Annual Conference
Midwest Art History Society
Annual Conference 2008
Chicago, Illinois, April 2 - 5, 2008
The Midwest Art History Society's 35th annual meeting will be held April 2-5, 2008 in Chicago. Hosted by Loyola University, Columbia College Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago, the conference takes place with the partnership of DePaul University, Lake Forest College, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Further assistance has been provided by the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Terra Foundation American Art. The conference hotel will be the Club Quarters, conveniently located in Chicago's Loop at 111 W. Adams Street.
The conference sessions and programs have been selected with an eye to showcasing areas of specialization closely associated with Chicago and its educational and cultural institutions. Additional emphases on American and Renaissance art have been designed to coordinate with the Terra Foundation of the Arts sponsored American Art American City initiative and the Renaissance Society of America (which is meeting April 3-5, 2008 at The Renaissance Chicago Hotel).
On Thursday and Friday a full range of scholarly sessions will take place at the conference hotel. A welcome tea will be held Thursday afternoon at the hotel. Thursday evening conference attendees are encouraged to attend one of two talks at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Avenue: At 6:00 pm. in Fullerton Hall Tom Hines will be speaking on Hollywood design of the 1920s. At the same time in Morton Hall Judith Barter, Field-McCormick Chair of American Art at the museum, will lecture on the Edward Hopper exhibition, on view nearby. Entrance to the Art Institute (and admission at the lectures) is free from 5:00 to 8:00 pm. on Thursday evenings, however the Hopper and another American exhibition Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light will be ticketed. Advance tickets for these exhibitions may be ordered at www.artic.edu/aic
The MAHS business lunch will take place on Friday. On Friday evening the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago, 600 S. Michigan, will be the location of a MAHS reception. Saturday morning, April 5, The Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 East Chicago Avenue, will host an early opening, continental breakfast, and curator's tour of the current exhibitions Alexander Calder in Focus and selections of the museum's permanent collection. The conference's morning sessions will also be held at the MCA. Loyola University Museum of Art, 820 North Michigan Avenue (just two blocks west of the MCA), will be the site of a luncheon on Saturday. The conferences afternoon sessions will be held at LUMA on Saturday where Gilded Glory: European Treasures from the Martin D'Arcy Collection will be on view.
In addition to the scholarly sessions that will develop from the Call for Papers, two additional sessions will be presented: Recent Acquisitions of Renaissance Art in Midwest Collections chaired by Judith Mann of the Saint Louis Museum of Art, and a round table on recent conservation projects undertaken by the Art Institute of Chicago chaired by Martha Tedeschi.
The Recent Acquisitions panel, a staple of the Midwest Art History Society's program, will focus this year on Renaissance objects, including painting, sculpture, and decorative arts, both North and South, presented by curators from throughout the Midwest. The conservation session, titled Partnerships in Conservation: Case Studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, will involve curators, conservators, and conservation scientists from the Art Institute discussing technical analysis and restoration of works from the Art Institute's collection, ranging from ancient Egyptian sculpture to a turn-of-the-century cabinet designed by Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard, as well as watercolors by Homer. Panelists will include: Martha Tedeschi, Curator of Prints & Drawings, Dept. of Prints & Drawings, panel chair; Kristi Dahm, Assistant Conservator of Prints and Drawings; Gloria Groom, David and Mary Winton Green Curator, Dept. of Medieval through Modern European Painting and Sculpture; and Karen Manchester, The Elizabeth McIlvaine Curator of Ancient Art, Dept. of Asian and Ancient Art.
The Renaissance Society of America (RSA) is meeting in Chicago over the same days as the MAHS conference. In order to take advantage of this synchronicity special attention has been given to arranging MAHS sessions related to that period and subject, including Judith Mann's session on Renaissance Art objects, a special session to honor Charles Cuttler, co-founder of MAHS, chaired by Burton Dunbar of the University of Missouri, Kansas City, a session on women artists and patrons in early modern Europe chaired by Marilyn Dunn of Loyola University, and Ann Roberts's (Lake Forest College) session on Narration and Naturalism in Renaissance Art (for further information on the latter three sessions, see Call for Papers). Those registered for the RSA conference will be welcome to attend MAHS Renaissance panels, and a reciprocal arrangement will allow MAHS registrants to show their conference badges to attend art history sessions at the RSA. Please note, this collegial exchange does not extend to sessions with other than Renaissance art history topics, or to receptions or other special events for either organization.
Registration forms and travel and lodging information are available in the back pages of this newsletter and online at the MAHS website. Proposals for papers are due by December 15, 2007 to the session chairs. The call for papers is included in this newsletter and is also available online. To receive the early bird rate for conference registration, please register by February 15, 2008.