THE ART ACADEMY OUTSIDE EUROPE A CLARK SYMPOSIUM SEPTEMBER 13–14, 2019
PROGRAM The nineteenth and early twentieth century witnessed the establishment of fine arts academies around the world. For the most part, these academies were modeled upon the French example and were part of a nexus of institutions and practices, including national museums and annual state-sponsored exhibitions, that domesticated the idea of art as it had developed in early modern Europe. As the fine arts academy was institutionalized in the nonwestern world, however, it encountered tensions and local contingencies that conditioned the ways in which the fine arts were conceptualized and practiced in those regions—often in extremely unexpected ways. Academies’ relationship to the state varied as their pedagogies altered, their hierarchies were inverted, and in some cases the artistic practices they were meant to introduce were transformed altogether. This is especially the case in Latin America, as demonstrated by examples ranging from Brazil to Chile, Cuba to Mexico. In Brazil, for example, the Academy of Rio de Janeiro subverted the traditional hierarchy of painting subjects that privileged history painting, and instead prioritized landscape as the subject most closely associated with state identity. Revealing examples can also be found in other regions of the world. The Tokyo Art School (Bijutsu Gakkō) established in 1889, was the first art academy not to include oil painting in its curriculum, teaching instead a form of neotraditional Japanese painting usually referred to as Nihonga. This symposium proposes a collective and comparative study of the art academy in the non-western world as a way of defamiliarizing art and its associated practices in a global context. In order to carry out such an endeavor, we have convened a group of scholars who study art institutions in different cultures and historical eras to add specificity and a meaningful grounding to the many discourses on world art that have proliferated over the past two decades.
Thursday, September 12 6:00 PM
WELCOME COCKTAIL THE ORCHARDS HOTEL
Please join us for drinks and light fare at the Orchards Hotel, where participants will be staying (222 Adams Road, 413-458-9611). Participants will be on their own for dinner. The restaurant at the hotel will be open and there are a few casual dining options nearby. Suggestions include: Hot Tomatoes (pizza with outdoor seating and bar), a 15-minute walk: http://hottomatoespizza.com/ Spice Root (Indian food) and Blue Mango (Thai & Sushi): https://www.spiceroot.com/menus.htm; http://bluemangothai.com/. They are next door to one another on Spring Street (a 20-minute walk).
If you want to drive, Coyote Flaco is a Mexican/Spanish food restaurant (5-minute drive): https://www.coyoteflacomass.com/.
Friday, September 13 Transportation will depart from the Orchards Hotel at 8:45 AM. The symposium will take place in the auditorium in the Manton Research Center. Coffee and pastries will be available by 9 AM in the reading room.
9:30 AM
WELCOME REMARKS Caroline Fowler, Interim Director, Research and Academic Program Yukio Lippit, Harvard University and Claudia Mattos Avolese, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Co-Conveners
10:00 AM
SESSION 1: MIDDLE EAST Moderator: Gülru Çakmak, University of Massachusetts, Amherst David Roxburgh, Harvard University: “The Birth of Art/Craft in Mid-NineteenthCentury Iran: Dialogues Between Subject, Medium, Composition” Kirsten Scheid, American University of Beirut: “Semites, Lady-artists or Partisans of the Nude?: The Struggle for an Art Academy in Mandate Lebanon” Deniz Türker, Pembroke College, Cambridge: “Bureaucrat-Artists of the Ottoman State: Nineteenth-Century Art Practices Beyond the Sanayi-i Nefise”
12:00 PM
LUNCH VISITING SCHOLARS’ RESIDENCE 166 South Street
2:00 PM
SESSION 2: LATIN AMERICA Moderator: Dana Leibsohn, Smith College Ray Hernández-Durán, University of New Mexico: “‘El único lazo de unión entre las dos épocas y las dos escuelas’: The Academy of San Carlos, Catholicism, and History in Nineteenth-Century Mexico” Paul Niell, Florida State University: “Society, Taste, and the Colonial Academy in Nineteenth-Century Cuba”
3:00 PM
COFFEE BREAK MANTON READING ROOM
3:30 PM
SESSION 2, CONTINUED Patricia Zalamea, University of los Andes, Colombia: “The Figure of the Artist in a Portrait of Pedro José Figueroa: Artistic Theory and Practice in NineteenthCentury Colombia” Claudia Mattos Avolese, Universidade Estadual de Campinas: “Orientalism in the Brazilian Academy: The Case of Oscar Pereira da Silva's ‘Roman Slave’”
5:30 PM
DRINKS & HORS D'OEUVRES
6:30 PM
DINNER MARC AND LAUREN GOTLIEB’S HOME 485 Henderson Road, Williamstown Transportation will depart from Manton at 6:20 PM.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 Transportation will depart from the Orchards Hotel at 9:15 AM. The symposium will take place in the auditorium in the Manton Research Center. Coffee and pastries will be available by 9:30 AM in Café 7 (Lower Level Clark Center)
10:00 AM
VISIT TO THE GALLERIES WITH MARC GOTLIEB, Director of the Graduate Program in Art History and Class of 1955 Memorial Professor of Art
12:00 PM
LUNCH PENTHOUSE
1:30 PM
SESSION 3: SOUTH AND EAST ASIA Moderator: Kailani Polzak, Williams College Sonal Khullar, University of Washington: “Academy, Ashram, Atelier: The Art School in South Asia” Juliane Noth, Universität Hamburg: “Writing about Chinese Art and Teaching Ink Painting at the National Academy of Arts in Hangzhou, 1928–1937”
2:30 PM
COFFEE BREAK MANTON READING ROOM
3:00 PM
SESSION 3, CONTINUED
Ren Wei, Dickinson College: “Resistance & Compliance: Pedagogy, Exhibition, and Circulation of Painting in 1920s Shanghai” Yukio Lippit, Harvard University: “Oily Painting”
4:30 PM
CLOSING ROUNDTABLE
5:30 PM
RECEPTION Manton Reading Room
6:30 PM
DINNER CLARK CENTER