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During an NEH fellowship year, I will complete the manuscript for "The American School: Artist and Identity in the Late Colonial and Early National Era" (est. 200,000 words). Four polished chapters are in hand but two (possibly three, as the work develops) require more research and writing, while the introductory text is still embryonic and epilogue yet to be started. While my study of artists' status has already resulted in a number of publications, the book does not simply collect that work. Instead, I have been reconfiguring and expanding previous essays, bringing the material together with substantial new scholarship into a cohesive whole of longer narrative arc. Recurring themes across the book include artisanry and professionalism; practice and theory; regional, colonial, and national identities; the democratization of art and portrait painting as a political metaphor; artistic nationalism and naturalism as a presumed American idiom; and the nascent history of American art.