I’m currently in London for the Association for Art History’s 2018 Annual Conference, which is being held between the Courtauld Institute and King’s College London from tomorrow until Saturday. As ever, I’m struggling to whittle down the panels I want to go to, so I thought I’d post my long list of recommendations for sessions. Also, if you’re at the conference, come and say hi!
Thursday 5th April, 2018:
Contemporary Art Histories
Convened by Sam Rose and Emalee Beddoes, this panel promises a fascinating examination of both the role of contemporary art in writing art history, and what contemporary art histories look like. This particularly appeals to me due to a couple of case studies for my collage project, which actively use modern/postmodern art historical ideas to rethink the art of the past. Highlights from this session include papers on Giotto and Kauffman through a contemporary lens.
HIV in Visual Culture: Looking to interdisiplinary approaches & global histories
Neil MacDonald and Jackson Davidow’s session HIV in Visual Culture, provides a transnational, institutional history of the artistic and cultural production associated with the pandemic. I’m particularly keen to hear the papers dealing with HIV/AIDS in the archive.
Textility
Mechthild Fend and Anne Lafont’s panel, Textility, is probably the one I’ll go to tomorrow. Dealing with the relatively new theoretical framework of ‘textility’, the session examines the technologies of textiles, intersections with other art forms, and hierarchies. Highlights include Marcia Pointon’s paper (Marcia Pointon is always a highlight, tbh), copper smithing, and lamé.
Friday 6th April, 2018
Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries: History of Science and History of Art
This roundtable, hosted by Katy Barrett, Sachiko Kusukawa, Alexander Marr, Sietske Fransen, Katherine Reinhart, and Joanna Woodall comes out of the AHRC-funded project, ‘Making Visible: the visual and graphic practices of the early Royal Society’. The session abstract talks about the specific relevance of such an interdisciplinary approach for the early modern period, particularly in terms of histories of collecting. This should be a really fascinating discussion.
Dialogues: Things and their collectors
Nicole Cochrane, Lizzie Rogers, & Charlotte Johnson’s panel, Dialogues: Things and their collectors, is where you’re likely to find me on Friday. I couldn’t be more excited for all the mourning, ruins, and ceramics.
Saturday 7th April, 2018
Dangerous Portraits in the Early Modern World
Jennifer Germann and Melissa Percival’s session on dangerous portraits promises a fascinating reassessment of the genre. Topics include radical, mutinous, painful, and colonial portraiture.
Seeing and Hearing the ‘Beyond’: Art, music and mysticism in the Long 19th Century
My second pick for Saturday is Michelle Foot and Corrinne Chong’s panel, on the interrelationship between art, music, and mysticism between 1789 and 1918. Crossing artistic, disciplinary, and geographical boundaries, the papers ask what testing these distinctions might tell us about nineteenth-century spiritualism.
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