Vivien Green Fryd Awarded Eldredge Prize for Book on Sexual Trauma in American Art

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has awarded the 34th annual Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art to Vivien Green Fryd for her book Against Our Will: Sexual Trauma in American Art Since 1970 (Penn State University Press, 2019). Fryd was recognized by an independent panel for her innovative examination of the social history of artworks addressing pornography, domestic violence, incest and rape from the 1970s to the present. The panel noted the publication stands out given its “academic rigor, historical understanding and contemporary relevance that characterize the highest achievements in our field.”

Jurors for the $3,000 prize this year were Elizabeth Hutchinson, associate professor of American art history at Barnard College/Columbia University; Nizan Shaked, professor of contemporary art history, museum and curatorial studies at California State University, Long Beach; and Laura Kina, the Vincent de Paul Professor at the Art School of DePaul University.  

Jurors described the book as a “groundbreaking and timely study of sexual violence in American art. Deeply researched and clearly written, this brave and difficult book offers a capacious history of this important artistic subject in the late 20th century and establishes a foundation for understanding contemporary work that continues this tradition, inviting art historians working in all periods to confront the damaging tradition of silence around sexual violence.” 

Fryd is a professor emerita in the history of art and architecture department at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815–1865 (Ohio University Press, 2001; reprint Yale University Press, 1992) and Art and the Crisis of Marriage: Georgia O’Keeffe and Edward Hopper (University of Chicago Press, 2003). She is currently writing another book manuscript tentatively titled Henry Ries’s Photographs of Berlin Iconic Buildings and Monuments, 1937–2004. In addition, Fryd has published essays in Panorama, Art Bulletin, American Art Journal, American Art and Winterthur Portfolio, among other publications. She received a doctorate in 1984 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.