Past Imperfect Workshop: Monica Bravo

Please join us for a workshop with Monica Bravo, Assistant Professor in Art & Archaeology at Princeton University. We will be discussing a portion of Bravo’s book-in-progress, ‘Silver Pacific: A Mineral History of Early American Photography’. This chapter traces the entanglement of the Comstock Lode in Nevada, the short-lived U.S. Mint in Reno, and the newly important San Francisco stock market, all revolving around mining stock certificates. These ornate slips of paper, frequently illustrated with elaborate vignettes, represent shares in mines, which echoed the once-common practice of investing in argonauts bound for California. San Francisco-based, African American artist Grafton Tyler Brown was among the lithographers who produced these prints. This chapter analyses his involvement in these systems of racial capitalism against the backdrop of the Civil War, bringing into focus the corporatization of mining by the 1870s and the concentration of wealth in California and Nevada.

This event is open to UCL staff and PGT students only.