[1] Collecting and the Institutionalization of Contemporary Art (1990–2015)

Chairs: Roberta Serpolli, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice; and Eleonora Charans, University of Milan.

Email: robertaserpolligmail.com and eleonora.charansgmail.com

This session will analyze the relation between collecting and the institutionalization of contemporary art in both the United States and Europe. While sometimes controversial, institutional acquisitions from private collections can lead to significant issues about museum policy and public response as well as the time gap in acknowledging the new art forms. What is the role played by collectors in museums’ acquisitions? What are the challenges faced by a museum in acquiring the recently collected artworks? Addressing the changing role of collectors and museums, this session investigates their confluence, thus fostering an interdisciplinary approach. Starting from an evaluation of the agreement between the Whitney Museum and the Met, the panel analyzes issues such as the collector as curator, the artist as collector, and the institutional reframing of a collection. We welcome contributions from art historians, curators, collectors, artists, and dealers examining historical antecedents and future perspectives.

Proposals for papers are due to session chairs by May 9, 2013. As indicated by the 2015 Call for Participation:

Proposals for participation in sessions should be sent directly to the appropriate session chair(s). If a session is cochaired, a copy should be sent to each chair, unless otherwise indicated. Every proposal should include the following five items:

1. Completed session participation proposal form, located at the end of this brochure, or an email with the requested information.
2. Preliminary abstract of one to two double-spaced, typed pages.
3. Letter explaining speaker’s interest, expertise in the topic, and CAA membership status.
4. CV with home and office mailing addresses, email address, and phone and fax numbers. Include summer address and telephone number, if applicable.
5. Documentation of work when appropriate, especially for sessions in which artists might discuss their own work.

For full details of conference and participation requirements, see:
http://www.collegeart.org/proposals/2015callforparticipation

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[2] Charting Cubism across Central and Eastern Europe

Venue and dates:
College Art Association (CAA) annual conference, New York, Feb. 11-14, 2015
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Feb. 14, 2015

Organizers:
The Historians of German and Central European Art and Architecture (HGCEA) and the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Chairs:
Anna Jozefacka and Luise Mahler (Hunter College, CUNY)

This symposium consists of a CAA session sponsored by HGCEA and a related session co-organized by HGCEA and the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

CALL FOR PAPERS:
The impact of Cubism on twentieth century culture was instant, widespread, and long lasting. From the outset its character was trans-regional, both in terms of practitioners and advocates. Pivotal to its reach were the networks of artists, dealers, collectors, critics, and scholars that contributed to Cubism’s rapid expansion across geographical, national, and ethnic boundaries. Participating in Cubist circles was a large contingent of artists and intellectuals from Central and Eastern Europe – a region that significantly contributed to the diversification and crossbreeding of the formal language of Cubism.

For this two-part symposium we invite papers that investigate ways in which Cubism became vital to local artistic and general discourses across Central and Eastern Europe. We seek to discuss strategies—such as printed media, exhibition practices, lectures, and other forms of modern communication—through which Cubism was disseminated and popularized across the region. Specifically, papers might examine topics that include but are not limited to:

• Trans-regional artists’ networks and groups
• Dealers and collectors of Cubism with ties to the region
• Techniques of dissemination
• Reception of Cubism in the artistic and popular press
• Cubist criticism and scholarship as well as its history

As Cubist scholarship begins to examine the movement’s global significance through regional frames, a symposium on Cubism in Central and Eastern Europe highlighting issues of dissemination and exchange is particularly germane due to the pivotal role the region played in this movement from the start. In investigating subjects such as those listed above, the symposium will further recent scholarship on the subject of Cubism brought forward by art historians and scholars of other disciplines focusing on Central and Eastern European artistic avant-gardes.

Please send a 500-word proposal for either session and an academic CV to: chartingcubismgmail.com. In addition to these documents we kindly ask scholars interested in the CAA session to submit letter of interest and complete the CAA submission proposal form (the form can be found on the CAA website: http://www.collegeart.org/proposals/).

Deadline for submissions is May 9, 2014. Successful applicants will be notified by June 9, 2014

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[3] Performative Architecture for the Modern Era

When speaking of how art engages viewers, one is already considering its performative potential as an active agent in shaping and mediating the world. This panel seeks more specifically to explore architecture’s performativity, not as the structural frame of a theatre, so to speak, but as the construction of a theatrical space, as well as an essential component of the performance, before it was built with modern technologies. More and more recent research in architecture has already turned our attention less to what it looks like than what it does, thus shifting our focus to experience, rather than interpretation, of architecture, asking how it acts upon the beholder and transforms the perceived reality. We are chiefly interested in how architecture creates or provokes synesthetic or/and kinesthetic experience, and how architecture orchestrates the built environment in such way that it, for example, performs the sacred, enacts memories, elicits desire, commands authority, or produces social drama.

Please submit your proposals for papers to Wei-Cheng Lin (UNC at Chapel Hill) at wclinemail.unc.edu