Fake Friends: A Symposium on Art History and Comparison

The Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University is pleased to announce FAKE FRIENDS, a symposium on comparison and similitude in art history slated for Friday, November 30. An opening program hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Philadelphia, will take place at 5:30 pm on Thursday, November 29, with a screening by visual artist Andrew Norman Wilson and a panel discussion featuring Caroline A Jones (MIT), Joan Kee (University of Michigan), and Jaleh Mansoor (University of British Columbia) moderated by ICA curator Alex Klein, to be followed by a reception.

On November 30, the program-proper will commence on Princeton’s campus at 10 am in McCormick Hall 106 with a morning keynote by Caroline Walker Bynum (Institute for Advanced Study, emerita), entitled “Dissimilar Similitude: How do Religious Objects Look Like and Look Alike?” The rest of the day will consist of three panels engaging comparison and similitude in a variety of historical times and from different methodological positions, with some incursions into other disciplines—notably comparative literature, religion, architecture, music, and philosophy, among others. The day will conclude at 6 pm with a reception in the foyer outside McCormick 106.

Advance registration is encouraged; for details, schedule updates, and to register, please visit the conference website, fakefriends.princeton.edu. A preliminary program for November 30 follows below.

Best wishes,
Mostafa Heddaya & Christopher Barrett-Lennard, co-organizers

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30
106 McCormick Hall, Princeton University

10:00 am – Opening remarks

10:15 am – Keynote
“Dissimilar Similitude: How do Religious Objects Look Like and Look Alike?”
Caroline Walker Bynum (Institute for Advanced Study, emerita)

10:45 am – Break

11:00 am – Panel A:

“From the Comparable to the Analogous” / Julia E Robinson (New York University)
“Corroborators in Arms: Melvin Edwards and Ronald Miyashiro” / Joan Kee (University of Michigan)
“Image/Vessel/Waste” / Shira Brisman (University of Pennsylvania)

12:30 pm – Lunch

1:30 pm – Panel B:

“Liking Likeness: Comparison of Sculptural Pairs in Roman Visual Culture” / Roko Rumora (University of Chicago)
“Santiago Sierra’s Cruelty, Francis Alÿs’s Naive Optimism: On the Limits of Analogy in the Wake of the Social Turn in Art” / Jaleh Mansoor (University of British Columbia)
“Points of View” / Andrew Norman Wilson

3:30 pm – Break

3:45 pm – Panel C:

“Predicated Internationalism: the ‘Pakistani Picasso,’ Sadequain” / Caroline A Jones (MIT)
“F. N. Souza on Barnett Newman (An Episode in the Contested History of Color)” / Saul Nelson (Oxford)
“‘Porous’ Naples Reconsidered: Comparison, Competition, and the Power of Neighborhood in Historical Urban Space” / Tanja Michalsky (Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History)

5:30 pm – Concluding remarks

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Panel respondents:

Amelia Ames (Princeton)
David Xu Borgonjon (Columbia)
Joe Bucciero (Princeton)
Sonia De Laforcade (Princeton)
Tausif Noor (ICA Philadelphia)
Rhiannon M. Pare (Princeton)

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Questions and comments can be directed to co-organizers Mostafa Heddaya & Christopher Barrett-Lennard (Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton) at:
mheddayaprinceton.edu; cab4princeton.edu

Special thanks to Tausif Noor, Spiegel-Wilks Curatorial Fellow, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.