THE RESONANT OBJECT: A SYMPOSIUM TO HONOR CHARLES W. HAXTHAUSEN

In 1999, under the auspices of the Research and Academic Program, Charles W. (Mark) Haxthausen convened the conference “The Two Art Histories,” an unprecedented and influential gathering of academic art historians and museum curators that brought sotto voce tensions to surface in the spirit of intellectual inquiry and what we might achieve as a discipline outside of our institutional silos.

Nearly twenty years later, it is time to reconsider this achievement through a deep engagement with the art object in social structures, and in terms of the broader agency of objects in politics, society, and culture. With this mandate in mind, we pose the following question: painting, artwork, art object, immersive installation, digital realm—how do we interact with art today and how have the approaches of academic art historians and museum curators to the object changed in recent years?

This symposium invites Mark’s former graduate students to think about, with, and through art objects, in order to consider art history’s many past bifurcations and convergences between the academy and the museum. Grounded in the present, but looking back through history, what are the paradoxical effects of media, image, and culture upon theory and art historical practice today? We simultaneously reflect back on both 200 years of art history as a discipline grappling with the object at the nexus of history, theory, and display object, and also aim to include the most recent developments in the field.

Taking the long view, this symposium seeks to center the object in relation to its particular historical period vis-à-vis broad changes in intellectual outlooks and shifts in frameworks of knowledge. Inviting multiple conversations across the many sub-disciplines of art history, yet tethered to the continued central importance of the object—and its ability to resonate deeply and widely outwards — this symposium opens afresh the question of how an art object resonates.

Through new research on a broad range of objects, this symposium seeks to open a range of perspectives and discussions in celebration of Mark Haxthausen’s fifty years in the discipline, as academic, as curator, as intellectual, as mentor, and as colleague.

PROGRAM

Friday, May 18
5:00 PM RECEPTION
READING ROOM, MANTON RESEARCH CENTER

5:30 PM KEYNOTE
Charles W. Haxthausen, Robert Sterling Clark Professor of Art History, Emeritus, "The Cathedral of Cinema: Fritz Lang's Metropolis"

Saturday, May 19
Coffee, pastries, and fruit available starting at 9:00 AM.

9:15 AM WELCOMING REMARKS
Lisa Saltzman, Starr Director, Research and Academic Program

9:30 AM SESSION I
Robin Schuldenfrei ’00, "Moholy-Nagy and Architecture’s Material Abstraction"
Rebecca Uchill ’05, "What Matters"

10:30 AM BREAK

11:00 AM SESSION II
Joshua O’Driscoll ’07, "Inventing Abstraction: circa 950"
Graham Bader ’95, "Collage and Care"
Kristina Van Dyke ’99, "The Object of Art History in Oral Cultures"

12:30 PM LUNCH BREAK

1:45 PM SESSION III
Scott Allan ’99, "‘A Course of Discoveries’: Théodore Rousseau at the Getty"
Robert Slifkin ’02, "On Dennis Oppenheim’s Marionette Theater"

2:45 PM BREAK

3:15 PM SESSION IV: AFTERNOON ROUNDTABLE
Victoria Sancho-Lobis ’02, "The Multiple Contexts for Colonial Latin American Art"
David Breslin ’04, "No Unconsciousness"
De-Nin Lee ’95, "Resonant Landscapes"
Ellery Foutch ’03, "The Resonance of ‘Non-Art’ Objects"
Andrea Gyorody ’09, "Reviving Hannah Wilke’s Homage to a Large Red Lipstick"

4:30 PM CLOSING REMARKS

RECEPTION TO FOLLOW
READING ROOM, MANTON RESEARCH CENTER

Sponsored by the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art