Art and Agriculture

Throughout its long history – from the fifteenth-century peasant farmers featured in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry to the twenty-first century Edible Estates of architect Fritz Haeg – art has looked to agriculture for inspiration. Art historians have often positioned the bucolic farm as a retreat or nostalgic escape from the problems and anxieties produced by the bustling city, studying the rural in subordinate relationship to the urban. This panel welcomes investigations of the political work done by the pastoral and picturesque landscape, as well as those that consider expanded aesthetic practices to offer new ways of understanding the relationships between art and agriculture. For example, papers may consider how collaborative art centers and community gardens share enthusiastic local audiences or why civic groups in Detroit imagine urban farms and art installations as integral to their city’s renaissance. Panelists may be artists, art historians, art educators, or activists, examining agriculture as a subject or model for artwork in any region or historical period.

To submit a proposal please visit the conference website
http://art.wayne.edu/DETROIT2012/
or the paper submission page directly
http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/macaa2012/