Conference that aims to promote discussion around the thematic, epistemological, and methodological intersections of history and history of art as disciplines.

Crafting the Past: Materials, Materialities, Materialisms

Gestures such as the recent toppling of statues portraying slave owners or confederate soldiers in the UK and USA have ushered in public and historiographical debates about the legacies of colonialism as well the role of material culture and visuality in historical memory. Although the study of the past is always situated, not least disciplinarily, such situatedness should be open for productive intersections between history and history of art. For example, can we consider Cecil Rhodes’ statue an autonomous material manifestation without considering how its materiality is placed in history? Can we historicise artistic objects without engaging with the specific contexts of their material production or with the evolving ideological values that shaped the very conception of ‘art’? Can we talk about history as purely discursive when its material consequences are, at the same time, so palpable and so contested, particularly at a time when bodies and cultures are visibly threatened by global, social, economic, environmental, and health-related crises?

This conference aims to promote discussion around the thematic, epistemological, and methodological intersections of history and history of art as disciplines, focusing on their relationship to issues of materiality and ethics.

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