CFP: Institutional Critique as Institution (AAH Leeds, 5-7 April 06)

Session for Association of Art Historians Annual Conference
Leeds, UK 5-7 April

Session Organizers:

Christopher P. Heuer, Columbia University
Matthew Jesse Jackson, University of Chicago

Various strategies of "institutional critique" in art practice -
from David to Haacke to Art & Language - have themselves generated
sharp, oppositional, and often extremely productive analytical
legacies. Yet art history has proven surprisingly less-attentive to
its own professional and theoretical realities. On the one hand, art
history seems reluctant to admit that many of its foundational, and
once-"adversarial" texts (say those of T.J. Clark, Rosalind Krauss
and Griselda Pollock) are now firmly ensconced as "institutions"
themselves, whether as features of syllabi, subjects of course
modules, or themes of symposia and panels. On the other, the
capital-based realities of art history - slashed budgets,
oversaturated job markets, ballooning tuition fees - make it
extremely difficult to speak of a "neutral" institutional
background. What are the implications of this condition for forms
of self-reflexive criticism? Can we save "oppositional" theory
from becoming only so much empty spectacle? What are the historical
precedents for these kinds of narratives? This session, to be
conducted at the 2006 Association of Art Historians Conference,
"Art & Art History: Contents, Discontents, Malcontents" welcomes
20-30 minute papers on any aspect of critical discourse as
"institution", on cultural phenomena of any era.

DEADLINE for abstracts: November 10, 2005

Please address all submissions to ch2353columbia.edu or to the
postal address below.

Dr. Christopher P. Heuer
Department of Art History and Archaeology
Columbia University
915 Schermerhorn Hall, MC 5517
1190 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, New York 10027 USA

F 1-212-854-7329