Annual Conference
Midwest Art History Society
April 14 – 16, 2011
Grand Rapids, Michigan
The Midwest Art History Society will host its 38th annual Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan, April 14-16, 2011. The conference will be hosted jointly by Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, with additional support from the Grand Rapids Art Museum and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (UICA). The conference hotel is the luxurious, historic Amway Grand Plaza in downtown Grand Rapids.
Twenty historical and thematic sessions will be featured, including special topics on The Body in Art, Conservation, Gardens as Art, and Public Sculpture. Several featured events are planned including an evening dialogue with American icon Jim Dine, who will join the conference at Meijer Gardens, and a presentation by Rebecca Zorach, author of the acclaimed book Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance, at UICA.
Grand Rapids has earned a distinguished reputation for its support of the visual arts, beginning with the 1969 arrival of Alexander Calder’s celebrated La Grande Vitesse, the first work supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Art in Public Places program. This civic symbol has been joined by major works by Mark di Suvero, Maya Lin, Ellsworth Kelly and Robert Morris in the heart of the downtown – an urban focal point with more than 75 restaurants, nightclubs, entertainment venues and museums found within a ten minute walking distance from the conference hotel.
Both the Grand Rapids Art Museum and UICA are located within minutes of the hotel. Celebrating its centennial year, the art museum moved into its acclaimed new facility in 2007. The focus of the collection is Renaissance to Modern Art, with particular strengths in 19th century painting, American prints and drawings. UICA is the state’s largest center for Contemporary Art, with extensive exhibition, film, and educational offerings in a new state-of–the art facility opening in autumn 2010.
The internationally renowned Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park is a highly unique organization devoted to sculpture and horticulture, nature and the visual arts. The collection opens with Rodin, Degas and Maillol, continues with masters like Moore, Hepworth, and Nevelson, and remains current with installations by Goldsworthy, Cragg, Plensa, Borofsky and Bourgeois, among others. Meijer Gardens is located ten minutes from the conference hotel and will be made available by complimentary shuttle service.
Grand Rapids is the center of a metropolitan area of more than 1.2 million residents and is one of the most active and vibrant cultural communities in the Midwest. In addition to the aforementioned visual arts organizations, it is home to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, the Public Museum of Grand Rapids, and hosts a highly regarded symphony, ballet and opera, and seven colleges and universities. Among numerous special attractions are Frank Lloyd Wright’s spectacular Meyer May House in the Heritage Hill neighborhood—the nation’s largest contiguous neighborhood of historic homes.
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