The 48th Cleveland Symposium will be held Friday, Sept. 16, in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium. This year’s theme is “Recentering the Periphery: An Inclusive Future of Art History.”
The Cleveland Symposium is a free annual event organized by graduate students in the Department of Art History and Art of Case Western Reserve University Joint Program with the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). Graduate students from around the country present papers on reevaluating and redefining the scope of art history and incorporating lost or previously silenced narratives and voices to build a more equitable future for the discipline.
This year, the symposium will mark the first day of the inaugural Art Futures Summit, a two-day series of presentations, panel discussions and conversations that will consider the role of arts institutions in equity and social justice. This unique collaboration between Case Western Reserve University, FRONT International and Assembly for the Arts will engage scholars, arts administrators, artists, and community activists on the urgent issues of power and equity in the arts ecosystem. The symposium will focus on scholarship and how the scope and mission of art history and museum collections can better reflect a holistic and inclusive worldview.
The program will conclude with a keynote presentation by De-nin D. Lee (李德寧), associate professor of art history in the Department of Visual & Media Arts at Emerson College. She will discuss writing the scholarship of the now, and of the future. Lee is co-author of The History of Art: A Global View, an updated, more inclusive and global approach to the art history survey course, and of the forthcoming The History of Asian Art: A Global View.
Lee has published extensively on the history of Chinese painting, including her 2010 monograph, The Night Banquet: A Chinese Scroll through Time. She is also the editor of the 2019 volume Eco–Art History in East and Southeast Asia. She has received numerous teaching and fellowship awards throughout her career and has worked to bring East and Southeast Asian art into the standard art history curriculum.
Her keynote address, titled “Writing Art History, or Terraformation,” will address the following Cliff Mine, Lake Superior (1848).
Get more information about the Cleveland Symposium and register to attend.
The symposium is sponsored by Department of Art History and Art of Case Western Reserve University with support from the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, Nancy and Joseph Keithley and Friends of Art. Friday September 16, 2022. Gartner Auditorium, The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Art Futures Summit Community Forum
Held in collaboration with Assembly for the Arts, FRONT International will host the Art Futures Summit Community Forum Saturday, Sept. 17, continuing the conversation started at the Cleveland Symposium.
This free event will take place at the Samson Pavilion of the Health Education Campus of Case Western Reserve University and The Cleveland Clinic.
Launched in 2018, FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art is a free, public, contemporary art exhibition comprising artist commissions, performances, films and public programs. The inaugural edition brought over 90,000 visitors from more than 25 countries and generated $31 million in economic impact in the region. “Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows,” the second iteration of FRONT International began July 16 and will run through Oct. 2.
Building on the first edition’s success, FRONT 2022 furthers the triennial’s commitment to the belief that by supporting creative communities and stimulating new cultural encounters in the region, contemporary art can be an important catalyst for positive social change.
Alongside panel discussions featuring local arts leadership will be a keynote address. Drawing inspiration from Common Ground, the goal of these conversations is to create spaces where meaningful connections are made and purposeful actions begin. FRONT’s exhibition theme relates to exploring art’s role as an agent of transformation, a mode of healing, and a therapeutic process.
Given the time of reckoning that our country, our city and our museums are having around white supremacy and race, how can we heal from the past by reimagining our future? Conversations will examine FRONT’s theme through a social justice lens.The Art Futures Summit Community Forum is free, but registration is required. Reserve your spot.