MELLON RESEARCH INITIATIVE
Comparativism
March 30-31, 2012
The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
1 East 78th Street, New York
RSVP Required
The first Art History colloquium of the Mellon Research Initiative will reflect upon the strengths and weaknesses of comparative practice in art history. It serves as an initial basis for understanding the place of the comparative in the future study of art history, and for examining the parallel problems of comparativism in the Initiative’s two other fields – archaeology and conservation.
The History of Art is comprised of a series of scholarly fields with a visual emphasis, whose specific historical and contextual focuses center on very different temporal and cultural contexts, while still regarding themselves as one coherent discipline. There are, however, deep problems in how the sub-fields within this big and broad-brush generalization called ‘Art History’ can speak clearly and coherently to each other. This question is in the subject’s history, and remains compelling for both its present and its future. It cannot be ‘solved’ simply or easily.
SPEAKERS:
Whitney Davis, George C. and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Art History, UC Berkeley
Finbarr Barry Flood, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of the Humanities, Institute of Fine Arts and College of Arts and Science
Christopher P. Heuer, Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University
Matthew Jesse Jackson, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Chicago
Richard Neer, David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor of Humanities, Art History and the College, University of Chicago
Margaret Olin, Senior Research Scholar, Yale Divinity School
Avinoam Shalem, Professor of the History of Islamic Art, Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich
Ittai Weinryb, Assistant Professor, Bard Graduate Center, New York
Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, and the College
Convened by Jas Elsner, Humfrey Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Archaeology at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University and Visiting Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago
AGENDA:
Saturday March 31, 2012:
Open to the public. RSVP by clicking here.
9:00 Registration
9:30 – 11:00 Session 1
Richard Neer, Recognizing Ancient Depictions
Wu Hung, What are “Chinese ruins”? A comparative inquiry into the notion and representation of ruins in Chinese art from ancient times to the present
Break
11:30 – 1.00 Session 2
Avinoam Shalem, Intersecting Historiographies and the Global Birth of Medievalism: The case of Henri Pirenne and Ernst Herzfeld
Ittai Weinryb,Marvelous in our Eyes
Lunch Break
2:00-3:30 Session 3
Christopher Heuer & Matthew Jesse Jackson, Our Literal Speed
Break
4:00-5:30 Session 4
Finbarr Barry Flood, Selective Affinities vs. Common Genealogies: Comparativism, Reception and the Medieval Modern
Reception
RSVP information:
Please note, due to capacity restrictions, the Friday (March 30) proceedings are closed to the public. Please join us for Saturday's programme that is free and open to the public, RSVP is required.
To make a reservation for this event, please click here or email ifa.events@nyu.edu with "Mellon 3/31" in the subject line. This conference is held in the Institute of Fine Art's first floor Lecture hall at 1 East 78th Street. Please note that seating is on a first-come first-served basis. If necessary, we will provide a simulcast of the lecture in an adjacent room.
For all other inquiries, please email the IFA Research Activities Coordinator at ya509@nyu.edu
 |
Follow the IFA on Twitter. |
 |
Connect with the IFA on Facebook. |
 |
Watch IFA Videos on Vimeo. |