Registration RequiredFriday, September 25, 1-6:45 pm
Saturday, September 26, 10:30 am-4 pm
How do objects circulate across physical and digital landscapes and how does this movement affect their status? Do we search differently with objects in the humanities and social sciences? How do we discover, attend to, and channel the network of ideas they help generate?
This two-day conversation highlights the double lives of objects—- their local, intimate, and concrete quality as they reside in museums and their global, ubiquitous, and permeable virtual representations in digital media. It investigates the structures of knowledge and emergent network systems whose architectures and formal characteristics facilitate our encounters with objects. Despite the growing interest in object-based ontology and the material turn in fields like art history, anthropology, and political science, objects continue to challenge—- and even defy—- our desire to tag, interpret, and systematize their form and content.
Investigate these issues through facilitated conversations, creative examinations, and other exploratory engagements. Critical Encounters offer opportunities to hear leading scholars and artists address key questions; Double Takes explore a single object from two disciplinary perspectives; Object Lessons offer a point of departure to examine the disciplinary treatment of objects; Drawing Perspectives invite you to practice observational and mark-making skills as used in the studio and the field; Teachers’ Lounge provides a forum to explore the pedagogy of primary sources; through Works in Process artists, designers, students and scholars share the object-based roots of their work from performance to experience design; and The Work of Art in the Age of Code examines how technology materializes and dematerializes the object.
Registration required. Visit the RISD Museum page for registration information (link below)
FRIDAY
1:00-2:30: Session 1
Double Take with Holly Hughes and Marc Redfield
Explore a single object from two disciplinary perspectives
Object Lesson with Gina Borromeo and Kevin Smith, moderated by Steve Lubar
Examine the disciplinary treatment of objects
Drawing Perspectives with Nicholas Carter
Practice observational and mark-making skills as used in the studio and the field
3:00-4:30: Session 2
Double Take with Bethany Johns and Graham Oliver
Explore a single object from two disciplinary perspectives
Object Lesson with Kate Irvin and Thierry Gentis, moderated by Steve Lubar
Examine the disciplinary treatment of objects
Drawing Perspectives with Leslie Hirst
Practice observational and mark-making skills as used in the studio and the field
5:00-6:45
Critical Encounters with David Joselit and Rosemary Joyce, moderated by Jane South
6:45-8:00
Cocktail reception
with Works in Process by Clement Valla, David Kim, Mikhael Mansion, and Maralie Armstrong
Artists, designers, students and scholars share the object-based roots of their work from performance to experience design
SATURDAY
10:00
Coffee
10:30-12:00: Session 3
Teachers’ Lounge with Julie Golia
A forum to explore the pedagogy of primary sources
The Work of Art in the Age of Code with Clement Valla, David Kim, Mikhael Mansion, and Maralie Armstrong
Examine how technology materializes and dematerializes the object
Sleuths and Fiction: How to Bring Museum Objects Back to Life with Brian Markovitz and Emily Avera
As detectives in the dusty attics of museum collections, Emily and Bryan will talk about their efforts to reanimate obscure objects by replicating them across a historicized spectrum of truth and fiction.
12:00-1:00
Lunch on your own
1:00-4:00
Critical Encounters with Ivan Gaskell and another presenter to be announced, moderated by Vazira Zamindar
This program is made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and is part of a collaboration between the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University and the RISD Museum at the Rhode Island School of Design focusing on the new and evolving field of object-based teaching and research.
Image Caption: Cornelis Cort, The Practice of the Visual Arts (detail), 1578 (engraved 1573). Georgianna Sayles Aldrich Fund, RISD Museum of Art