DIGNITY PORTRAIT

The Gilded Age pointed to European ideals of aristocracy and patronage with a heretofore unknown collaboration between wealthy American patrons and artists. With the amassing of great fortunes founded on industrial expansion, came the impetus to document the DIGNIFIED appearance of those who propelled and benefited from burgeoning wealth, thus echoing a cultural pattern reaching back to the colonial era. Students investigate their own strong cultural and social legacy; write a narrative of their own history; and research ‘DIGNITY’, photoshoping themselves into a gilded age portrait with applicable and/or desired accoutrements.