Call for Papers

Collections: Celebration
42nd Annual Cleveland Symposium
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
Friday, October 28, 2016

Why is art collected? Who collects art? How do objects celebrate the history of their makers and buyers? What is the market’s impact on artistic production? In what ways does art manifest collaboration, exchange, and interaction?

The Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Museum of Art Joint Graduate Program in Art History and Museum Studies invites student scholars from all areas of art history, visual studies, material culture, and related disciplines to submit abstracts for its 2016 Annual Symposium: Collections: Celebration. This year’s theme deals broadly with topics of patronage, art as a commodity, historical narrative, cross-cultural exchange, monuments, and in honor of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s centennial anniversary: collecting and celebrating.

With keynote speaker: Dr. Dena Woodall, Associate Curator of Prints & Drawings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Collecting and connoisseurship
- Art as commodity
- Art market, past and present
- Selling and dealing
- Fakes, copies, and reproductions
- Patronage and provenance
- Donors and philanthropy
- Authorship
- Public art
- Museum display
- Historical narrative
- Monuments
- Cross-cultural exchange of objects and ideas
- "High" v. "low" brow

Current doctoral and master's degree students and recent graduates (degree conferred no earlier than January 1, 2015) in art history and related disciplines are invited to submit a 300-word abstract (for a final paper of 20 minutes maximum) and C.V. by June 17, 2016. Please do not include identifying information other than your name on the abstract and send both documents to clevelandsymposiumgmail.com. Three prizes will be awarded to the most successful papers.