It’s About Time: Temporality in Visual Culture
Art History Graduate Student Symposium
Rutgers University – Art History Graduate Student Organization

Friday, March 24, 2017
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Pane Room, Alexander Library
New Brunswick, NJ

Keynote: Professor André Dombrowski, University of Pennsylvania

Art historical scholarship has only recently begun to address the  potential of the artwork to speak across, through, and out of time.  Though discipline-wide norms dictate considerations of an object’s  historically-specific reception as the most relevant for study, many  art objects are created with the purpose of reaching audiences long  after their completion. “To me there is no past or future in art,”  Picasso wrote in 1923, “If a work of art cannot live always in the  present it must not be considered at all.” By confronting the  traditional “period eye” lens of critical analysis, this symposium  seeks to challenge conventional approaches to time and objects and  foster a community of scholars who are rethinking this framework. From  broad reconsiderations of periodization to close readings of a single  object across its lifespan, the 2017 Rutgers University Art History  Graduate Student Symposium situates the issue of the temporal as both a  particularly rich cultural concept and an opportunity for identifying  and developing new theoretical frameworks.

The Rutgers University Art History Graduate Student Organization seeks  submissions that are in dialogue with questions, theories, and  considerations of time in the history of art and visual culture.  Abstracts are welcome from all historical periods, geographical areas,
and cultural, theoretical, or methodological perspectives. Submissions  within the fields of art and architectural history, archaeology,  history, and visual and material culture will be considered for  20-minute presentations.

Possible topics and issues include, but are not limited to:

Time, teleology, and the art historical canon
Duration
Privileged time
Art and a plurality of times (heterochrony)
Art out of time (anachrony)
Art as an indicator of temporal instability
Time as material / mechanized / measurable
Reception and/or revival of a historical past in art
Warburg’s concept of Nachleben, the afterlife of art
Time-based artworks
Reconsidering the period eye
Periodization and the construction of histories
Memento mori
The lives of objects
Historical hauntings

Please send your abstract (maximum of 300 words) and a current CV to
rutgersarthistorygradsymposium@gmail.com by December 30, 2017. Our
symposium will take place on Friday, March 24, 2017 at the Pane Room,
Alexander Library, at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.
Applicants will be notified of the committee’s decision by January 15,
2017.