This year's theme considers the various arrangements of presentation in art. With the intention of broadening art and its history beyond a singular or dominant narrative, our symposium will focus its line of questioning on the ways in which artistic mis/re/presentation lends itself to an investigation of existing descriptive paradigms as well as the implications of such an endeavor. The speakers will consider modes and forms of misrepresentation across all time periods, media, and locations of art production from prehistoric to contemporary. The goal of our symposium is to spur interdisciplinary dialogue within and beyond the community of art historians and other scholars working with visual material and culture at the University of Michigan. We are excited to welcome an international group of graduate student presenters and a keynote lecturer to reflect upon this theme through a wide range of topics. Light refreshments and coffee will be provided immediately before the symposium in the Commons.

Keynote Lecture:

Bronwen Wilson, Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, University of British Columbia
Inscription, the Horizon, and Melchior Lorck's "Prospect of Constantinople"

Presenters:

Anna K. Huber, Harvard University
Another Renaissance. (Mis)representations of Italian Renaissance Art in Diego Rivera's Murals of the 1920s

Anne Roehl, University of Siegen, Germany
Self-Reflection of Representation : Walid Raad's Atlas Group Project

Emily L. Spratt, Princeton University
Defining "Post-Byzantium": Historiographic Considerations on the Legacy of an Empire and the Role of Formalism in Description of Its Art

Courtney T. Wilder, University of California, Riverside
The Medium and Its Message: Yinka Shonibare MBE's Sculpted Misrepresentations of Eighteenth-Century Painting

Danijela Zutic, University of British Columbia – Vancouver
Skin Metamorphosis and the image "Masquer: A Daughter of Niger"

This program is sponsored by the Department of History of Art, Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan International Institute, MEMS: Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Center for European Studies and the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art.