Visual Culture and National Identity
A Symposium

June 10-11, 2010
Lectures, discussion panels and research workshops

With (a.o.): Susan Buck-Morss, Thomas Dacosta Kaufmann, Sudeep Dasgupta,
Annet Dekker, Wessel Krul, Neil McWilliam, Griselda Pollock, Anthony
Smith, Anna Tilroe and Kitty Zijlmans

This symposium and the accompanying research workshops explore the
performative and imaginary construction of national identities in relation
to visual culture, art history and the visual arts. What kind of images
are significant in these constructions and what is the relation between
the interpretation of these images as a form of national capital and the
process of globalisation, both of which have been increasingly criticised
in the past two decades? And do national identities - and the art and
popular-culture images attached to them - still matter when supranational
communities and their related identities are quickly gaining ground? The
symposium will also critically examine how the geographical model has
become seemingly ineradicable in the academic and museological
interpretation of art and visual culture: will we ever, or should we ever,
abandon the concept of nationality as a primary structuring principle?

The symposium takes place on the occasion of the publication of the
anthology Overal Vincent: De (inter)nationale identiteiten van Van Gogh
(Amsterdam University Press, 2010), edited by co-organisers Rachel Esner
and Margriet Schavemaker. For more information, see the AUP website:
www.aup.nl

Symposium
Date: June 10-11, 2010
Location: Auditorium of the Van Gogh Museum, Paulus Potterstraat 7,
Amsterdam
Entrance fee: Euro 15,- (students) / Euro 30 (non-students) (N.B.:
students of the School of Art, Religion, and Cultural Sciences (KRC) of
the University of Amsterdam have free entrance to the symposium)
Registration and payment in advance is compulsory. Please register via
www.nationalidentity.nl

Research Workshops
Date: June 10-11, 2010
Location: University of Amsterdam, PC Hoofthuis, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam
Entrance fee: None
Registration in advance is compulsory. Please register via
www.nationalidentity.nl

Partners: University of Amsterdam (Institute of Culture and History (ICH),
Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), School of Art, Religion,
and
Cultural Sciences (KRC)), Van Gogh Museum
Media partner: Metropolis M
Supported by: Mondriaan Foundation, Research School of Art History (OSK)

For more information, please visit
www.nationalidentity.nl