Saving Adele: A History of the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Individual Research Project Research in progress for HIST 1302: United States History II Faculty Mentor: Kyle Wilkison, Ph.D. Nothing ruins an enriching intellectual experience quite like having it assigned. Consequently, Honors History 1302 students began by identifying their own passions and interests. They then chose topics of immediate and abiding personal interest and produced research projects that reflected that energy and commitment. Their research probed a marvelous variety of historical topics from culture, medicine, science, politics, and economics. They researched and wrote about anti-fascist American comic books during World War II, disturbing historic treatments for the mentally ill, advances in applied physics in motor vehicles, a sophisticated analysis of church and state in a NYC mayoral race, and one wonderfully-written explanation of credit-default swaps and the Great Recession. Ariel Furman’s splendid paper reflects the best of these freshman endeavors. The author-scholar carefully recounts the serpentine path of Gustav Klimt’s “Woman in Gold” from the complex art world of nineteenth-century Austria, through midtwentieth-century Nazi predations, on to resolution via twenty-first-century international law