Description:
Focusing on photographs depicting the domestic display of three US presidential icons - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama - Jennifer Wingate examines everyday expressions of national pride and belonging alongside the tension that these displays signal about the state of democracy.
Brief description: Jennifer Wingate is an art historian based in the USA who writes about American art and material culture. She is co-editor of Teachable Monuments: Using Public Art to Spark Dialogue and Confront Controversies (Bloomsbury, 2021) and author of Sculpting Doughboys: Memory, Gender, and Taste in America's World War I Memorials (2013).
Review Quotes: "Over the last century, we have sometimes invited US presidents into our homes and places of work via photographic portraits. This astonishing cultural practice, which stretches from FDR to Trump, and harks back to Lincoln and to prints of Washington, tells us a lot about who we are and how we relate to the republic, its leaders and the values embedded in the practice. Richly and beautifully told, this timely book is a revelation." --Paul Staiti, Alumnae Foundation Professor of Fine Arts, Mount Holyoke College, USA