Skip to main content

Supernatural America

The Paranormal in American Art

America is haunted. Ghosts from its violent history—the genocide of Indigenous peoples, slavery, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and traumatic wars—are an inescapable and unsettled part of the nation’s heritage. Not merely in the realm of metaphor but present and tangible, urgently calling for contact, these otherworldly visitors have been central to our national identity. Through times of mourning and trauma, artists have been integral to visualizing ghosts, whether national or personal, and in doing so have embraced the uncanny and the inexplicable. This stunning catalog, accompanying the first major exhibition to assess the spectral in American art, explores the numerous ways American artists have made sense of their own experiences of the paranormal and the supernatural, developing a rich visual culture of the intangible.

​Featuring artists from James McNeill Whistler and Kerry James Marshall to artist/mediums who made images with spirits during séances, this catalog covers more than two hundred years of the supernatural in American art. Here we find works that explore haunting, UFO sightings, and a broad range of experiential responses to other worldly contact.

320 pages | 200 color plates | 9-1/4 x 11 | © 2021

Art: American Art, Art--General Studies

Reviews

“The first major exhibition to examine the relationship between American artists and the supernatural in all its forms.”

Fortean Times

 “Supernatural America paints a picture of the paranormal in all its historic significance . . . . In addition to presenting art historical analyses of works in the exhibition, the catalog gives the reader a bare bones history of the paranormal in American culture, ranging from the origins of the Ouija Board and Spiritualism to psychic photography and witchcraft.”

ARLIS / NA

“Numerous artists have been inspired by ghosts and the paranormal over the centuries but rarely have these ghostly works been examined in a scholarly fashion. Robert Cozzolino, a curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, brings together more than 150 works in an ambitious touring show covering more than two centuries of art linked to the supernatural.”

Art Newspaper

Table of Contents

Director’s Foreword / Katherine C. Luber

INTRODUCTION: AMERICA IS HAUNTED / Robert Cozzolino
DESTINIES MANIFEST / John Jota Leaños
Hauntology / María del Pilar Blanco
UNCANNY SPACES / Sarah Burns
Phantasmagoria / Wendy Bellion
“THINGS NOT TANGIBLE”: PORTRAITS, SITTERS, AND THE SUPERNATURAL / Rachael Z. DeLue
Ghosts in the Machines / Brandon Hodge
HOW TO PAINT A GHOST AROUND 1900 / Adam M. Thomas
THESE UNSEEN BEINGS / Robert Cozzolino
Dust / Tony Oursler
Magic’s Deconstruction of Art, Science, and Religion / George P. Hansen
WILSON BENTLEY’S ARMY OF SOULS / Alexander Nemerov
Bringing the Invisible to Light: Aura and Psychic Photography / Michelle Donnelly
BLACK BLACK MAGIC / Bridget R. Cooks
The Rootworker’s Worktable / Renée Stout
Contemporary Witch Culture / Lacey Prpić Hedtke
GODDESS, BODY, AND EARTH: FEMINIST SPIRITS IN THE 1970S / Rachel Middleman
Popular Culture and the Paranormal/Supernatural / Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

Plates
Selected Bibliography
Appendix: Octopus Series
Exhibition Checklist
Contributors
Curator’s Acknowledgments
Lenders to the Exhibition
Photography Credits

Awards

College Art Association: Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award
Won

Be the first to know

Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!

Sign up here for updates about the Press