International Undergraduate Student Symposium

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5th Annual  International Undergraduate Student Symposium
Call for Papers: The Destruction of Art (Past and Present)
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth – Art History Department

Please send a 200-word abstract (along with essay title and a short resume) to the president, Rea Bethel, The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (rbethel@umassd.edu and arthistoryclubcvpa@gmail.com) by March 15, 2016. Those whose proposals are accepted will be contacted soon thereafter and requested to submit full papers and PowerPoint presentations by April 1, 2016.

Subject Fields: Architectural History, Cultural Studies, Heritage and Museum studies, Art History, Media & Visual Culture Studies, Censorship Studies, and studio art practices with focus on issues of destruction and eradication of material culture

Works of art can be damaged or destroyed via natural processes, accidents, or intentional human action. The deliberate destruction of art and architecture and cultural heritage is an old practice, going as far back as the time of the Byzantine Empire when iconoclastic practices took place. In addition to religious drives, ideological persuasions have led to the destruction or obliteration of art. For example, the destruction and censorship of avant-garde art by the Nazis was a political response to progressive thinking. Paintings by Gustave Courbet and Gustav Klimt were inadvertently destroyed during WWII aerial bombings. In addition to state-sponsored defacing of art, in recent years works by Leonardo, Mark Rothko and others have been stabbed, shot, tagged and otherwise vandalized by everyday museum goers.

Recently, we have also seen many precious historic sites obliterated by radical groups. The destruction of cultural heritage of the Middle East by ISIS has become a pressing issue amongst scholars worldwide. More than ever before scholars have begun to consider ways to prevent art and artifacts from being destroyed.

It is in light of such developments that this year’s Art History undergraduate symposium at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is focused on the theme of the destruction of art. We invite undergraduate students from across various disciplines to share their thoughts about the destruction of art. Papers may draw on specific historical or contemporary examples, but may also take on bigger questions such as

  1. How have works of art been concealed or hidden from view throughout history?
  2. Iconoclasm is a controversial subject and spans across many cultures and time periods. What can we learn from historic examples of iconoclastic practices?
  3. What role does documenting the destruction of art play in contemporary art practices and/or the way we write (art) history?
  4. How has the destruction of art by ISIS or the events of 9/11 affected contemporary art practices and/or theories of art and material culture.

Public Panel

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Dr. Pamela Karimi takes part in a PUBLIC PANEL: Material Speculation, Between ISIS and Islamophobia at Trinity Square Video.

Saturday, February 13, 2016 @ 2:00 – 5:00pm

Ebu-web

On the occasion of Morehshin Allahyari’s solo exhibition: Material Speculation at Trinity Square Video, we are pleased to invite you to a public panel with the artist, in discussion with art historian and critic Pamela Karimi, and researcher and writer Dina Georgis. The panel will discuss their research in relationship to Allahyari’s work, Material Speculation: ISIS, a digital fabrication and 3D printing project focused on the reconstruction of selected artifacts that were destroyed by ISIS in 2015.

Situated in the political, social and cultural web of relations that Material Speculation proposes—from petropolitics, war, conflict materials, and terrorism—the panel explicitly challenges potentially polarizing and Islamophobic responses to the work, while probing its aesthetic, radical and complicated insights. The goal is to offer artistic contexts and theoretical readings of the exhibition while tying it to contemporary events of war, terrorism and the material/political worlds it implicates. More Information: http://www.trinitysquarevideo.com/panel-material-speculation/

 

 

Dr. Thomas Stubblefield Awarded the NEPCA Rollins Book Prize

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Dr. Thomas Stubblefield book entitled, 9/11 and Visual Culture of Disaster received the Rollins Book Prize from the Northeast Popular/American Culture Association. The Rollins Book Prize  is named for Peter C. Rollins, a renowned scholar in the fields of American and popular culture and a longtime NEPCA benefactor. Dr. Thomas Stubblefield is this year’s, 2015, recipient, congratulations!

 

Women Artists: An Untold Story

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DSC_0064 The University of Massachusetts Art History Department presents an exhibition entitled, Women Artists: An Untold Story (1890 – 1940). This exhibit is part of the Senior Art History Capstone class at UMass Dartmouth and will feature paintings, illustrations, book cover designs and photographs created by professional late nineteenth and early twentieth -century women artists from Philadelphia to Maine. The exhibition will open April 15 and close on May 2, 2015 The exhibition is held at the CVPA Campus Gallery, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 285 Old Westport Road, North Dartmouth, MA 02747. (Parking Lot 9 directly behind the CVPA building.). All are invited to attend the open reception and gallery talk on Thursday, Apr 16, 4 – 6 PM. For more information, please visit the University Galleries Facebook page, www.facebook.com/UmassDartmouthGalleries.

DSC_0093The exhibition explores the careers and lives of New Modern Woman Artist of the early twentieth-century and include works by Jessie Willcox Smith, Sarah Wyman Whitman, Eliza Draper Gardiner, Anna Richards Brewster, Blanche Ames, Theodosia Chase, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Emma Swan, Angela O’Leary, Mabel May Woodward, Grace Albee, Helen Watson Phelps, Alice Barbara Stephens, Ellen Dale Hale, and Lena Newscastle. These women were accomplished artists and leaders within the American art world. They embraced the modernist principles by the established of art organization throughout North East, attended and taught at prestigious education institutions, study at European and American salons with renown Modernists artists such as William Morris Hunt, John LaFarge and Arthur Dow and led profitable successful business careers.

The exhibition is a project of the Art History Senior Seminar class, composed of fourteen art history upperclassmen. Through this course students apply their academic and professional knowledge to a real world endeavor. Students expand their skill sets within the fields of art history, art, design and museum studies, through exhibition research, writing, interpretation, exhibition and graphic design, collection care, and visitor relations. Students learn to work collaboratively within a team setting. Students wrote and edited the catalog, developed the exhibition design, installed the exhibition and developed public programming.

We would like to extend our gratitude to those individuals who generously loaned works to the Women Artists: An Untold Story (1890-1940) exhibition, including, private collectors, Providence Art Club, Bert Gallery, Providence Athenaeum, Boston Public Library, Smith College, UMass Amherst, New Bedford Public Library and UMass Dartmouth, Claire T. Carney University Library.