Symposia
Geographies of Art: Sur le Terrain
Musée des Impressionnismes and Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art
Giverny and Paris, France
June 17, 2010 – June 19, 2010
International Symposium in Celebration of the Tenth Anniversary of the Terra Summer Residency (2001—2010)
As a tribute to the mission of the Terra Foundation to foster exploration of American art across national boundaries, "Geographies of Art: Sur le Terrain" examines the state of the field of American art in a global context. For three days, art historians, cultural historians, and artists will explore the cultural and conceptual implications of such a context through papers and discussions that provide international perspectives and encourage lively exchange—the two fundamental premises of the Terra Summer Residency.
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Anglo-American: Artistic Exchange between Britain and the USA
University of York
York, United Kingdom
July 23, 2009 – July 25, 2009
This conference explored the significance of Anglo-American cultural relations for the visual arts produced in Britain and the United States since 1776. Although some isolated moments in this history have been studied, this conference was the first systematic attempt to consider the implications of a highly charged relationship for the histories of both British and American art. It aimed to identify the important issues at the heart of the concept of ‘Anglo-American' art and investigate the very idea of artistic ‘exchange' across different cultures. At a moment when the utility of national schools as an organizing principle is being increasingly held up to scrutiny in the scholarship on both American and British art, a systematic examination of the detail of the fluid, and sometimes volatile, Anglo-American relationship and of the invested interests that have sought to define it is important and timely.
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Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, Royal Academy of Art, University College London
London, United Kingdom
October 15, 2009 – October 17, 2009
This conference aimed to rethink Romanticism in the American visual arts within a trans-Atlantic framework. It provided a forum in which to consider developments in American art of the period c.1789 - 1848 in relation to cognate developments. The twelve papers and keynote lecture addressed the issues of Romanticism from a number of perspectives: (1) The urban context in which artists worked in Britain and the United States, and notably London and New York. (2) The literary discourse of early 19th-century Romanticism in relation to new attitudes to the arts and their place in society more generally. (3) The work of individual artists who acted as link figures between British and American cultures, including Benjamin West and Washington Allston. (4) Related developments in landscape and genre painting in Britain and the United States, represented by the work of Thomas Cole, John Quidor, John Martin, and JMW Turner.
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Terra Foundation for American Art, Milwaukee Art Museum,
and American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation
Chicago and Milwaukee
June 19, 2009 – June 20, 2009
The symposium addressed the question of American modernism through a series of brief "keyword" talks and panel discussions that investigated its manifestations in progressive painting and design between 1900 and the early 1930s. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen delivered the keynote lecture. The symposium coincided with two exhibitions at the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM): The Eight and American Modernisms, organized by the Terra Foundation for American Art (TFAA) in collaboration with the New Britain Museum of American Art and MAM; and The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs, organized by MAM, the Chipstone Foundation, and American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation (ADA1900). The symposium was convened by TFAA in collaboration with MAM and ADA1900.
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Starting from Scratch: Arts, Culture and Politics in Europe and America in the Aftermath of World War II, 1945-1949
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon
Lyon, France
January 12, 2009 – January 13, 2009
This international colloquium was held in conjunction with the exhibition Repartir à zéro, L'art en Europe et en Amérique après la seconde guerre mondiale 1945-1949 (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, 24 October 2008 – 2 February 2009), and brought together specialists from a wide-range of disciplines to discuss the concept of “starting from scratch”—a widespread notion in the immediate post-war period. The ideas of “tabula rasa,” “anno zero,” and “Stunde Null” universally called for a reconsideration of the course of human history after the traumas of World War II. During the brief period before the advent of the Cold War in 1949, most Americans and Europeans found themselves united by the determination to “start from scratch.” This interlude came to an end with the return to classic forms of organization and the polarization of East/West, Paris/New York, social realism/abstraction, etc. Organized by the Université Lumière-Lyon 2, the Université François-Rabelais de Tours, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.
