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Podcast: New Books in Art
Episode: Pamela M. Lee, "Think Tank Aesthetics: Midcentury Modernism, the Cold War, and the Neoliberal Present" (MIT Press, 2020)
Description: In her groundbreaking and timely book Think Tank Aesthetics: Midcentury Modernism, the Cold War, and the Neoliberal Present (MIT Press, 2020), distinguished art historian Pamela M. Lee poses fundamental questions about how the rise of the âthink tankâ in the mid-20th century has challenged, and indeed must challenge, our understandings of aesthetics, political economy, scholarly knowledge production, and war. A conceptually rich and prolifically sourced work, Think Tank Aesthetics shows how the approaches and methods of think tanksâincluding systems theory, operations research, and cyberneticsâpaved the way for a peculiar genre of midcentury modernism and set the terms for contempor...