Mellon Research Initiative: Events

Three external coordinators were invited to work with the IFA to develop workshops and conferences exploring key issues in conservation, archaeology, and art history as separate and as interlocking disciplines and in relation to other fields. The coordinators are: Jim Coddington (Chief Conservator, Museum of Modern Art); Jas Elsner (Humfrey Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Archaeology and Art, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University); and David Wengrow (Professor of Comparative Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University College London).

Past Events

Surfaces (15th-19th Centuries)
March 27, 2015 Organized by Noemie Etienne, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Fine Arts-NYU
[click for a full description]
[watch video of this symposium]

Field/Work: Object and Site
February 11-12, 2015
Organized in conjunction with the College Art Association's annual conference
[click for a full description and list of speakers]
[watch video of this symposium]

From ‘Surface’ to ‘Substrate’: The Archaeology and Art History of Material Transfers
November 7-8, 2014
Organized by David Wengrow, Professor of Comparative Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University College London
[watch video of this symposium]
[full description and list of speakers]

Materiality in Japan:  Making, Breaking and Conserving Works of Art and Architecture (April 11, 2014)
Organized by Anton Schweizer
[watch video of this symposium]
[full description and list of speakers]

Is Contemporary Art History? (February 28, 2014)
Organized by Robert Slifkin
[watch video of this symposium]
[full description and list of speakers]

Workshop on Digital Tools (February 1, 2014)
Organized by Jonathan Hay
[watch video of this symposium]
[full description and list of speakers]

Conservation and Its Contexts (December 7, 2013)
Organized by Jim Coddington
[watch video of this symposium]
[full description and list of speakers]

Art History and the Art of Description (October 4-5, 2013)
Organized by Jas Elsner 
[watch video of this symposium]
[full description and list of speakers]

Archaeology, Heritage, and the Mediation of Time (April 12-13, 2013)
Organized by David Wengrow
[watch video of this symposium]
[full description and list of speakers] 

Mapping: Geography, Power, and the Imagination in the Art of the Americas (March 7-8, 2013)
Organized by Jennifer Raab
[watch video of this symposium]
[full description and list of speakers]

Digital Art History (November 30 – December 1, 2012)
Organized by Jim Coddington
[watch video of this symposium]
[full description and list of speakers]

Publishing and the PhD (October 18, 2012)
A public workshop on the art history publication in relation to the dissertation
[watch video of this symposium]
[full description and list of speakers]

Beyond Representation: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Nature of Things (September 27 -29, 2012)

This event is jointly sponsored by Bard Graduate Center and the IFA’s Mellon Research Initiative, and organized by Jas Elsner, Finbarr Barry Flood, and Ittai Weinryb.
[full description and list of speakers]

Image and Ontology in Comparative Perspective (April 28-29, 2012)
Convened by David Wengrow Professor of Comparative Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University College London 
[full description and a list of speakers]

Comparativism (March 30-31, 2012)
Convened by Jas Elsner, Humfrey Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Archaeology at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University and Visiting Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago
[full description and a list of speakers]  

Presentism (November 5, 2011)
Convened by Jim Coddington, Chief Conservator, Museum of Modern Art

[full description and a list of speakers]