History of Art Scholars Well Represented at College Art Association 2018 Conference

Each year thousands of representatives of the art world assemble for the College Art Association’s annual meeting. Bryn Mawr College’s History of Art department was as well represented as ever. This year’s Los Angeles event featured a number of talks and panels organized by the college’s distinguished faculty, graduate students, and alumnae.

Notably, History of Art Professor Homay King organized and chaired the panel “Race and Deleuze: Representation, Affect, Art” in which she presented the paper “Anna May Wong and the Color-image.” Several Bryn Mawr graduate students from History of Art delivered inspired talks on their ongoing projects. Ph.D. Candidate Michelle Smiley presented an excerpt of her dissertation in the talk “Formless: The Chemical Origins of Photography” in which she considers ephemeral chemical spectacles in the context of the scientific development of photography. Also in attendance was Ph.D. Candidate Jamie Richardson, who gave the talk titled “All in the Family: Northern European Artistic Dynasties, ca. 1350-1750,” sponsored by Historians of Netherlandish Art. Jamie’s paper examines dynasty of the Francken family dynasty, based in Flanders from ca. 1520-1717. First year graduate student Meg Hankel was also in attendance.

In a panel organized by alum Jennie Hirsh (Ph.D ’03) called Performance, Voice, and Embodiment: Ventriloquism in Contemporary Art” alumnae Isabelle Loring Wallace (Ph.D. ’99) “Voice, Vivification, and Subjectivity: Jasper Johns “Ventriloquist” (1983)”, and Michael Jay McClure (Ph.D. ’06)  “Like I’m Dead: Sharon Hayes, Patty Hearst, and the Dummy Self” each presented research related to ventriloquism in contemporary art. Historian of the artist Ray Johnson, Johanna Gosse (Ph.D. ’14) drew together the interces of class and pop art in “Nice Work (if you can get it): Ray Johnson and the Political Economy of Pop Art.”