On November 7–8, 2024, Historic Deerfield will host a public, in-person and virtual colloquium focused on its collection of paintings, works on paper, and decorative arts titled “Reawakening Materials: American Art, Empire, and Material Histories in Historic Deerfield’s Collection.”
Questions of “empire” emerged from an interest in scholars rethinking the American experience from the lens of global European empires (England, Spain, France, The Netherlands, etc.) and U.S. imperialism. Historic Deerfield’s collection focuses on 18th- and 19th-century American art and material culture, and it is based in a landscape tied to Indigenous communities, histories of enslaved people and free people of African descent, and settler colonialism. Our colloquium will explore relationships between empire, materials of objects, and settler colonialism in the collection, specifically asking how these art historical topics can be generative for recontextualizing Historic Deerfield’s place in the study of New England history, art, and culture.
Speakers will investigate materials that reveal new ideas of empire, including: pastels, lacquer, birch, engravings on paper, and linen. The program will also workshop methods for telling these narratives through historic interiors, including objects tied to violence and absence, and opportunities to bring in stories of joy and survivance.
Keynote speaker: Dr. Charmaine Nelson, Provost Professor, Black Diasporic Art & Visual Culture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Other scheduled speakers include:
- Megan Baker, PhD Candidate in Art History, University of Delaware & 2024-2025 Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery
- Dr. Mary Amanda McNeil, Assistant Professor, Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora, Tufts University
- Lan Morgan, Associate Curator, Peabody Essex Museum
- Joseph Litts, PhD Candidate in Art History, Princeton University
- Dr. Jonathan Square, Assistant Professor of Black Visual Culture, Parsons School of Design
- Morgan Freeman, PhD Candidate in American Studies, Yale University
- Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and PhD Candidate in Art History, University of Delaware
- Anthony Trujillo, PhD Candidate in American Studies, Harvard University
Registration and full colloquium schedule: https://www.historic-deerfield.org/events/reawakening-materials-american-art-empire-and-material-histories-in-historic-deerfields-collection/
Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife 