THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4
Borland Project Space Tour — 125 Borland Building
2:00 PM Heather McCuhn Bruhn (Penn State) — Curator’s Tour of the Exhibition, “Rocks, Minerals, and the History of Art”
Dickson Memorial Lecture — Department of Art History
Palmer Lipcon Auditorium / Palmer Museum of Art / Curtin Road
6:00 PM Pamela H. Smith (Columbia University) – “Making and Knowing in a Sixteenth-Century Workshop”
BUGS, BOULDERS, BEAKERS: The Materiality of Artists’ Colors
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5 – SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2018
Palmer Lipcon Auditorium / Palmer Museum of Art / Curtin Road
Registration is required to attend this event as space is limited. Registration opens in early August and closes on September 30, 2018.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5
9:00 AM Check In, Tea/Coffee/Pastries
9:30 AM Welcome – Cassie Mansfield (PSU)
Introductory Remarks – Sarah Rich (PSU) and Daniel Zolli (PSU)
9:50 – 10:50 AM Session I: Matter
Moderator: Robin Thomas (PSU)
9:50 AM Jennifer Stager (Johns Hopkins) – “Color as Matter, Color as Light”
10:15 AM Christopher Nygren (University of Pittsburgh) – “(Epi)Phenomenal Objects: Painted Stones in Early Modern Europe”
10:50 – 12:10 PM Session II: Colonialism & Exchange
Moderator: Martha Few (PSU)
11:00 AM Amara Solari (PSU) and Linda K. Williams (University of Puget Sound) – “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue ‘C’: Refiguring “Azul Maya” and Indigenous Catholicism in Counter Reformation Yucatán”
11:25 AM Sylvia Houghteling (Bryn Mawr) – “Dyes, Roots, and Leaves: The Defiance of Textile Pigments in Seventeenth-Century South Asia”
12:10 – 1:30 PM Lunch Recess
1:30 – 3:00 PM Session III:The Colors of Industry I
Moderator: Hester Blum (PSU)
1:30 PM Matthew C. Hunter (McGill University) – “An Engine, Not a Camera: Photography and Combustion in the Early Anthropocene”
1:55 PM Michael Rossi (University of Chicago) – “Composing Colors and Making Minds: The Physical Basis of 19th Century Color Psychology”
2:20 PM Sarah Rich (PSU) – “Cobalt Invasions in the Cold War”
3:00 PM Tea/Coffee
3:30 – 4:30 PM Session IV: The Colors of Industry II
Moderator: Nancy Locke (PSU)
3:30 PM Laura Kalba (Smith College / UC Irvine) – “From Ford Madox Brown’s The Last of England to Whistler’s Gold: Materiality, Value, and Color in 19th-Century British Art”
3:55 PM Trevor Stark (University of Calgary) – “The Colors of Industry and the Rhetoric of Purity in Cubism”
4:30 – 5:30 PM Session V: Making
Moderator: Christopher Staley (PSU)
4:30 PM Barbara Berrie (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) – “Pigments are Beautiful Themselves”
4:55 PM Sanchita Balachandran (Johns Hopkins) – “The Touch, Smell and Sound of Red, Black and Purple: Sensory Experience and the Making of Ancient Greek Vases”
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6
1:30 PM Check In, Tea/Coffee/Pastries
2:00 – 3:15 PM Session VI: Skin
Moderator: Sabine Doran (PSU)
2:00 PM Anthony Cutler (PSU) – “Colors of Ivory: Nature and Human Intervention”
2:25 PM Daniel Zolli (PSU) – “Making Up Materials”: Donatello & Cosmetics”
2:50 PM Oliver Wunsch (Harvard Art Museums) – “Pastel, Skin Color, and the Fabrication of Race”
3:15 PM Tea/Coffee
3:45 – 4:45 PM Session VII: Feathers & Scales
Moderator: Matthew Restall (PSU)
3:45 PM Brendan McMahon (U Michigan, Ann Arbor) – “Iridescence and Material Thinking in a 17th-century Mexican Feathered Triptych”
4:10 PM Maggie Cao (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) – “Natural History and Chromatic Dead Ends, Circa 1900”
4:45 – 5:30 PM General Discussion
Moderator: Chang Tan (PSU)