That scholars of American art have in recent years become increasingly interested in the history of the relation between capitalism and art was demonstrated at the 2023 College Art Association conference where a panel on "Capitalism and the History of United States Art" drew an overflow audience of well over a hundred people. Alan Wallach, a longtime student of the social history of American art, organized the panel and later submitted the speakers' papers to the journal. First the organizer, then the editorial board of American Art and its anonymous peer-reviewers, narrowed the offerings to an introduction and three essays, each demonstrating a different approach to the often-complicated relationship between capitalism and the art in question. These three commentaries offer methodologies for considering how artists working in a variety of media have come to grips with, or have in crucial ways responded to, the history of U.S. capitalism.
Vibrant, lively, and raucous, the three paintings in George Caleb Bingham's election series offer a colorful vision of Jacksonian democracy. While scholars often use these images as emblems of antebellum politics, the paintings marginalize a significant group of political actors: women. I read the series in conversation with an array of visual and material sources to offer a more complete picture of women's political participation during the antebellum era. Focusing on the material culture of campaign ephemera and situating the paintings in the context of Bingham's career, I argue that women of all classes were an integral part of the body politic. Thus, Bingham's series obscures as much as it reveals and scholars should expand the range of sources they examine to better understand women and politics in the antebellum era.
