dismiss their own culture as inferior to the cultures of other countries. 

Terms of the Day for November 10

• Pluralism - a Postmodern movement in art that assumes the cultural context of art should be all-encompassing in its respect for the art of the world's wide variety of cultures and artistic styles, and that diverse cultural and stylistic influences can coexist in a work of art.
• Biennials – large scale international exhibitions of contemporary art which take place every two years.  These events have come to kick-start careers of artists and produce or frame the art history to be studied by future generations.
• Santería - a syncretic religion of Caribbean origin influenced by and syncretized with Roman Catholicism. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yorùbá, is also known as Lucumí.

Terms of the Day for November 3

• Postmodern Art - a movement in Western art, spanning from the late 1970s until the present, which rejects the key ideas of modernism. 
• Pluralism - a Postmodern movement in art that assumes the cultural context of art should be all-encompassing in its respect for the art of the world's wide variety of cultures and artistic styles, and that diverse cultural and stylistic influences can coexist in a work of art.
• Appropriation - an artistic concept in which an artist uses an image already in existence and places it in a new context in order to give it new meanings.
• Conceptual Art - art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns.
• Double-consciousness – a term coined by W. E. B. Du Bois used to describe an individual whose identity is divided into several facets. Du Bois saw double consciousness as a useful theoretical model for understanding the psycho-social divisions existing within African American society.
• Jezebel Archetype – a term with roots in the biblical character Jezebel often used to describe the stereotypical primitive, sexually promiscuous and sometimes controlling black woman.

Terms of the Day for October 31

• The Feminist Art Movement – a term which refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to make art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and reception of contemporary art. It also sought to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice.
• Installation Art – an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space, generally an interior space.
• Performance Art – a term that refers to a performance presented to an audience, traditionally using interdisciplinary arts. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. 
• The Female Gaze – a deliberate appropriation of the “Male Gaze” that takes the common tropes of how women have been historically portrayed in art and applies them to depictions of men.

Terms of the Day for October 29

• The African-American Civil Rights Movement – a collection of social movements in the United States whose goal was to end racial segregation and discrimination against black Americans and enforce constitutional voting rights to them.  The movement was most active during a period from 1955-68.
• Protest Art – a broad term that refers to creative works that concern or are produced by activists and social movements.
• AfriCOBRA – (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) a collective of African American artists in Chicago that specifically took on the goal of creating a new revolutionary black aesthetic. 
• Minimalism - a movement in various forms of art and design where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features and often used industrial materials and processes.
• Postminimalism - a term used in various artistic fields for work which is influenced by, or attempts to develop and go beyond the aesthetic of minimalism. The term refers less to a particular movement than an artistic tendency.

Terms of the Day for October 27

• Abstract Expressionism – the first specifically American art movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, it combined the emotional intensity of German Expressionism with the abstraction of Futurism and Synthetic Cubism.
• Automatism – the Surrealist act of automatic writing or drawing done as a means of accessing symbols of the subconscious.
• Action Painting – a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist.
• Color-Field Painting – a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s that  is characterized primarily by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. In color-field painting  “color is freed from objective context and becomes the subject in itself.”

Terms of the Day for October 22

The New Woman – a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century and had a profound influence on feminism well into the 20th century. New Women were active in the Suffragette movement, took on traditionally “masculine” roles, advocated gender equality, and were freely expressive of their ideas.
Surrealism - an artistic movement and an aesthetic philosophy that aims for the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative powers of the subconscious mind.

Terms of the Day for October 20

• Primitivism – a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples considered to be “primitive”.
• Femme Fatale – the concept of a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare men in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations.

Terms of the Day for October 17

• The Arts & Crafts Movement – an international design movement between 1866 and 1930 which sought to remove the distinction between “art” and “craft”. It stood for traditional craftsmanship using simple forms and often applied medieval, romantic or folk styles of decoration. 
• Orphism – an offshoot of Cubism that focused on pure abstraction and bright colors, influenced by Fauvism and theoretical writings of Paul Signac.
• Rayonism – a style of abstract art that developed in Russia in 1911.  Inspired by Cubism and Futurism, the movement sought an art that floated beyond abstraction, outside of time and space, and to break the barriers between the artist and the public.
• Suprematism – an art movement, founded by Kazimir Malevich in Russia, in 1915, that focused on basic geometric forms, such as circles, squares, lines, and rectangles, painted in a limited range of colors.

Terms of the Day for October 15

• Modern Art – artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation.
• Abstraction – art which uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which distorts traditional representations of—or exists with a degree of independence from—visual references in the world.
• Reform Dress Movement – a late 19th and early 20th century movement to reform constricting clothing designed for women and to transform the ideal female figure from Victorian exaggerated proportions to a more natural, “healthy” shape.
• The Omega Workshops – an experimental design collective founded by the painter and influential art critic Roger Fry in 1913, whose purpose what to bring the experimental language of avant-garde art to domestic design in Edwardian Britain. 

Terms of the Day for October 13

• Impressionism – a style of painting, developed in the late nineteenth century, that focused on casual subjects, the ability to paint outdoors, and divided brush strokes to capture the light and mood of a particular moment.
• En plein air – a French expression, meaning "in the open air", which is used to describe the act of painting outdoors.  This became particularly important to the Barbizon school and Impressionism after the introduction of paints in tubes in the 1870s
• Bourgeoisie – a term used to designate the upper middle class, specifically in France.  In the 19th century, the Bourgeoisie grew to prominence in France, establishing a culture centered around domestic models of family, leisure time, and an appreciation of the new industrialization of the modern Western world.
• Woman’s Gaze – a term which refers to the depictions of women as spectators.  This is in contrast to a great majority of images in which women are depicted as merely spectacles.

Terms of the Day for October 6

• "The White Marmorean Flock” – a group of American women sculptors who studied and worked together as a collective in Rome in the mid- to late-19th century.  The title of the group was a pejorative name developed by author Henry James which the women decided to adopt.
• The First-Wave Feminism – a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early twentieth century, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It focused on ending officially mandated inequalities and gaining women's suffrage.
• The Centennial International Exhibition – the first official World's Fair in the United States, held to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  It is notable for a “Women’s Pavilion,” which displayed a wide range of work by women artists and artisans.

Terms of the Day for October 3

• Utopia – a community or society possessing highly desirable or perfect qualities. The word was coined in Greek by Sir Thomas More’s book Utopia, describing a fictional island with a perfect society. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in literature..
• Abolitionism – a movement to end slavery, whether formal or informal.   In the nineteenth century,  this movement was highly organized and contributed to many societal changes in America, the Civil War, and the eventual emancipation of slave in the United States.

Terms of the Day for September 29

• Romanticism – an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that gained momentum in 19th century Europe and the Americas.  It was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.  Artists explored strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, terror, and awe—especially when confronted by untamed nature and the “exotic”.
• The Victorian Era - the period of Queen Victoria's reign over the British Empire from 1837 until her death in 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities, and national self-confidence for Britain.  The period was also marked by a rising middle class, sexual repression, and a renewed division of public and private life.

Terms of the Day for September 24

• The Age of the Enlightenment - (also known as the Enlightenment or Age of Reason) A cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th-century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted science and intellectual interchange and opposed superstition, intolerance, and abuses in church and state.
• Neoclassicism – (meaning “new classical”) An artistic movement of 18th-century Europe in which there was a revival of classic antiquity in art, architecture, and literature, inspired directly from the ancient Greek and Roman periods, as a rejection of Rococo era art.  Based in the philosophies of the Enlightenment, Neoclassical art promotes morality and reason and rejects oppression of church or state.
• Planarity – a term that refers to the placement of objects and figures parallel to the picture plane in a drawing or painting
• Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture – a French royal art institution founded to professionalize the artists working for the French court and give them a stamp of approval that artists of the St. Luke's guild did not have.
• Salon (Paris) – a term used for the regular organized official exhibitions of art held by the  Académie de Peinture et Sculpture in France. To show at a salon, a young artist needed to be received by the Académie by first submitting an artwork to the jury; only Académie artists could be shown in the salons.

Terms of the Day for September 22

• Rococo – An 18th century artistic movement that rejected the dark palette and political nature of Baroque art in favor of lighter, more frivolous, wittier themes, bright pastel colors, and an abundance of decoration. 
• Salon (Private) – a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation.  In the 18th century, these private intellectual gatherings also became a venue for exhibiting art.
• Salonnière – the female host of a salon gathering and patron of the arts.

Terms of the Day for September 15

• Iconoclasm - the deliberate destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives.
• Genre – from the French word for “sort” or “kind”, genre refers to types of artworks, usually having to do with subject matter.  In the sixteenth century, several kinds of subjects became popular, including landscape, still life, portraits, mythologies, and scenes of everyday life.
• Genre painting – Paintings that focus specifically on the genre of everyday life.

Terms of the Day for September 10

• The Baroque - a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music. The style started around 1600 in Rome, Italy and spread to most of Europe.
• Tenebrism -  from the Italian tenebroso (murky), a style of painting using very pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are violent contrasts of light and dark, and darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image.

Terms of the Day for September 8

• Mannerism - From the Italian word maniera, meaning “style”, this was a period of European art that emerged in the late Italian Renaissance. It is influenced by, and is a reaction to, the harmonious ideals and restrained naturalism of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
• The Protestant Reformation – a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other early Protestants.  The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led to the creation of new national Protestant churches.
• The Counter-Reformation – (also known as the Catholic Revival or Catholic Reformation) The period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent (1543–1565) and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War (1648) as a response to the Protestant Reformation.  The reforms put in place were designed to attract people back to the Catholic church and to increase its strength.  It also involved political activities that included the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions.