The Museum of Modern Art’s Second Annual Graduate Symposium

Keynote address, Friday, April 28

Symposium, Saturday, April 29

Audio recordings from the symposium are available in the Adult and Academic Programs Audio Archive.

World Art | Art World: Changing Perspectives on Modern and Contemporary Art.

In the past few decades, the art world has seen unprecedented growth and globalization. These developments are apparent in a number of areas: new and larger museums and cultural institutions; a thriving market of galleries, art fairs, and biennials around the world; new press outlets for the dissemination of art criticism, marketing, and education through traditional and new media; increased attention, research, and art that addresses non-Western subject matter; and the professionalization of artists, museum administrators, and curators through emerging MA, MFA, and PhD programs.

How do critics and scholars comprehend the significance of both local and international artistic activity? What traditional and new tools for analysis do they use? Art historian James Elkins has recently written that the prospect of world art history raises questions about the discipline’s limits and future. Indeed, Western art history’s traditional methods, assumptions, and parameters of research have been under debate for at least the last four decades. This symposium sought papers that drew on a variety of disciplines and approaches to address histories of world art and emerging trends in the contemporary art world, while focusing on specific works or projects.

The keynote address was presented on Friday evening, April 28, 2006.

Professor Wu Hung, University of Chicago

"De-Flattening Contemporary Global Art"

Professor Wu is the Harrie H. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History, East Asian Languages and Civilizations; Chief Curator of the 2006 Gwangju Biennale; Director, Center for the Art of East Asia; and Consulting Curator, Smart Museum of Art.

Saturday, April 29

Symposium

INTRODUCTION

David Little, Director, Adult and Academic Programs, The Museum of Modern Art

Larissa Buchholz, State University of New York at Stony Brook

“The Global Rules of Art”

Daniel R. Quiles, Graduate Center, City University of New York

“Some Aspects of the South American Question: Tucumán Arde’s Bid for an Argentine Public Sphere”

Jennifer Josten, Yale University

“From Local to Global: Recovering Gabriel Orozco’s Naturaleza recuperada”

DISCUSSION

Moderator: Zdenka Badovinac, Director of Moderna Galerija (Museum of Modern Art), Ljubljana, Slovenia

Roberta Bonetti, University of Bologna and l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, Paris

“In Transit: Fantasy Coffins between Ghana, the Art Market, and Museums”

Wendy Morris, Institute for Research in the Arts, University of Leuven, Belgium

“(un)Lived Situations: Memórias Íntimas Marcas”

Leora Maltz, Harvard University

“William Kentridge's Rock and the 'Weight of Europe Leaning on the Tip of Africa’”

DISCUSSION

Moderator: Salah Hassan, Chair of the Department of History of Art and Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Art History and Visual Culture at Africana Studies at Cornell University

Presenters were selected from an international pool of applicants by an advisory committee consisting of:

Zdenka Badovinac, Director of Moderna Galerija (Museum of Modern Art), Ljubljana, Slovenia

Salah Hassan, Chair of the Department of History of Art and Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Art History and Visual Culture at Africana Studies at Cornell University

Charles W. Haxthausen, Director, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art and the Faison-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art

Jonathan Hay, Associate Professor, Institute of Fine Arts

From The Museum of Modern Art:

Amy Horschak, Educator, Department of Education

David Little, Director, Adult and Academic Programs, Department of Education

Joachim Pissarro, Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture

Peter Reed, Senior Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs

The symposium topic and schedule of speakers from 2005's First Annual Graduate Symposium is also available online.