Please note that some sessions run simultaneously, and any sessions denoted as seminars have limited seating.
To attend a seminar, you must pre-register for that seminar.
PUBLIC PANEL
Auditorium
Manton Research Center
Clark Art Institute
9:00 AM–12:00 PM THE “WORK” OF THEORY FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH
Resisting nativist cultural politics on the one hand and art history’s Eurocentrism in the matters of theory on the other, the panel takes off from an article titled “The Work of Theory: Thinking across Traditions” by Prathama Banerjee, Aditya Nigam and Rakesh Pandey in 2016 published in the Economic and Political Weekly to propose that “we move from the position of being a critic of Western theory to being a composer and assembler of a new theory.” Theorists will gather to explore writing an art history that leaves open the possibility of abstract thinking and self-reflexivity in the non-European knowledge systems and aesthetic theories.
Parul Dave Mukherji, convener, professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Iftikhar Dadi, professor of History of Art and Visual Studies, Cornell University, on “Abstraction and Modernism”
James Elkins, chair of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, School of the Art Institute, Chicago, on “Reconceptualizing Global Art History”
Prita Meier, associate professor of Art History, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, on “The Indian Ocean as Method: Beyond the ‘Cross-Cultural’ Paradigm in Art History”
Keith Moxey, professor emeritus of Art History, Barnard College, New York, on “Decolonization Now”
Sugata Ray, associate professor of History of Art and South & Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, on “Eco Art History from the Global South: Genealogies, Methodologies, Practices”
SEMINAR
Scholars’ Seminar Room
Library, Upper Level
Manton Research Center
Clark Art Institute
Pre-registration in advance required to attend.
10:00 AM–4:00 PM DRAWING ART HISTORY
Drawing is not only a subject, but also a tool for art history. Its use was common among 19th-century art historians, many of whom had artistic training. Major art historians, such as Meyer Schapiro, used drawing to observe, analyze, record, and interpret their objects of study. Nevertheless, most art historians have kept their drawings, deemed “subjective,” to themselves. This seminar will deal with the past, the present, and the future of drawing as an instrument of art history, by focusing on case studies.
Dario Gamboni, co-convener, professor emeritus of Art History, University of Geneva, on “Testing Ways of Visualizing Aniconism”
Jérémie Koering, co-convener, professor of Art History, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, on “Drawing by Proxy: Edgar Wind through Karl Schneider”
Isabel Bird, PhD candidate in History of Art, Harvard University, on “First Person, Twice Removed: On Drawing After Sturtevant”
Dominic-Alain Boariu, Swiss Science Foundation Senior Researcher, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, on “Wölfflin’s Hatchings”
Kerstin Thomas, professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, University of Stuttgart, Germany, on “‘Secrets de la matière et de l’outil’: The Role of Artworks and Art Practices in Henri Focillon’s Concept of Form”
Barbara Wittmann, professor of Art History and Theory, Berlin University of the Arts, Germany, on “Reconceptualizing Vision: Drawing and the Experimentalization of Perception in Art History”
TOUR
Meet by water feature on Fernandez Terrace
Outside Manton Research Center
Clark Art Institute
10:00–11:30 AM HIKE & TOUR OF GROUND/WORK OUTDOOR SCULPTURE EXHIBITION AT THE CLARK
OBJECT POP-UP
Library
Manton Research Center
Clark Art Institute
12:30–2:00 PM ARTISTS’ BOOKS HIGHLIGHTS
Andrea Puccio, Director of the Clark Library, delves into highlights from the Clark’s rich and varied collection of artists’ books.
PUBLIC PANEL
Auditorium
Manton Research Center
Clark Art Institute
1:30–4:30 PM AGAINST WHITENESS AND ITS ARCHIVES
Art history awaits its anti-melancholic turn. From Aby Warburg’s belief in the universal lost “primitive” origins of human expression to George Kubler’s concept of the “extinction” of Indigenous cultural forms and even to the present day, art historical reflections on the discipline’s relationship to archives have tended to focus on how archival lack corresponds to colonized cultures’ losses. This colloquium brings together art historians who write with different attitudes, affects, and methodologies in approaching colonial and postcolonial archives. These approaches will be anti-melancholic, oriented toward not past destruction but present construction. If art history always already acknowledges the deferment of full, replete meaning in its object of study, and has traditionally honored the unusual powers of the artwork, our colloquium hopes to push the discipline’s latent potential for writing beyond grief.
Jennifer Nelson, convener, associate professor of Art History, University of Delaware
Mia Bagneris, associate professor of Art History and Africana Studies and director of the Africana Studies Program, Tulane University, on “Deliberately Defaced: The Violence of Institutional Anti-Blackness in the Visual Archive and what to do (or not do!) about it”
Allison Caplan, assistant professor of History of Art, Yale University, on “Feathers in the Archive”
Ximena A. Gómez, assistant professor of History of Art and Architecture, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, on “Generative Possibilities of Erasure”
David Young Kim, professor of History of Art, University of Pennsylvania, and visiting faculty at the University of Zürich, on “Found in Translation: Vasari, Life-Writing, and Art History”
Shawon Kinew, assistant professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University, on “St. Paul & Me”
TOUR
Meet in Reading Room
Manton Research Center
Clark Art Institute
2:00–3:00 PM HIGHLIGHTS TOUR: RECENT ACQUSITIONS AT THE CLARK
EVENING CONVERSATION
Auditorium
Manton Research Center
Clark Art Institute
5:00 PM Reception, Manton Reading Room
5:30–7:00 PM CURATING & WRITING AMERICAN ART IN THE MUSEUM
Horace Ballard, Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Curator of American Art, Harvard University Art Museums, in conversation with Layla Bermeo, Kristin and Roger Servison Curator of Painting, Museum of Fine Arts Boston
RAP 25 is free and open to the public, but please register to attend.