Symposium: Archaeological Visual Practices

A one-day interdisciplinary symposium examining the visual construction of antiquity through archaeology, art history, and photography. Overview How do we know what the ancient world looked like? And how much of what we see is shaped by the scholars, artists, photographers, and technologies that reconstruct it for us? Aesthetics, Objectivity, and Interpretation in Archaeological Visual Practices is a one-day interdisciplinary symposium bringing together archaeologists, art historians, curators, conservators, and scholars of photography and digital visualization to examine how images of the ancient past are made, interpreted, and presented. From archaeological drawings and early photography to museum displays and digital reconstructions, the symposium asks how visual practices that appear to document the past objectively are also shaped by choices of framing, selection, restoration, aesthetics, and interpretation. The symposium is co-sponsored by the Humanities Institute and organized in dialogue with the Fairfield University Art Museum exhibition James Welling: Cento. Taking inspiration from Welling’s exploration of fragments, reproductions, and the afterlives of classical objects, the symposium extends these questions into scholarly practice. Archaeological photographs, drawings, reconstructions, restorations, and digital models are considered not simply as neutral records of antiquity, but as interpretive objects that actively shape how the ancient world is seen and understood. The program brings together scholars from institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel, with papers ranging from nineteenth-century Egyptological publishing and early reconstructions of ancient sculpture to wartime photography, modern artistic engagements with archaeology, museum display, conservation, and the digital reconstruction of ancient Rome. Unable to attend in person? The symposium will also be available via Zoom. Advance registration for the livestream is required. Symposium Program 9:00–9:20 a.m. | Opening Remarks Andrew Ward, Carey Weber, and Jason Smith Panel I: The Power of an Image 9:20–9:40 a.m. Kathryn Howley, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University “A Dangerous Bibliophilia: Critical Analysis of 19th- and Early 20th-Century Egyptological Publishing Practices” 9:40–10:00 a.m. Alexander Ekserdjian, Yale University “Le Jupiter Olympien: Quatremère de Quincy’s Grounded Guesses” 10:00–10:20 a.m. Samuel Holzman, Princeton University “Archaeological Drawing in (and out of) Perspective” 10:20–10:40 a.m. Marsha McCoy, Southern Methodist University “Visualizing the Parthenon Metopes: From Objectivity to Interpretation” 10:40–11:00 a.m. | Coffee Break and Discussion Panel II: Between Photography and Archaeology 11:00–11:20 a.m. Boaz Zissu, Bar-Ilan University “The Case of the Painted Tombs at Maresha: Reconstruction, Aesthetic Mediation, and the Illusion of Objectivity” 11:20–11:40 a.m. Peter Thompson, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford “Aesthetics of Destruction: Archaeology in Ariel Varges’ First World War Photography” 11:40 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Eric Driscoll, Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Documentation, Seriality, and Teleology in the Work of Socratis Mavrommatis and Nora Okka” 12:00–12:20 p.m. | Discussion 12:20–1:20 p.m. | Lunch Break Panel III: The Archaeological in the Fine Arts 1:20–1:40 p.m. Sasha Whittaker, Harvard Art Museums “Hellas: George Hoyningen-Huene’s ‘Semi-Archaeological’ Photobook” 1:40–2:00 p.m. Ivan Mileković, University of Pennsylvania “Against the Grain of Archaeological Poetics: Fateh al-Moudarres and the Incavation of Land” 2:00–2:20 p.m. | Coffee Break and Discussion Panel IV: Visualizations and the Exhibition Space 2:20–2:40 p.m. Megan Gatton, New York University, and Kerry Joyce, Independent “Supplying Supplicants: Modern Restorations of Late Canosan Funerary Vessels” 2:40–3:00 p.m. Ellen Archie, Washington and Lee University; Rebecca Salem, Kenyon College; and Bonna Wescoat, Emory University “The Subjective Vision: Archeology and Sociability on Samothrace” 3:00–3:20 p.m. Caitlin Clerkin and Kerri Cox Sullivan, Harvard Art Museums “Sardis in Record/Art: A Case Study from the Harvard Art Museum’s Galleries” 3:20–3:40 p.m. Matthew Nicholls, University of Oxford “What Does ‘Real’ Look Like? Digital Reconstruction and the Problem of Verisimilitude” 3:40–4:00 p.m. | Discussion and Concluding Remarks Keynote Lecture | Thursday, October 15 The symposium is preceded on Thursday, October 15, 5:30–6:30 p.m., by a keynote lecture from Katherine A. Schwab, Professor Emerita, titled “Altered States? The Shifting Impact of Our Visualizations of Antiquity.” The keynote will also take place in the Dogwood Room of the Barone Campus Center. In Dialogue with James Welling: Cento The symposium and keynote are organized in dialogue with the Fairfield University Art Museum exhibition James Welling: Cento. Welling’s work explores how antiquity survives through fragments, restorations, reproductions, photographs, and modern acts of recombination. The symposium brings that central concern into conversation with archaeological and art historical practice, asking how the images scholars create become part of antiquity’s continuing visual afterlife. Image Credit: Torso of Poseidon, Figure M, West Pediment, Parthenon, Acropolis, Athens, ca. 438-432 BCE. Original by Unknown Greek Artist. Plaster cast after Pentelic marble original. Gift of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004.