Avant-Garde in the Cornfields: Architecture, Landscape, and Preservation in New Harmony
Michelangelo Sabatino, Ben Nicholson (Editors)
University of Minnesota Press, October 2019

Paperback | 8 x 10 inches | 408 pages | 178 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-1517903145 | $40.00

Publisher's Description:
Avant-Garde in the Cornfields is an in-depth study of New Harmony, Indiana, a unique town in the American Midwest renowned as the site of two successive Utopian settlements during the nineteenth century: the Harmonists and the Owenites. During the Cold War years of the twentieth century, New Harmony became a spiritual ?living community? and attracted a wide variety of creative artists and architects who left behind landmarks that are now world famous.
This engrossing and well-documented book explores the architecture, topography, and preservation of New Harmony during both periods and addresses troubling questions about the origin, production, and meaning of the town?s modern structures, landscapes, and gardens. It analyzes how these were preserved, recognizing the funding that has made New Harmony so vital, and details the elaborate ways in which the town remains an ongoing experiment in defining the role of patronage in historic preservation.

An important reappraisal of postwar American architecture from a rural perspective, Avant-Garde in the Cornfields presents provocative ideas about how history is interpreted through design and historic preservation?and about how ...