2. Medical research produces "miracle" drugs (middle to late 1900's)

Medical research changed the quality and duration of human life in the 1900's. Marie Curie received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of radiation in 1903, and Alexander Fleming introduced penicillin in 1928. Widespread vaccination (polio, 1953) showed the potential to stamp out killer diseases, such as TB, polio, and scarlet fever. Antibiotics made surgery safer and ever more sophisticated. As medicine and the wonder drugs prolonged human life, so substance abuse cut it short. Beginning in 1981, the HIV infection leading to death from AIDS decimated an important segment of the arts community. The AIDS quilt and "A Day Without Art" alert the public to this new medical emergency.

 

Marilyn Stokstad is the Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History at the University of Kansas. For her Top 10 list, Stokstad selects broad cultural movements of global significance seen in the light of the American experience. She generally notes a few specific events that triggered or characterized the larger issue or movement. She also expresses the impact on art either by a general movement or by a specific work of art.

1.

Science and technology get human beings to the moon (July 20, 1969)
2. Medical research produces "miracle" drugs (middle to late 1900's)
3. The breakup of the old social order (early 1900's)
4.

Private versus state patronage of the arts (throughout the 1900's)
5. The consumer society embraces the machine-made object (throughout the 1900's)
6. Advances in communication and transportation create the "global village" (throughout the 1900's)
7. The advance of civil rights and gender issues (middle to late 1900's)
8. The rise of ethnic nationalism (middle to late 1900's)
9. Totalitarian states attempt to control artists (throughout the 1900's)
10. Dropping the atomic bomb during World War II (1945)