October 4–5, 2013 Symposium Program
As a result of the federal government shutdown, the symposium, American Art in Dialogue with Africa and its Diaspora, was moved offsite to the auditorium at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Links to the webcasts for each session are included below.
Friday, October 4
9:30 a.m., Welcome Webcast
Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Johnnetta Cole, Director, National Museum of African Art
10:00 a.m.–noon, Opening Session Webcast
Respondent: Renée Ater, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Maryland, College Park
Tobias Wofford, Assistant Professor of Art History, Santa Clara University
"Feedback: Between American Art and African Art History"
Ikem Stanley Okoye, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Delaware
"The Americanist Quandary: Of the History of African Art in the Work of Romare Bearden and Robert Rauschenberg"
Krista Thompson, Associate Professor of Art History, Northwestern University
"Reframing American Art: An African Diasporic Perspective"
1:15–2:45 p.m., Nineteenth-Century Portraiture Webcast
Chair: Renée Ater, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Maryland, College Park
Anne Lafont, Associate Professor of Art History, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée
"Paris–Philadelphia: African Figures around 1800, or Portrait of Yarrow as a Mameluke"
Shawn Michelle Smith, Associate Professor of Visual and Critical Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
"Augustus Washington's Liberian Daguerreotypes and the Civil Contract of Photography"
Camara Dia Holloway, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Delaware
"'Aglow in the Darkest Vistas': Africa, Racial Fantasy, and the Modernist Self-Fashioning of F. Holland Day"
3:15–4:45 p.m., Primitivism and Modernism Webcast
Chair: Tanya Sheehan, Associate Professor of Art, Colby College
James Smalls, Professor of Art History and Theory, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
"Féral Benga: African Muse of Modernism"
Mia Bagneris, Assistant Professor of Art History, Newcomb Art Department, Tulane University
"Fighting the Fetish for Fétiches: Africa in the Work of Palmer Hayden"
Nicholas Miller, PhD Candidate in Art History, Northwestern University
"'To Paint His Own People': William H. Johnson's Avant-Garde Gambits and the Orientalized Black Female Body"
Saturday, October 5
10:00 a.m., Welcome Webcast
Ruth Fine, Curator, National Gallery of Art, Washington (1972-2012), and Board Member, Terra Foundation for American Art
10:10 a.m., Opening Remarks Webcast
David C. Driskell, Professor Emeritus of Art, University of Maryland, College Park
10:30 a.m.–11:30 a.m., Developing a Trans-African Aesthetic Webcast
Chair: Kelly Quinn, Terra Foundation Project Manager for Scholarly and Educational Initiatives, Archives of American Art
Jeffrey C. Stewart, Professor of Black Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
"From Transnational to Trans-African: The Circulation of Culture in the Work of Winold Reiss and Romare Bearden"
Rebecca Keegan VanDiver, Senior Lecturer, Vanderbilt University
"Routes to Roots: Loïs Mailou Jones's Engagement with Africa and the African Diaspora, 1938-70"
1:00–2:30 p.m., Artists Travel to Africa Webcast
Chair: Tanya Sheehan, Associate Professor of Art, Colby College
Anne-Grit Becker, PhD Candidate in Art History, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
"Toward a Language of Material: Cy Twombly's North African Sketchbooks"
Chika Okeke-Agulu, Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Art, Princeton University
"Living in Color: Jacob Lawrence and the Osogbo Experience in the Early 1960s"
Peju Layiwola, Associate Professor of Art and Art History, University of Lagos, Nigeria
"Transcultural Conversations: American and Nigerian Art in Dialogue"
3:00–4:30 p.m., Reframing the Traditional/Historical in Contemporary Art Webcast
Chair: Kelly Quinn, Terra Foundation Project Manager for Scholarly and Educational Initiatives, Archives of American Art
Celeste-Marie Bernier, Professor of African American Studies, University of Nottingham
"Imaging the 'Face of the Fugitive Slave' Artist in Black Diasporic Self-Portraiture"
Venny Nakazibwe, Dean of The Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda
"African Textiles in Dialogue with Contemporary Fiber Art"
Daniel Haxall, Associate Professor of Art History, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
"In the Spirit of Négritude, or, Kehinde Wiley Goes to Africa"