Department of Art History

Katherine Tsiang, Associate Director
Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago
Department of Art History, University of Chicago
“Yungang to Longmen Transition? New Perspectives on Reading the Evidence”

Special Event - Cybele Tom, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Objects Conservation, The Art Institute of Chicago

Rana Choi, Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Comparative Literature

Special Event - Open Studios with MFA students in the Department of Visual Arts in the Logan Center Studio Clusters

Angie Epifano, PhD student, Department of Art History

Claudia Brittenham, Associate Professor, Department of Art History

How does data, which has shaped the urban environment and the ways we inhabit cities as individuals and as collectivities, advance intelligent urbanization? In an era when data analysis so thoroughly informs urban design, urban policy, and urban development, how can we understand the questions it raises and the questions it evades? And how can artistic or design practices defamiliarize the dynamics by which data forms and transforms the urban?

In conjunction with the Arts Club of Chicago’s summer exhibition A Home for Surrealism, this two-day program will explore the legacy of Surrealism in Chicago in all of its dimensions, from histories of collecting and display to surrealist artistic practices. In a series of lectures and discussions, a set of international scholars and historical practitioners of Surrealism will examine the movement’s story in Chicago from the standpoint of local art institutions and activist politics alike.

This talk by Prof. Gerd Hurm (Trier Center for American Studies, University of Trier) will revisit key 20th-century debates about American documentary discourse which continue to be of central relevance for contemporary photography and visual studies discussions. It will radically revise and reconfigure in particular the debate about the most influential text/image installation in the history of photography, the 1955 'Chicago-inspired' Family of Man by the Luxembourg-born American artist Edward Steichen.

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to work as an editor after finishing your M.A. or Ph.D.? Join PATHS and the Department of Art History for a conversation on launching careers and achieving leadership roles as editors in the art world. Panelist Gregory Nosan (Ph.D. English, UChicago) is the Executive Director of Publishing at The Art Institute of Chicago. Prudence Peiffer (Ph.D. Art History, Harvard) is an art historian, writer, and a former Senior Editor at Artforum.