Symposia, Conferences, Seminars, and Workshops

The Art History Information Exchange

Events of this nature are forever "upcoming." Any that are of interest to the Art History community and come to my attention will be posted here for the whole cyber-world to view.

If you are in charge of posting, or know of an upcoming symposium, conference, workshop or other event of significance to art historians, please contact me with your information. It will be my pleasure to post it here. Please note: potential attendees have scheduling concerns. In light of this, I respectfully ask that you do not request to have events posted that are less than two weeks away from being held, unless they are online, virtual classes or broadcasts.

Posted: 02/05/12

Mondrian, Nicholson and 20th Century Abstraction

09.30 - 18.00, Saturday 3 March 2012 (with registration from 09.00)
Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

In 1936 Alfred H. Barr Jr's history-making-and-shaping survey Cubism and Abstract Art put Piet Mondrian and Ben Nicholson together as the older and younger leaders of 'geometrical abstraction' in the Western World. It also announced that 'geometrical abstraction' was in decline, a judgement Mondrian immediately dismissed. For him, writing to Nicholson, 'geom. abstr.' was always in the ascendant.
This conference will respond to the stimulus offered by the exhibition Mondrian/Nicholson: In Parallel, to explore the issues raised by the kind of non-figurative art for which Mondrian and Nicholson stood in the 1930s and after. What was specific to this kind of art both in the particular achievements of these two artists and more generally? How could it assert its importance in the 1930s, and what could it mean in a decade in which Utopian optimism met anxiety and fear in the descent towards war? Was there, despite Barr's judgement, a future for what he dubbed 'geometrical abstraction', even beyond Mondrian's death in 1944 and beyond the Second World War?

Among those speaking will be Hans Janssen from the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, Michael White from the University of York, and Lee Beard, editor of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Nicholson. There will also be free entry to the exhibition throughout the day, and the conference will end with an open discussion in which the curators involved, Christopher Green, Barnaby Wright and Lee Beard will participate.
To book a place: £16 (£11 students, Courtauld staff/students and concessions) Book online: http://courtauld-institute.digitalmuseum.co.uk Or send a cheque made payable to 'Courtauld Institute of Art' to: Research Forum Events Co-ordinator, Research Forum, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, stating the event title 'Mondrian/Nicholson' conference. For further information, email ResearchForumEvents@courtauld.ac.uk

Organised by Chris Green and Barnaby Wright (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

Further information (incl. programme and timetable):
http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/events/2012/spring/mar3_MondrianNicholson.shtml

Posted: 01/29/12

Art and Exchange
Tufts University Art History Graduate Student Research Conference

March 10, 2012, 9:30am-4pm
Crane Room, Paige Hall,
Tufts University, Medford MA
Breakfast and lunch will be served

Keynote Address:
Dennis Carr
Assistant Curator,
Decorative Arts and Sculpture,
Art of the Americas,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Graduate Presenters:

Erika Nelson, Brooklyn College, MA graduate,
"Mickey in Mexico: The Infiltration of the Disney Dynasty in the Codex Espangliensis"

Elizabeth Frasco, Institute of Fine Arts, PhD candidate,
"Mermaids and Roses: Artistic Agency in the Murals of Iglesia San Jose"

Victoria Addona, University of British Columbia, MA candidate,
"Reality and its (Dis) contents: Bambocciate and the Collection of the Quotidian"

Alyssa Greenberg, University of Illinois, PhD candidate,
"The Mail Art and Artist Stamps of Michael Hernandez de Luna: Mail Art, Collaboration and Institutional Critique"

Lindsay O'Conner, Tulane University, MA candidate,
"The Picture of Civility: The Interplay between the Construction of Whiteness and Visual Culture in Kara Walker's A Warm Summer Evening in 1863"

Marian Smith, Harvard University, MA candidate,
"The Evolving Pictorial and Literary Language of Late Timurid Heart: A Case Study Using a 15th Century Illustrated Manuscript of the Mantiq al-tayr"

This event is generously sponsored by the Tufts University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Art and Art History

For more information, including directions and parking, visit our website:
http://ase.tufts.edu/art/newsevents.asp#mar10

Or contact Andrea Rosen at Andrea.Rosen@tufts.edu or Meredith Ferguson at Meredith.Ferguson@tufts.edu.

Posted: 01/29/12

History of Art Department, Yale University, New Haven (Connecticut), April 20 - 22, 2012

Byzantium/Modernism: Art, Cultural Heritage, and the Avant-Gardes

What does modern art have to gain from Byzantium? How can Byzantine philosophy enrich our understanding of the modern and contemporary image? The goal of this conference is twofold: First, to investigate the prolific interest in Byzantine art at the turn of the century and its effects on the historical Avant-Gardes in art, architecture, and visual culture to the present; second, to articulate how Byzantine art and image philosophy can contribute to modern and contemporary visual culture. The intention is to produce an intellectual history of art from the nineteenth century to the present that uses Byzantium/Modernism as a paradigmatic fissure for the co-identification of said terms.

Please find our full conference program on our website.

http://byzmod2012.eventbrite.com/

SPACE IS LIMITED: Please register on our website

Chairs: Roland Betancourt and Maria Taroutina

Posted: 01/22/12

Staging Space - From Gormley to Gaga

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, March 30, 2012

To coincide with the display Transformation and Revelation: Gormley to Gaga, the V&A is hosting a symposium. Invited designers and artists will explore the 'staging of space' including designing for site specific productions, dance, theatre and stadium shows.

Staging Space – From Gormley to Gaga
Friday 30 March 2012 , 10.30 - 17.30
Hochhauser Auditorium In collaboration with the Society of British Theatre Designers

Programme
10.00 Registration
10.30 Welcome Matty Pye, Learning and Interpretation, V&A
10.40 Introducing the Themes and Ambitions of the Exhibition and Symposium Kate Bailey, Exhibition Curator, V&A
10.50 Transformation and Revelation, Society of British Theatre Designer Peter Farley
11.20 Refreshments
11.40 At the Blindspot; Scenographic intersection of territorial fields Sodja Lotker
12.10 Landscape as Theatre Pippa Nissen and Simon Banham
12.30 Panel Discussion Chair tbc
13.00 Lunch (not provided), opportunity to visit 'Staging Space, Transformation and Revelation'
14.30 Visual artists in Theatre Rae Smith and Leo Warner
15.00 The Stadium as Theatre Es Devlin
15.30 Multimedia Theatre Jamie Vartan
16.00 Refreshments
16.30 Stage City Melissa Appleton & Matthew Butcher, Post Works
17.00 Conclusions and reflections
17.15 Close (please note that the Museum is open until 22.00 on Fridays)

More information www.vam.ac.uk/tickets

All programmes vary occasionally subject to change without warning
£25, £20 concessions, £10 students.

To book please call 020 7942 2211.

Posted: 01/22/12

After the 'New Art History'

The Journal of Art Historiography 2012 Conference

26-27 March 2012, University of Birmingham

Keynote Speakers:

Whitney Davis (University of California, Berkeley) and Griselda Pollock (University of Leeds)

Speakers:

Fiona Allen and Simon Constantine (University of Leeds)
Rina Arya (University of Wolverhampton)
Noemi de Haro García (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
Joanne Heath (University of Leeds)
David Hulks (University of East Anglia)
Krista Kodres (Art Institute, Tallinn)
Jenni Lauwrens (University of Pretoria)
Matthew Rampley (University of Birmingham)
Renja Suominen-Kokkonen (Åbo Akademi University)
Ian Verstegen (Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia)
Jennifer Way (University of North Texas)
Shearer West (Oxford University)

The term 'new art history' has long been an established – albeit contentious – part of the critical lexicon of the art historical discipline. Associated with the pioneering social and feminist art histories of T J Clark and Griselda Pollock of the 1970s (expanding in subsequent decades to encompass post-colonial, Freudian, post-Freudian and wider gender-studies approaches), it denoted a conceptual shift that foregrounded the dependence of intellectual inquiry on a priori ideological / political values.

In recent years such interlinking has been undermined in a number of ways. Embryonic discourses such as neuro-art history, environmental approaches to art and neo-Darwinian accounts have sought to create alternative 'objective,' 'scientific' and depoliticised paradigms of inquiry. On the other hand, it has been seen as insufficiently self-critical; for many proponents of visual studies its institutional success has led to a blunted vision, in which the value of basic categories, such as 'art' allegedly remain uninterrogated.

Finally, growing external political pressures on the Academy, which have been focused on instrumentalising art history, are potentially threatening to turn the discipline into a service industry for the market, stripping it of its force as a mode of radical social and cultural inquiry.

This conference will examine the state and futures of radical art history within this context. What has been gained for the discipline over the past 40 years, and what are the dangers for these gains in the present? What are the current challenges for radical art history, and how are they being met?

The Full Programme can be found at the Journal of Art Historiography website: http://arthistoriography.wordpress.com/colloquia/.

Fee:
Daily rate: £25 Full conference: £40.
Students / unwaged: £10 / £20

Registration deadline: 26 March, 2012

Contact: m.j.rampley@bham.ac.uk

Posted: 01/08/12

Medieval Maps and Diagrams
Warburg Institute, London, March 09, 2012

http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/colloquia-2011-12/medieval-maps-and-diagrams/

In the past, maps were defined as representations of the surface of the earth or a part of it, but modern cartographical theorists and map historians define maps more widely as forms of graphic representations facilitating 'a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events' (J. B. Harley and D. Woodward). This interdisciplinary workshop will explore the relationship between medieval maps and diagrams. Brief presentations (15 minutes each) will concentrate on specific examples, which will be discussed in view of wider topics such as the art of memory, divination, typology, and page layout. The concluding panel will be concerned with the underlying question of the relationship and distinctions between medieval diagrams and maps, with the ways in which they have been examined by scholars in the past, and with how they might be investigated in the future.

PROGRAMME

10.00 Doors Open, Registration

10.15 Peter Mack and Hanna Vorholt, Welcome and Introduction

Chair: Peter Tóth (Warburg Institute)

10.30 Catherine Delano-Smith (Institute of Historical Research, London) - One Image, Several Guises: the Mapping of the Desert Encampment (Numbers 2-3)

11.00 Peter Barber (British Library) - From Jerusalem to Alpine Pride: the Geographical Diagrams of Albrecht von Bonstetten of 1479

11.30 Coffee

Chair: Megan C. McNamee (Warburg Institute and University of Michigan)

12.00 Paul D. A. Harvey (University of Durham) - English Manorial Accounts: Their Visual Impact

12.30 Charles Burnett (Warburg Institute) - Mapping the Shoulderblade

13.00 Lunch

Chair: Michael Kauffmann (Courtauld Institute of Art and Warburg Institute)

14.00 Mary Carruthers (New York University and All Souls College, Oxford) - How the Tower of Wisdom Diagram Works

14.30 Sandy Heslop (University of East Anglia) - Typology as Diagram in the Stained Glass at Canterbury Cathedral

KEYNOTE LECTURE

15.00 Jeffrey Hamburger (Harvard University) - Rhabanus redivivus: Berthold of Nuremberg’s Marian Supplement to De laudibus sanctae crucis

15.45 Tea

Chairs: Alessandro Scafi and Hanna Vorholt

16:15 PANEL DISCUSSION

17:45 Reception

Registration £25 (£12.50 for concessions) including coffee/tea, and a sandwich lunch. To register please contact: warburg@sas.ac.uk

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