Luther College professor Kate Elliott publishes an art history book

Posted: Sat, Oct 31, 2020 1:21 PM

Luther College associate professor of art history Kate Elliott has published an art history book that explores visual representations of the first contact between European settlers and Native Americans. "Framing First Contact: From Catlin to Russell" is available for purchase where books are sold.

"I actually got to work on the project during my last year of graduate school," said Elliott. "I was interested in the representations of Native Americans by white American artists, and I kept noticing these history paintings of contact in all sorts of contexts. Asking why they were so popular in American art was enough to launch the entire project."

Elliott says in her classes at Luther, "We talk a lot about how paintings do not illustrate history, rather they help construct history and offer the artist's specific agenda in the presentation of history."

Elliott's book helps uncover the less obvious messages of first contact paintings and forces readers and her students to think about why we tell the stories we do and why those stories matter.

Published by the University of Oklahoma Press, "Framing First Contact: From Catlin to Russell" will be available for purchase at the Luther Book Shop as well as local and area booksellers.