“Artist as Community” 37th Annual Art History Graduate Symposium

“Artist as Community” 37th Annual Art History Graduate Symposium

Keynote Speaker: Lisa Bitel (History and Religion, University of Southern California)
Friday, April 27 / 4:30 PM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

This two day event will explore the ways in which community is defined through the production and reception of visual art.  The symposium will begin with Dr. Lisa Bitel’s keynote address, entitled “Looking Like Pilgrims and Picturing Religion at Our Lady of the Rock.” She will discuss a contemporary pilgrimage site near California City where pilgrims gather in the desert to capture apparitions of Virgin Mary on their cameras.  Dr. Bitel will be discussing the powerful role that shared visual experience has played in the formation of the pilgrimage community that has grown around the Lady of the Rock.
The symposium will continue at 8:30am on Saturday, April 28 at TD-W (Theater and Dance building) 2600.  Graduate students will present papers that discuss the connections between the visual arts and community, addressing issues of the community as a productive artistic force, the social parameters of reception, and the ways visual culture and modes of making can challenges traditional definitions of community.  The symposium will end with an interdisciplinary round table, in which graduate students from other departments at UCSB will discuss the role of visual and performing arts in the formation and dividing of communities.

Sponsored by Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Department of History, Department of Religious Studies, Graduate Student Association, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Mbanefo Foundation
Website: http://www.arthistory.ucsb.edu/NewsEvents/index.html