Art historian's book earns top prize from Smithsonian

A book by Jodi Hauptman, art history, has won a top prize from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Joseph Cornell: Stargazing in the Cinema has been selected as the 2001 winner of the prestigious Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art, which honors "the best single-author book in American art, published in the last three years." The $2,000 award includes an invitation to give a public lecture in Washington, D.C.

"I am honored and thrilled to receive this award for scholarship in American art and to have been selected by jurors who are well known and highly respected in the art history field," Hauptman said.

Based on Hauptman's doctoral dissertation at Yale, the book was published last year by the Yale University Press and examines the work and life of the 20th-century artist and filmmaker Joseph Cornell. Known for his "surprising and evocative art in small boxes" and for his surrealist collages of films, Cornell focused many of his works on movie stars such as Lauren Bacall, Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe, actresses whom he admired from afar and sought to capture in his boxes or films.

Cornell's works have been exhibited in the leading museums in the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim.

In the jurors' statement awarding the prize, the committee wrote that Hauptman's "reading of Cornell's works are informed by deep knowledge of the art and cultural history of the period and by intimate familiarity with Cornell's extensive writing and work.

"The subtle arguments and interpretations developed in the book are presented in an extraordinarily accessible and engaging style. The text is beautifully written, and the design and the quality of reproductions are also excellent," they wrote.

Jurors were Erika Doss, a professor in the department of fine arts at the University of Colorado at Boulder; Kenneth Myers, assistant curator of American art at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art of the Smithsonian Institution; and Michael Leja, Sewell C. Biggs Chair of American Art History at UD.

A visiting assistant professor at UD in 1997-98, joining the faculty in 1998, Hauptman graduated from Princeton University and earned her doctorate from Yale University.

–Sue Moncure