Presentation Abstracts

Here's my second attempt at the Itinera abstract, after some comments from Jen:

The humanities are ingrained in the history of our species, and they study people and objects to reveal what it means to be human.  In our rapidly-digitizing age, history can be more easily preserved through the use of new technologies to avoid dissolving into itself.  Through the database Itinera, we are able to preserve art history online by tracking culturally-motivated travel in an interactive forum, which is more accurate than preserving art history through traditional, textbook media.  The database helps to make people more aware of and connected with our historic past, going beyond the confines of bookcovers and webpages, extending the history and making it easier to visualize.  In a collaborative project like Itinera, multiple scholars can contribute to make new connections about old data through digitized configurations.  My contribution to Itinera concerns research in tracking and documenting the Elgin marbles.  These artifacts were ancient Greek sculptures, inscriptions and adnornments that decorated the Parthenon in antiquity, but migrated throughout Europe during the early 1800s.  In my research, I will be able to deduce where and why these objects migrated, and ultimately, I will better understand the cultural reasons for moving these ancient art pieces in a 19th century context.

In 1992, architectural thinker and educator Lebbeus Woods proposed a series of technological pods throughout the war-torn sections of Zagreb meant to be used for free global communication. His motivation was for a an architectural free-space away from tyrannical government and traditional social hierarchy. My talk will expand on this idea of guiding social hierarchy by way of architecture. My research examines how the physical function of space influences the social hierarchy of people inhabiting the space. In the past 25 years, people have created and advanced global communication and connection through the internet where people are able to make themselves heard. This has certainly led to a push toward social equality, and architecture must be able to match the new social demands of people. I will contrast two recent projects of vastly differing social implication: the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE (completed 2010) and the Pont Jean-Jacques Bosc in Bordeaux, France (set to be completed in 2016). These two examples will be contrasted by how they related to four items: the basic function of humans, the basic function of space, the creation of boundary and interaction, and the social hierarchy formed. 

Find out more about Chris Hazel.

Located in the Cabinet des Medailles are the chalice and paten found buried at the monastery in Gourdon which is in modern day France. Though we may never know how they made it to Gourdon definitively, it is worthwhile to look into the historical and social implications surrounding these items to understand their meaning more fully. The chalice specifically brings forth many questions as to the nature of the shift from pagan practices to Christianity following the public conversion of King Clovis in 500 AD. Looking for other pieces that relate to the imagery and design on the chalice places the chalice at Gourdon in a specific social and cultural climate. There are also practices of Merovingian and Carolingian gift-giving and burial traditions that work at looking for more ways for these objects to make it to the monastery in Gourdon. The monastery itself also places these items in a time when these establishments are being questioned for their lavishness and opulence. To Bernard of Clairvaux, the use of precious materials and ornate gifts were counter to what monasteries should embody, but to others it also acted as a way for those making pilgrimages to feel like they were closer to interacting with the actual body of Christ. This tension between idolatry and the treasury objects in the Medieval Ages sets the tone for most objects found in these types of situations. The combination of all these ideas culminate in an effort to better understand the chalice and paten of Gourdon that we will likely never fully place.

Find out more about Laura Dunn.

In many respects, the scholarly history of Minimalism, an artistic movement beginning in the 1960s that focused on the creation of reductive art, is quite extensive. Much is written about the formal qualities of Minimalist works as well as their production. Despite this, not much focus has been paid to the reception of these works, and almost no focus has been directed toward the display and curation of Minimalist art. My paper will use the Minimalism display at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as a case study to address and better understand the display and curation of Minimalist art objects.

At the Carnegie Museum, I have experienced three distinct, charged episodes of Minimalism display. These three displays revolve heavily around three separate decisions made by the curators of the 2013 Carnegie International, a large-scale exhibition currently on display at the museum. The first curatorial decision, the choice to disassemble the previous Minimalism gallery, highlights the first of the three aforementioned Minimalism episodes, the self-contained, Minimalist-focused gallery that was in place prior to the International. In conjunction with the decision to break up the Minimalism gallery, the second key decision made by the curators was to display the Minimalist works among artworks of different styles and time periods, leading to the Minimalism episode currently on display at the museum. In order to experience the third of the charged Minimalism episodes, we must move just outside the museum, where Phyllida Barlow’s Tip is in direct interaction with Richard Serra’s Carnegie, a sculpture that has been standing, undisturbed, since the 1985 Carnegie International. Having studied these three charged episodes extensively through personal experience as well as observations of how others approach the spaces, I, in this paper, will critically assess the curatorial decisions involving Minimalism made for the 2013 Carnegie International. My goal is to elaborate on the major successes and failures of each episode of display, allowing me to therefore assess the decisions made for the exhibition. I will focus particularly on the way in which the display fosters the Minimalist works it contains as well as the way the display imbues a sense of curatorial meaning and purpose with regard to the exhibition as a whole. 

Find out more about James DiBitetto.

The Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux is a book of hours designed between 1324 and 1328 CE specifically for Queen Jeanne d’Evreux, wife of King Charles IV of France. It was intended as a prayer book for Jeanne’s private use which is supported by the handheld size (3 ½ by 2 ½ inches). The visual interaction with the images, symbols and text that gave instructions to Jeanne will be researched. I will explore the use of sight, touch and sound that Jeanne d’Evreux may have experienced and how these senses may have enhanced the reading and religious experience she may have underwent. While the book is a physical object, it served to elevate Jeanne to a higher spiritual realm.  To gain an understanding of the sensory experience, the context will be explored along with the illustrations that serve as an instruction to Jeanne. 

Find out more about Allison Reitz.