Events

The Centre for American Art organises a variety of conferences, lectures and workshops throughout the year. Here you will find upcoming events, live calls for papers and an archive of past events.

The Centre for American Art is hosting a programme of virtual research lectures this term. Please see below for details of lectures. We are working to reschedule Centre for American Art events cancelled earlier as a result of Covid-19 in the 2020-21 academic year, so please visit this page frequently for updates and details.

Mon 8 Mar, 2021 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[ONLINE] Earth Diplomacy: Diné Arts...

This is a live online event. Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before…

More Info about [ONLINE] Earth Diplomacy: Diné Arts of Reciprocity, 1966–1968 Book Now
Mon 15 Mar, 2021 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[ONLINE] Tom Day and Jo Applin R...

This is a live online event. Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before…

More Info about [ONLINE] Tom Day and Jo Applin – In Conversation with Jann Haworth Book Now
Fri 23 Apr, 2021 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[ONLINE] Afrotropes and Art History...

This is a live online event. Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30…

More Info about [ONLINE] Afrotropes and Art History’s Global Imagination Book Now
Mon 26 Apr, 2021 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[ONLINE] The Shop Girl in Movies an...

This is a live online event. Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before…

More Info about [ONLINE] The Shop Girl in Movies and Fine Art Book Now
Thu 29 Apr, 2021 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[ONLINE] False Advertising: The Rec...

This is a live online event. Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before…

More Info about [ONLINE] False Advertising: The Reception of Television and the Creation of Art in the East Village Book Now
Mon 10 May, 2021 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[ONLINE] Painting Dissent: The Amer...

This is a live online event. Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before…

More Info about [ONLINE] Painting Dissent: The American Pre-Raphaelite Experiment Book Now
Mon 17 May, 2021 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[ONLINE] Andy and Edie planning an...

This is a live online event. Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before…

More Info about [ONLINE] Andy and Edie planning an ‘Afternoon’ (1965): fallacies and film practice in Warhol’s cinema Book Now
Thu 3 Jun, 2021 - Fri 4 Jun, 2021 Conference

[ONLINE] 1940s in Focus: American A...

This is a live online event. Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30…

More Info about [ONLINE] 1940s in Focus: American Art during the Decade of Transition Book Now
Mon 7 Jun, 2021 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[ONLINE] ‘“It’s Showtime!”: Anton ...

This is a live online event. Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before…

More Info about [ONLINE] ‘“It’s Showtime!”: Anton Perich Presents and the Performativity of the Party’ Book Now
Thu 10 Jun, 2021 - Fri 11 Jun, 2021 Conference

[ONLINE] Crossing Borders; Construc...

This is a live online event. Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before…

More Info about [ONLINE] Crossing Borders; Constructing Canons: Post-Impressionism in Britain, America and Beyond Book Now

Call for Papers

There are currently no calls for papers.

Fri 2 Jul, 2021 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: The Ashcan S...

The Ashcan School and Camden Town Group Comparative Project David Peters Corbett, Professor of American Art and Director of the Centre for American Art, The Courtauld – david.peterscorbett@courtauld.ac.uk Anne Collins Goodyear, Co-Director, Bowdoin College…

More Info about CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: The Ashcan School and Camden Town Group Comparative Project
Thu 24 Jun, 2021 - Fri 25 Jun, 2021 Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS: Relationality in A...

Abstract Whether in current critical discourse or recognized retrospectively, relationality has been central to the study of twentieth-century art. Art history is, after all, predicated on the study of relations between bodies, artworks and forms,…

More Info about CALL FOR PAPERS: Relationality in American Art
Fri 15 Jan, 2021 Call for Papers

CFP: American Art Archives in Britain

This project aims to tell the stories of, and stories contained in, archival records and documents generated by American artists, artworks and artworld activities in Britain. This might mean bringing new materials to light, such…

More Info about CFP: American Art Archives in Britain

Past Events

Thu 25 Feb, 2021 Event Recording

[ONLINE] Brutal Aesthetics – ...

To mark the Barbican’s forthcoming exhibition Jean Dubuffet: Brutal Beauty, the first of the artist in the UK in over 50 years, The Courtauld Research Forum is hosting a conversation between acclaimed art historian Hal Foster (Princeton)…

More Info about [ONLINE] Brutal Aesthetics – Hal Foster and Kent Minturn in Conversation Book Now
Mon 22 Feb, 2021 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[ONLINE] Blackening Surrealism: Ted...

This is a live online event. Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before…

More Info about [ONLINE] Blackening Surrealism: Ted Joans’s Ethnographic Surrealist Historiography Book Now
Fri 12 Feb, 2021 American Art

[ONLINE] Meyer Schapiro: Thinking b...

Meyer Schapiro (1904-1996) was a dazzling midcentury entrepôt of ideas, bridging the worlds of artists and intellectuals in ways that are truly incomparable. Just as he impressed Noam Chomsky, beseeched Walter Benjamin, and critiqued Martin…

More Info about [ONLINE] Meyer Schapiro: Thinking between Art and the 20th Century Book Now
Mon 25 Jan, 2021 Event Recording

[ONLINE]Light, Land, and Water: Nat...

Museums in the United States like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have long represented the Anglo-American tradition of landscape painting. But what about artists who used different techniques to explore the natural world? This lecture…

More Info about [ONLINE]Light, Land, and Water: Native and non-Native Visions of New England Book Now
Mon 16 Nov, 2020 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[ONLINE] ‘Dogs of the world unite’:...

This is a live online event Please register for further details. The platform log in details will be sent to attendees 48 hours prior to the event time. Please note that registration for this event…

More Info about [ONLINE] ‘Dogs of the world unite’: Keith Haring and New York’s queer canine imaginary Book Now
Mon 26 Oct, 2020 Event Recording

[ONLINE] New politics, new methods:...

Rifts in the fabric of the British Empire produced spectacular and sometimes strange effects in eighteenth-century British art. The “revolution of history painting” described by Edgar Wind as long ago as 1938, in which contemporary…

More Info about [ONLINE] New politics, new methods: James Barry’s printmaking at the time of the American Revolution Book Now
Tue 23 Jun, 2020 Event Recording

[NEW DATE – ONLINE] Facture W...

This is an online event. Please register for further details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours prior to the event time. Registration will close one hour…

More Info about [NEW DATE – ONLINE] Facture Wars: The expanded field of American art in the 1940s Book Now
Tue 30 Jun, 2020 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[ONLINE] Sam Francis and the Philos...

This is an online event. Please register for further details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours prior to the event time. Registration will close one hour…

More Info about [ONLINE] Sam Francis and the Philosophy of a New Aesthesis Book Now
Tue 26 May, 2020 Event Recording

[ONLINE] Ornament and Obsolescence:...

This is an online event. Please register for further details. The platform log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours prior to the event time. Registration will close one hour prior…

More Info about [ONLINE] Ornament and Obsolescence: Lee Krasner’s Mosaics for Wall Street Book Now
Mon 27 Apr, 2020 Event Recording

[ONLINE] “Not so much a line as a s...

This is a live online event. Please register for further details. The platform and log-in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours prior to the event time. Donald Judd’s rising reputation and…

More Info about [ONLINE] “Not so much a line as a star” Donald Judd in The Low Countries (1966-71) Book Now
Tue 10 Mar, 2020 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[CANCELLED] Facture Wars: The expan...

Due to UCU industrial action beginning Thursday 20th February and ending on Friday 13th March, our events programme is subject to change, including cancellation. This event is cancelled. What’s in a brushstroke made with…

More Info about [CANCELLED] Facture Wars: The expanded field of American art in the 1940s
Mon 24 Feb, 2020 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

[CANCELLED] Erotic Art and Feminism...

Due to UCU industrial action beginning Thursday 20th February and ending on Friday 13th March, our events programme is subject to change, including cancellation. This event is cancelled. In 1960s New York, erotic art…

More Info about [CANCELLED] Erotic Art and Feminism in the 1960s
Mon 17 Feb, 2020 Documenting Fashion

Panel talk with Kwame Brathwaite Jr...

Kwame Samori Brathwaite, son of photographer Kwame Brathwaite, is the Director of the Kwame Brathwaite Archive, through which he manages his father’s photographic archive and collaborative projects that are concordant with the themes in his…

More Info about Panel talk with Kwame Brathwaite Jr. and Tanisha Ford
Mon 10 Feb, 2020 Artist in Conversation

Describing a Movement: Toward a Fem...

Anna Lovatt in conversation with Jo Applin Drawing was a feminist issue in 1976. That spring, a group of artists led by Nancy Spero picketed MoMA and the Guggenheim to protest the lack of women…

More Info about Describing a Movement: Toward a Feminist Drawing Book Now
Mon 3 Feb, 2020 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

The Future is a Rectangle: Modernis...

International Style modernist architecture, together with many of its major practitioners, arrived in the United States after World War II. It famously took form in corporate office buildings and public housing projects by the mid-1950s.…

More Info about The Future is a Rectangle: Modernist University Architecture and the Human Being
Mon 27 Jan, 2020 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

Conflict Objects, Restitution and t...

This presentation will consider two episodes in the history of empire, the history of war, and the history of art: the 1762 British campaign against Manila, which was attended by both widespread looting and the…

More Info about Conflict Objects, Restitution and the Future of Art History
Mon 20 Jan, 2020 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

Vision and Value: Cotton and the Ma...

This talk examines the visual relationship between the cotton trade and the representation of the black body in American culture, using historical case studies and contemporary art. Juxtaposing contemporary interventions with historical moments, it examines…

More Info about Vision and Value: Cotton and the Materiality of Race
Fri 6 Dec, 2019 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

Walking Tour with Prof Coll Thrush

One of the most mistaken perceptions of Indigenous history is that it is, by definition, not urban – that cities and Indigenous people exist at the opposite ends of Big History, with “real” Indigenous people…

More Info about Walking Tour with Prof Coll Thrush
Mon 18 Nov, 2019 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

‘Art and Narrative’: Co...

In interpreting visual culture, including American art, we face an irritating dilemma: On the one hand, we value visual culture because it can create the impression of an immediate experience that the written word cannot…

More Info about ‘Art and Narrative’: Competing Narratives About American Art
Mon 28 Oct, 2019 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

“Visions of Great Usefulness and Pr...

In 1928, when interviewed for a Chicago-based publication, photographer William E. Woodard stated that he was motivated to migrate to this city in order to realize “visions of great usefulness and progress.” Like many other…

More Info about “Visions of Great Usefulness and Progress”: A Chicago Photographer’s Studio and Black Modern Subjectivity
Wed 16 Oct, 2019 American Art

Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution ...

On the night of July 9, 1776, a crowd emboldened by a public reading of the Declaration of Independence pulled a huge equestrian statue of King George III from its pedestal in lower Manhattan. A…

More Info about Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment
Thu 10 Oct, 2019 - Fri 11 Oct, 2019 Conference

Conceptualism and Materiality. Matt...

Conference and Book Launch This conference celebrates the publication of Conceptualism and Materiality: Matters of Art and Politics (ed. by Christian Berger, Brill, 2019). The aim is to underscore the significance of materials and materiality within Anglo-American…

More Info about Conceptualism and Materiality. Matters of Art and Politics Book Now
Sat 22 Jun, 2019 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

‘This Transitional Age In Art...

Reflecting on the 1913 Armory Show, painter and exhibition organiser Jerome Myers noted its disorienting effect on American artists: ‘in the swirling medley of art on parade…more than ever before we had become provincials’. The…

More Info about ‘This Transitional Age In Art’, Modernism and American Art Discussed Book Now
Thu 22 Jun, 2017 - Fri 23 Jun, 2017 Conference

‘A fearful sense’: Ruskin’s patheti...

A two-day international conference. Day 1: Thursday 22 June, taking place at Rothermere American Institute, Oxford. Free and Open to all, but please book with the Rothermere. Day 2: Friday 23 June, taking place at The…

More Info about ‘A fearful sense’: Ruskin’s pathetic fallacy and the non-human world Book Now
Fri 3 Nov, 2017 - Sat 4 Nov, 2017 Conference

Writing Impressionism Into and Out ...

Impressionism continues to be celebrated in blockbuster exhibitions worldwide: in the last few years alone, Impressionism, Fashion, Modernity (Art Institute of Chicago, Musée d’Orsay, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013); Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye…

More Info about Writing Impressionism Into and Out of Art History, 1874 to Today
Sat 9 Dec, 2017 Conference

CHASING AMERICA: The CHASE Doctoral...

This third event organised by the CHASE Doctoral School in American Art and Visual Culture is intended to bring together faculty and doctoral students from the consortium to present and debate work in progress. The…

More Info about CHASING AMERICA: The CHASE Doctoral School in American Art and Text
Fri 23 Mar, 2018 - Sat 24 Mar, 2018 Conference

Experience and American Art

What does it mean to experience a work of art? What does it mean for a work of art to register—even enact—an experience? Would it be possible for an art historian working now, in experiencing…

More Info about Experience and American Art Book Now
Sat 5 May, 2018 Conference

Passing: Fashion in American Cities

The idea of ‘passing’ and the issues it raises in relation to contemporary and historical notions of self-fashioning and identities is of central importance in a period of political, social and cultural upheaval. The notion…

More Info about Passing: Fashion in American Cities Book Now
Thu 14 Jun, 2018 Conference

Alfred Cohen: An American Émigré in...

Alfred Cohen (1920-2001) was an American whose art was firmly rooted in the European tradition, and who lived and worked in Europe after the war, settling in England in 1960. He exhibited successfully in London…

More Info about Alfred Cohen: An American Émigré in Europe Book Now
Tue 18 Sep, 2018 - Wed 19 Sep, 2018

British Art and the Global

What is the role of art history in the Brexit era? In the wake of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, the history of Britain’s relationships with the rest of the world takes…

More Info about British Art and the Global Book Now
Sat 10 Nov, 2018 American Art

Archives and American Art: a workshop

This workshop will be the first event to launch a 3-year project funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art designed to develop knowledge of the archival resources relating to American art in British collections…

More Info about Archives and American Art: a workshop Book Now
Fri 11 Jan, 2019 Panel Discussion

Victorian Jamaica: Roundtable

Victorian Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2018) marks a pivotal moment in the study of nineteenth-century Jamaican society through an extraordinary archive of visual and material culture. This panel discussion, chaired by the volume’s co-editors, Tim Barringer (Paul Mellon Professor in…

More Info about Victorian Jamaica: Roundtable Book Now
Fri 8 Mar, 2019

A Symposium in Response to the Exhi...

In collaboration with the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum’s survey of American art between 1650 and 1950, The Centre for American Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London and the John F. Kennedy Institute for North…

More Info about A Symposium in Response to the Exhibition “Once Upon a Time in America. Three Centuries of US Art” Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne
Fri 22 Mar, 2019 - Sat 23 Mar, 2019 Conference

Psychoanalysis and American Art

‘…I shall avoid the temptation of entering upon a critique of American civilization; I do not wish to give an impression of wanting myself to employ American methods.’ Sigmund Freud, Civlization and its Discontents (1931).…

More Info about Psychoanalysis and American Art Book Now
Mon 29 Apr, 2019 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

Andrew Wyeth and the Landscape of War

During World War II American artists recast the terms of landscape painting as it had been practiced in the 1930s, broadening its scope from the local to the international, and from the pastoral to the…

More Info about Andrew Wyeth and the Landscape of War
Fri 10 May, 2019 Conference

Thinking Drawing 1960 to Now

This day-long symposium takes as its subject the status of drawing since 1960 as a complex and dynamic medium. Bringing together artists, curators, and art historians, the symposium will explore drawing’s status as a significant…

More Info about Thinking Drawing 1960 to Now Book Now
Mon 13 May, 2019 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

‘The World is My Palette̵...

At a press conference organized at UN headquarters in 1984, the artist Robert Rauschenberg announced the formation of an ambitious new program: the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange, known as ROCI. The initiative would take the…

More Info about ‘The World is My Palette’: Rauschenberg’s Overseas Culture Interchange Book Now
Wed 29 May, 2019 American Art

UN/COMMON RITUAL

This event focuses on Barbara McCullough’s pioneering short film Water Ritual 1: An Urban Rite of Purification (1979) including a screening of the film. Rizvana Bradley (History of Art and African-American Studies, Yale University) will…

More Info about UN/COMMON RITUAL Book Now
Fri 24 May, 2019 - Sat 25 May, 2019 Conference

Art Institutions and Race in the At...

The long eighteenth century gave rise to a host of art institutions throughout the Atlantic world, including the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City, and the Academia…

More Info about Art Institutions and Race in the Atlantic World, 1750–1850 Book Now
Mon 3 Jun, 2019 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

Dark Mines, Dusty Workshops: Silver...

The history of silversmithing in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Britain and Europe takes the maker’s mark as its starting point. This talk, and the forthcoming exhibition upon which it is based, will build on past scholarship to…

More Info about Dark Mines, Dusty Workshops: Silver beyond the Smith
Fri 7 Jun, 2019 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

Alfred Cohen: An American Vision of...

Alfred Cohen (1920-2001) came to Europe in 1949, living in Paris and Heidelberg before settling in Britain in 1960. In anticipation of exhibitions planned for his centenary next year, art historians, curators and critics assess…

More Info about Alfred Cohen: An American Vision of Britain and Europe Book Now
Tue 18 Jun, 2019 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

Lee Krasner: Making Art, Making Tro...

This lecture, set in New York City during the Great Depression, will focus on the formative years of Brooklyn-born painter, Lee Krasner (1908-1984), beginning with her study at the National Academy of Design. There she…

More Info about Lee Krasner: Making Art, Making Trouble, and Making Do in the 1930s

2017-18 American Art Seminars

Mon 8 Oct, 2018 American Art

The Photographic Relic

Whittled wooden spoons, crude baking dishes, artillery shells, and soup bones form a strange, altar-like arrangement. Collected by Clara Barton from the notorious Confederate prison camp immediately after the American Civil War, these objects were…

More Info about The Photographic Relic
Mon 16 Oct, 2017 American Art

George Caleb Bingham’s River ...

This talk is concerned with how the river paintings of the important painter of the American West, George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879), face us and how this fact implies an ethics of looking. I argue that…

More Info about George Caleb Bingham’s River Paintings: Facingness and the Aesthetic
Mon 19 Nov, 2018 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

From the Easel to the Wall (and bac...

In 1943, as the WPA Federal Art Project was dismantled, Jackson Pollock was commissioned to produce a large painting as the centerpiece for his first solo show at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery Art of This Century.…

More Info about From the Easel to the Wall (and back again): Large-Scale American Painting at Mid-Century
Mon 4 Dec, 2017 American Art

Imaging Slavery and Imagining Freed...

This talk will explore the drawings, paintings, prints, and sculpture created by African American, African Caribbean, and Black British women and men, enslaved and free, living and working across the Black Diaspora over the centuries. Living and…

More Info about Imaging Slavery and Imagining Freedom in the African Atlantic Diaspora
Mon 29 Jan, 2018 American Art

The King’s Two Bodies

‘The King’s Two Bodies’ considers a cast-metal replica of the building where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in April 1968. An object intended for manual as much as visual apprehension, the replica compels a…

More Info about The King’s Two Bodies Book Now
Mon 19 Mar, 2018 American Art

Leon Golub and Cy Twombly’s Vietnam...

In this talk Jon Bird reflects upon the figuring of a historical event – the Vietnam War – in the work of two artists, Leon Golub and Cy Twombly, one figurative, the other abstract. However,…

More Info about Leon Golub and Cy Twombly’s Vietnam: Towards an Aesthetics of Violence
Mon 23 Apr, 2018 American Art

‘Lee Lozano: Not Working’

On the occasion of the launch of the book Lee Lozano: Not Working by Jo Applin (Yale University Press), please join us for a conversation between the author and Mignon Nixon, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art…

More Info about ‘Lee Lozano: Not Working’ Book Now
Mon 30 Apr, 2018 American Art

Reddish-Orangish Purple Blue Black:...

What is the color of a memory? Of history? The American sculptor Anne Truitt is well known for the nuanced colors of her works. Beginning in the early 1960s, Truitt honed her sense of color in concert…

More Info about Reddish-Orangish Purple Blue Black: Anne Truitt and Color
Thu 28 Feb, 2019 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

Out of the Woodwork

The nineteenth century saw the rise of a new text-image economy, one defined by the mass reproduction and dissemination of pictures, together with text, in lucrative and popular illustrated newspapers, weeklies, and books. The explosion…

More Info about Out of the Woodwork Book Now
Mon 18 Mar, 2019 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

American Standards

This talk is about editing and the afterlives of photographs. It takes as its subject the photographic book 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States. A collaboration between the novelist…

More Info about American Standards
Mon 20 May, 2019 Modern and Contemporary - Centre for American Art

Picturing Perception in Nineteenth-...

When philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1837 that “Our Age is Ocular,” he offered a succinct assessment of antebellum America’s cultural, commercial, and physiological preoccupation with sight. In the early nineteenth century, the American…

More Info about Picturing Perception in Nineteenth-Century America

Events

Events

Events

Call for Papers

Past Events

2017-18 American Art Seminars

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