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THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS HAS PASSED
PROPOSALS ARE NO LONGER BEING ACCEPTED
The National Committee for the History of Art solicits 250-word proposals for 25-minute papers for the sessions described below. Papers should present new scholarship that has not previously been published. Proposals should be sent via email or hard copy to both of the relevant session chairs.
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1) What Makes Antiquity so Different, so Appealing? Issues and Debates
Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, Morning, 7 April 2006
Co-Chairs: Malcolm Baker, Professor, Department of Art History, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0047; mcbaker@usc.edu;
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Professor, Department of Art and Archaeology,
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1081; kaufmann@princeton.edu.
Appropriation, imitation, revival and reproduction are familiar terms for describing the uses made by many cultures of the artifacts produced by other, earlier cultures. As such, these terms and the concepts they suggest are as applicable to the adaptation of Indian styles in nineteenth-century England as to the use of antique motifs in Renaissance Florence. They are also employed in discussions of the “classic” in other cultures, as well as transculturally, instances of which would be appropriate to this session. Nonetheless, the idea of appropriation and revival within art historical discourse very often carries with it the notion of the afterlife of the antique. While this of course is part of a far wider response to the classical, is there something about the art of Greece and Rome that encourages and prompts its appropriation and adoption as a norm so frequently in European art? How might we account for the enduring appeal of antiquity? Are there blind spots that have allowed us to view the classical past without seeing the whole picture?
Papers are invited that explore these issues and/or consider the re-use of the antique in a broader context. Comparative discussions of the afterlives of the antique and other traditions would be especially welcome.
2) Gardens of Contemplation, Delight and Desire
Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, Afternoon, 7 April 2006
Co-Chairs: Edward Harwood, Associate Professor, Department of Art and Visual
Culture, Bates College. Mailing address:
3412 O Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20007 Tel: 202-333-1411
eharwood@bates.edu;
Therese O'Malley, Associate Dean, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art. Mailing address: 2000B South Club Drive, Landover, MD 20785; t-omalley@nga.gov.
This session explores the idea of the villa garden in the ancient world and its reinterpretation in the modern period. The opening of the Getty Villa and the site of this meeting at Henry Huntington's villa estate serve as obvious inspiration for a discussion of past and present interpretations of ancient villa gardens. While the former is a literal recreation, and transplantation, of the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, the latter is a metaphorical re-envisioning of a villa for a different time and place. Central to an understanding of both, however, is an enduring dialogue that privileges the villa as a site for restorative, rural retreat, while, at the same time, assuming its necessary proximity to an active urban center. The complexity of the villa idea through time draws richly from this apparently contradictory, but interpretatively essential, embrace of both the city and the country. Over centuries, interpretations of ancient villa gardens have been built upon fragments of mythic history and contemporaneous ideologies, in addition to, and at times even in conflict with, an ever growing body of archaeological evidence. This session seeks papers that offer reassessments of the villa garden based on new archeological or textual evidence. Papers may also address the history and historiography of ancient villa gardens and their imaginative reconstructions through the reiteration, and reconfiguration, of form and meaning from antiquity to the present.
3) The Body in Antiquity and the Modern Imagination
Getty Villa, Malibu, Morning, 8 April 2006
Co-Chairs: Peter Holliday, Associate Professor, Art Department, California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90840; holliday@csulb.edu;
Richard Meyer, Associate Professor, Art History Department, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0047; rmeyer@usc.edu.
The human form was the principal motif in the visual arts of classical antiquity. The body provided a fundamental vehicle for formal and aesthetic exploration, ethical and religious enquiry, and the dissemination of ideology. Attempts to resuscitate antiquity's fascination with the body have continually resurfaced in Western art, literature, philosophy, and culture from the early modern period through postmodernism. This session invites papers that address the issue of the modern longing to come to grips with ancient concepts--and images--of the body. Both papers that reconstruct ancient approaches to the body and those addressing the modern reconstructions of the antique are invited. How, this session asks, did classical themes and motifs become the embodiment of aesthetic, political, or erotic ideals at particular historical moments from antiquity to the present day? We are particularly interested in papers that pursue this question through a close analysis of a particular "case study," whether that be an artist, a work, a text, or another kind of cultural artifact.
4) Ancient Site/Modern Museum
Getty Villa, Malibu, Afternoon, 8 April 2006
Co-Chairs: Dana Arnold, Professor of Architectural History and Head of Research,
School of Humanities, University of Southampton, Highfield SO17 1BJ, U.K.;
d.r.arnold@soton.ac.uk;
Diane Favro, Professor, Department of Architecture and Urban Design, University of
California at Los Angeles, Box 51467, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1467; dfavro@ucla.edu.
The potent exchange between ancient architecture and the modern museum is largely muted in the contemporary discourse. Consideration of this nexus is critical at a time when divisions are broadening between disciplines, institutions, and nations. For instance, the portability of architecture, in fragments or in its entirety, across countries and continents provokes the questioning of its relationship to the construction of national memories. The increasing number of expansive archaeological zones, heritage parks of transported buildings, and digital recreations of ancient environments is further challenging the definition of the museum. Indeed, the display of large buildings and environments in a traditional museum setting transforms architecture into an art work that ‘opens a world’. But what is our experience of this ‘world’ and what is the role of the optic of the modern museum through which we view the architecture of the past? Ancient architecture can, then, through the practices of museum display and multi media representations, become either spectacle or something with which we have affinity. This session seeks papers that consider these issues either through theoretically refined readings of particular case studies or through comparative examples.
Proposals for papers (250 words) should be formatted in Microsoft Word for submission via email attachment addressed to the two chairs of the relevant session; alternatively, proposals may be submitted in hard copy via regular mail to the postal addresses of the two session chairs. Those proposing papers should include in the body of their email message (or in a hard copy cover letter for those submitting via regular mail) their name, email address, postal address, telephone number(s), and institutional affiliation; a curriculum vitae should also be attached (or sent with the submission via regular mail).
Session chairs will acknowledge receipt of proposal submissions.
Deadline for submission of proposals: 15 September 2005.
Notification of acceptance: 1 November 2005.
Deadline for submission of final papers: 15 February 2006.
THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS HAS PASSED
PROPOSALS ARE NO LONGER BEING ACCEPTED
For further information, please email info@nchart.org.
FUNDING AVAILABLE
Through the generosity of the Getty Foundation, funding is available to support travel and other expenses for scholars (those presenting papers as well as attendees) from developing countries, Central Europe and Eastern Europe. To apply, send a curriculum vitae and a statement of purpose (not to exceed 350 words) describing how attendance would enhance your professional activities and scholarship. Send via email to info@nchart.org; or via regular mail to: Past Perfected Conference, National Committee for the History of Art, Art History Department, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA 90089-0047, USA. Review of applications will begin 15 October 2005.