A 2007-08 Series of Public Conferences:
New Directions in Visual Culture

New Directions in Visual Culture is made possible by a grant from the Anonymous Fund.

Visual Theory: Interruption, Interference, Intervention
October 25-27, 2007

This mini-conference will take up the question of visual culture's investment in critical theory. Beginning with lectures and discussion-based workshops by the influential visual theorists Norman Bryson and Kaja Silverman and concluding with a research colloquium, the event focuses on the ways in which visual culture as a mode of analysis and re-inscription radically alters the "object." In “What is Philosophy?,” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari call for creative interference within and between the disciplines of art, science, and philosophy. In the spirit of Deleuze and Guattari’s efforts to push the creation of concepts toward the future and to summon “what is to come,” the research colloquium asks participants to extend the theoretical speculation of their research and practice beyond the “no” or prohibitions of their disciplines, making this conference an “event” in the sense of a departure.

Thursday, October 25:
2:30pm-4:30pm: Workshop with Kaja Silverman. Chazen Art Museum (Conrad A. Elvehjem Building), Room L166. Seating is limited. Advanced registration is required. To sign up and gain access to the required readings, please email visualculture@education.wisc.edu.

6:00pm: "The Miracle of Analogy". A public lecture by Kaja Silverman, Class of l940 Professor of Rhetoric and Film at the University of California-Berkeley Chazen Art Museum (Conrad A. Elvehjem Building), Room L140.

We have grown accustomed to thinking of the camera as a controlling and even aggressive device: as a mechanism for "arresting," "shooting" and "capturing" the world. Since most cameras require an operator, and it is usually a human hand that picks up the apparatus, points it in a particular direction, makes certain technical adjustments, and clicks the button, we often extend or transfer this power to our look. However, as Kaja Silverman will show in her talk, photography¹s discoverers and early practitioners had a very different understanding of the medium. They thought of it as a graphic rather than an ocular practice, and they knew that they were not the source of its "drawings." They were also keenly aware of the fundamental instability of the photographic image.

Friday, October 26:
10:00am-12:00pm: "Updating Semiotics". A workshop with Norman Bryson. Chazen Art Museum (Conrad A. Elvehjem Building), Room L166. Seating is limited. Advanced registration is required. To sign up and gain access to the required readings, please email visualculture@education.wisc.edu.

6:00pm: "Limited Freedoms: Art in Shanghai since 1990". A public lecture by Norman Bryson, Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at UC-San Diego. Chazen Art Museum (Conrad A. Elvehjem Building), Room L140.

Deng Xiaopeng's announcement, in 1991, that Shanghai was to be the next zone up for economic development, irreversibly altered the city's future. In the 1990s, as the consequences of Deng's policy took effect, artists in Shanghai responded to their changed circumstances in complex ways. Some of their work is well known in the West, some is not. In this paper I focus on the less-known group, the "Chinese Maximalists," whose response to New Shanghai encompasses a broad spectrum of affect, from celebration at one end, to nausea at the other.

Saturday, October 27:
10:00am-1:00pm: Research Colloquium on "Visual Theory: Interruption, Interference, and Intervention" with Norman Bryson and Kaja Silverman. Chazen Art Museum (Conrad A. Elvehjem Building), Room L150.

"Visual Theory: Interruption, Interference, Intervention" is co-sponsored by the Art, Art History and English departments.

Click here to read more about Norman Bryson and Kaja Silverman.

Islam, Religion and Visual Culture
November 6-9, 2007

Tuesday, November 6:
Screening (Chazen Museum of Art, Room L150):
7:00pm: Screening of The May Lady, a film by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad. The film will be presented by Dr. Hamid Naficy and will be followed by a discussion with audience members.

The screening in conjunction with "Islam, Religion and Visual Culture" is sponsored by Middle East Studies.

Wednesday, November 7:
Workshops (Chazen Art Museum, Room L166):
10:00am-12:00pm: Finbarr Barry Flood
2:15pm-4:00pm: "Diaspora Cinema" workshop with Hamid Naficy

Public Lectures (Chazen Art Museum, Room L150):
5:30pm: "Figures as Flowers: Nature, Animation and the Idea of a Bilderverbot in Islamic Art" by Finbarr Barry Flood, Associate Professor in the Institute of Fine Arts and the Department of Art History at New York University

It is often assumed that the proscriptions on figuration in Islamic tradition (the so-called Bilderverbot) constituted a blanket rejection that stymied artistic creativity. It has even been suggested that theological constraints on figuration inspired a compensatory emphasis on calligraphy or geometry in Islamic art. My presentation aims to complicate our understanding of the relationship between theological proscription and artistic practice. It will focus on a small corpus of altered images in which animate beings are transformed into trees or flowers. The specific mode of transformation to which this corpus bears witness reflects a literal understanding of a Prophetic tradition (hadith) that recommends the decapitation of anthropomorphic images and compares the resulting acephalic figures to plants or trees.

These altered images provide insights into the way in which pre-modern artists negotiated theological proscriptions on figuration. In particular, they suggest that the proscriptions espouse a transformative theory of artistic production, or were understood as doing so by some pre- modern artists.

7:00pm: “The Politics and Poetics of the Veil: Iranian Cinema’s Representation of Women” by Hamid Naficy, John Evans Chair of Communications at Northwestern University

Thursday, November 8:
Workshops (Chazen Art Museum, Room L166):
10:00am-12:00pm: "Aestheticized Politics and Politicized Aesthetics" with Mazyar Lotfalian
2:30pm-4:30pm: "Is There a Contemporary Islamic Art? Research Approaches and Problems" with Jessica Winegar

Public Lectures (Chazen Art Museum, Room L140):
5:30pm: "Aesthetics and Politics of Contemporary Shi’ite Images: Passion-Play in the Transnational Circuitry" by Mazyar Lotfalian, 2006-2007 Fellow at the Center for Cultural Studies, UC-Santa Cruz and Visiting Assistant Professor at the Global Studies Program at University of Pittsburgh (Spring 08)

This paper takes as an instance of possible transformation of Shi’ite visual culture a specific case, the transformation of the Shi’ite passion play Ta’ziyeh, a performance that in the age of Islamism is tied to martyrdom, war, and community formation, from a local to a transnational production. I am interested in the ways in which Ta’ziyeh might lose or gain its aura in the context of its transnational reproducibility and enters into the phantasmagoria of transnational circuitry. In the context of expansion of Shi’ite visual culture it is important to understand how the community of Muslims communicate through these transformed cultural forms, and particularly the question of technology within this context. To what degree is this transformation due to technological reproducibility?

7:00pm: "Visual Artists, Islamic Televangelists, and the Battle for Culture" by Jessica Winegar, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Temple University

This lecture compares and contrasts the construction of the culture concept among Egyptian visual artists and Islamic televangelists. It examines how notions of secular national culture, Islamic culture and civilization, and Islamic or secular culturedness are visually coded and expressed in order to constitute social hierarchies and affiliations, and secular vs. religious visions of modernity. 

Friday, November 9:
Research Colloquium on Islam, Religion and Visual Culture (Chazen Art Museum, Room L150):
1:00pm-4:00pm: with Finbarr Barry Flood, Hamid Naficy, Mazyar Lotfalian and Jessica Winegar.

Colloquium participants include:
Preeti Chopra (Assistant Professor of South Asian Visual Culture, Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Department of Design Studies)
Henry Drewal (Evjue-Bascom Professor of African and African Diaspora Art, Department of Art History and Department of Afro-American Studies)
Susan Standford Friedman (Director of Institute for Research in the Humanities, Professor of English and Women’s Studies, Department of English)
Kenneth George (Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology)
B. Venkat Mani (Director of Global Studies and Assistant Professor, Department of German)
Quitman E. Phillips (Director of Religious Studies Program and Professor of Art History, East Asian Studies, and Religious Studies, Department of Art History)
Susan Rottmann (Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology)
Lee Palmer Wandel (Professor of History and Early Modern Religion, Department of History)
Aarthi Vadde (Ph.D. candidate, Department of English)


"Islam, Religion and Visual Culture" is co-sponsored by Art, Art History, the Center for South Asia, English, Global Studies, Languages and Cultures of Asia, the Lubar Institute for the Study of Abrahamic Religions, Middle East Studies and Religious Studies.

Click here to read more about Finbarr Barry Flood, Mazyar Lotfalian, Hamid Naficy and Jessica Winegar.

Visualizing Science
February 7-8, 2008

Thursday, February 7: "Drawing Attention to Nano: Fantastic Realism and Other Modes of Visual Impression Management in Nanotechnology." A Public lecture by Michael Lynch (Professor, Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University). 5:30pm, Chazen Museum of Art, (800 University Avenue) Room L140. Free and open to the public. Lecture poster (pdf)

Starting about thirty years ago, historians of science and art historians began taking an interest in what James Elkins later called “images that are not art,” including diagrams, optical and digital images, maps, models, and graphs. (Ironically, such non-art images have lately become fashionable as art.) In past work, I have studied the composition and use of various types of non-art images, including electron micrographs, digital images of astronomical objects, and illustrations in field guides.  My main interest has been in how visualization exacts and enacts discipline, both in terms of the objective fields displayed and in the practices of investigating those fields.  This presentation concerns nanotechnology: a field that has become known for conspicuous indiscipline in its use of imagery.  Although the coherence and very existence of “nano” remains questionable, it has produced a proliferation of popular images, ranging from fantastic nanobots placed in hyperrealistic nanoscapes to crude atomic drawings that resemble children’s fingerpaintings. In some respects, nano images trade on compositional and expository practices that are characteristic of many other technical renderings, but the publicity and controversy that surrounds nano highlights the ethical tensions involved in simulating invisible realms by placing them in classic realistic compositions.      

Friday, February 8: Visualizing Science: A Research Colloquium. Organized by Shiela Reaves (Professor, Life Sciences Communication). 9:00am-12:10pm, Pyle Center Auditorium, 702 Langdon Street. Click here for directions and information about the Pyle Center.
Required registration for the conference ended on Sunday, February 3.

Participants include:
Dominique Brossard (Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication)
Laurie Beth Clark (Professor, Art)
Wendy Crone (Associate Professor, Engineering Physics) and Greta Zenner (Materials Research Science and Engineering Center)
Meghan Doherty (PhD Candidate, Art History)
Steve Hilyard (Associate Professor, Art)
Judith Houck (Assistant Professor, Medical History and Bioethics)
Michael Lynch (Professor and Director of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University)
Daniel Kleinman (Director, Holtz Center for Scinece and Technology Studies)
Patty Loew (Associate Professor, Life Sciences Communication)
Lynn Nyhart (Professor, History of Science)
Ramya Rajagopalan (Research Associate, Sociology)
Shiela Reaves (Professor, Life Sciences Communication)
Dietram Scheufele (Professor, Life Sciences Communication)
Ahna Skop (Assistant Professor, Genetics & Medical Genetics)
Tom Still (Wisconsin Technology Council)

Conference Materials:
Research Colloquium Schedule: front and back
Reserach Colloquium Bibliography: page 1, page 2
Question posed to participants by the Eye Research Institute and Visual Culture Center

Lunch, Pyle Center Main Dining Room (registration required)

"Topical Contextures and Objectivity." A workshop with Michael Lynch.
1:15pm-3:15pm. Pyle Center, 702 Langdon Street, Room 309.
The workshop will involve examples and exercises in which participants explore how visualization is featured in scientific communication, demonstration, and argument.  Topical contexture is a term used to describe the relationship between arrangements of visible details and the gestalt forms they compose. Seating is limited. Advanced registration with the Visual Culture Center is required. To register for the workshop and to gain access to the required readings, please send an inquiry to visualculture@education.wisc.edu. Please note that conference registration does not guarantee a seat in the workshop.

3:30pm-4:00pm: Exhibition Viewing and Curators' Talk in Kohler Art Library, 800 University Avenue. Guest co-curators Amy Noell and Beth Zinsli (PhD Students, Art History) discuss "The Scientist's Eye: Dialogues between Art & Science." The exhibition features artist and rare books from the Kohler Art Library and Special Collections (Memorial Library).

"Visualizing Science" is co-sponsored by the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, the Eye Research Institute, the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, and the Departments of Art, Art History, Medical History and Bioethics, and Sociology.

Click here to read more about Michael Lynch.

April 9-11, 2008: Interdisciplinarity and the University Art Museum

This is a pivotal moment to host a dialogue on the role of the university art museum in the intellectual and creative life of the campus and community. The expansion of the Chazen museum is on the horizon. Plans for the new arts district of campus are underway. The newly formed Visual Culture Center will join the Arts Institute, the Center for the Humanities, and the Institute for Research in the Humanities in the 2009 remodeling of the University Club. There is interest on the part of a number of research clusters, programs, and departments (e.g., Visual Culture, Art History, Art, American Indian Studies, African-American Studies, and History of Science) in building museum and curatorial studies into the curriculum. Graduate students in a number of units on campus (including Art, Art History, Communication Arts, and Theatre & Drama) have been working on a proposal for an alternative curatorial lab space and have curated shows in various spaces on and off campus.

The conference begins with keynote lectures by Amy Lonetree, Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz and Alan Shestack, deputy director and chief curator of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Following these lectures, on Friday, April 11 we are hosting a day of focused, idea-generating discussions with panels on three main areas of interest: (1) the teaching museum, (2) the university art museum as interdisciplinary laboratory, and (3) rethinking museums and diversity.

Wednesday, April 9: Public Lecture by Amy Lonetree, Assistant Professor, Department of American Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz. "Visualizing our Stories: Museums, Decolonization, and Telling the Hard Truths," 6:30pm Chazen Museum of Art, Room L150. Amy Lonetree's lecture is sponsored by the American Indian Studies Program and supported by the University Lectures Committee and the Ho-Chunk Nation.

My presentation examines the changing representations of Native Americans in museum exhibitions, and the new collaborative partnerships occurring between Indigenous communities and mainstream museums that have brought about this change in exhibitionary practices. While collaborative efforts appear to be moving in a positive direction, many complexities have yet to be explored. My paper will address the successes of this new approach as well as the challenges that remain through an examination of the exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Ziibiwing Center for Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways in Michigan.

Thursday, April 10:
Discussion with Russell Panczenko, Director of the Chazen Museum of Art, about the Museum’s plans for expansion. 9:00-11:00am, Chazen Museum of Art, Room L170

Public Lecture by Alan Shestack, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. "The Art Museum on the University Campus,” 5:00pm Chazen Museum of Art, Room L150.

The lecture will describe the inherent problems faced by university-related museums and propose solutions to the knottiest issues.  It will also touch on the needs and demands of the very different “factions” which constitute the museum’s audience.  It will propose ways and means of engaging the entire academic community.

Friday, April 11: Interdisciplinarity and the University Art Museum: A Research Colloquium. Organized by Jill Casid (Director, Visual Culture Center and Associate Professor, Department of Art History) and Amy Noell (PhD Student, Department of Art History).

The Teaching Museum: Curatorial and Museum Studies & Education
9:30-11:00am, Chazen Museum of Art, Room L170
Panel Discussion Participants:
Stephen Fleischman (Director, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art)
Megan Katz (MFA Student, Department of Art)
Emily Pfotenhauer (Project Coordinator, Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database and Chipstone Foundation Hummel Fellow)
Robin Schmoldt (Wisconsin Union Art & Film Advisor, Wisconsin Union Galleries)
Jon Sorenson (Director of Development/College of Letters and Science, University of Wisconsin Foundation)
Moderator: Thomas E.A. Dale (Professor, Department of Art History)

Sighting Knowledge: Photography in the Lab, the Museum and the Archive
11:15-11:45am, Chazen Museum of Art, Niche Case between Galleries I and II
Interview with guest curators, Amy Noell and Beth Zinsli (Ph.D. Candidates, Department of Art History), by Tom Jones (Assistant Professor, Department of Art).

The University Art Museum as Interdisciplinary Laboratory: Exhibitions, Policy, and Interdisciplinary Research
1:00-2:30pm, Chazen Museum of Art, Room L140
Panel Discussion Participants:
Meghan Doherty (PhD Candidate, Department of Art History)
John House (Walter H. Annenberg Professor, Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ethan Lasser (Curator, Chipstone Foundation)
Jon Prown (Executive Director and Chief Curator, Chipstone Foundation)
Alan Shestack (Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC)
Jane Simon (Curator of Exhibitions, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art)
Moderator: Nancy Rose Marshall (Associate Professor, Department of Art History)

Bluethrough
2:45-3:15pm, Located on the third level outdoor plaza of the Humanities building.
Interview with Chele Isaac (MFA candidate, Department of Art and recipient of Arts Institute fellowship), by Jill H. Casid (Director of the Visual Culture Center and  Associate Professor of Visual Culture Studies, Department of Art History).

Rethinking Museums and Diversity: Perspectives, Practices, Policies
3:30-5:00pm, Chazen Museum of Art, Room L140
Panel Discussion Participants:
Marcela Guerrero (PhD Student, Department of Art History)
Amy Lonetree (Assistant Professor, Department of American Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz)
Nick Miller (UW Undergraduate Student in Visual Culture)
Nancy Marie Mithlo (Assistant Professor, Department of Art History and American Indian Studies Program): "'Savage Truths' - Indigenous Curation in the Tribal College Setting"
Willie Ney (Director, Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives)
Freida High W. Tesfagiorgis (Professor, Afro-American Studies)
Moderator: Jill H. Casid (Director, Visual Culture Center)

Click here to read more about Amy Lonetree and Alan Shestack

Click here to read more about the colloquium participants in "Interdisciplinarity and the University Art Museum"

On view March 3-June 1, 2008: "Sighting Knowledge: Photography in the Lab, the Museum and the Archive"
Guest curators Amy Noell and Beth Zinsli (PhD Students, Department of Art History) curated this exhibition that highlights relationships between scientific, artistic, and archival uses of photography in order to question the boundaries between these categories of inquiry and knowledge. Chazen Museum of Art, niche case 2, between Galleries II and III.

Also on view during the conference: "Bluethrough," a temporary installation by Chele Issac (MFA Candidate, Department of Art), situated on the third level plaza of the Humanities building – the nexus of the Mosse Humanities Building and the Chazen Art Museum and (via the footbridge) University Theatre and Vilas Communication Hall. The site-specific work is an investigation of both the social expectation and institutional determination of architectural space, with goals of fostering generative conversation about the possibilities for art practice, exhibition, alternative programming and exploration within the university art museum.

"Interdisciplinarity and the University Art Museum" is co-sponsored by the American Indian Studies Program, the Center for the Humanities and the Departments of Art, Art History, and Theatre & Drama.

Visual Culture event archive
Co-sponsored event archive