Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of History of Art
Bryn Mawr College

“The Limits of Documentary: Identity and Urban Development in Agnes Varda’s Daguerreotypes (1975)”

French filmmaker Agnes Varda’s experimental documentary Daguerreotypes (1975) is often viewed as a quaint, cinematic portrait of a Parisian street, the rue Daguerre, where she lives and works.  In contrast, this presentation excavates the film’s previously unacknowledged sources, demonstrating how Varda drew on a range of visual media—photography, film, and contemporary art—to create sophisticated social and political commentary on urban and economic transformations taking place in France in the late 20th century.

Director, Infinity Burial Project
TED Fellow
Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley
Research Affiliate, MIT

“The Body/Self and Decompiculture”

Jae Rhim Lee will discuss her latest project, the Infinity Burial Project. The Infinity Burial Project is a proposal for an alternative postmortem option which promotes and facilitates the process of corpse decomposition and toxin remediation.  The Project features the training of existing edible mushrooms to decompose and remediate toxins in human tissue (Infinity Mushroom), the development of a decomposition ‘kit’ consisting of a cocktail of capsules which hold various decomposing organisms (Decompiculture Kit), burial suits embedded with decomposition activators, and a membership society (the Decompiculture Society) devoted to the promotion of death acceptance and the practice of decompiculture (the cultivation of decomposing organisms).

Professor of Art History, University of Sydney
Clark/Mellon Curatorial Fellow, Clark Art Institute

“Monochromy, Polychromy, Photography: Kandinsky, Münter and Klee in Tunisia”

Two key figures of the German avant-garde, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, travelled to paint in Tunisia in 1905 and 1914 respectively. This paper examines their luminous color works – ethno-decorative in Kandinky’s case, cubo-orphist and cryptic in Klee’s – in dialogue with contemporary photography. Local studio photography by Garrigues or Lehnert & Landrock provided a vocabulary of the colonial scene, while black and white snapshots taken by Gabriele Münter, Kandinsky’s artist companion, and by Klee’s jocular friend August Macke, escape the colonial paradigms of the Ansichtskarte.

President, Lafayette College
President-elect, Haverford College

“Towards a New Conception of Crusader Art: Reflections on the Sainte-Chapelle, the Morgan Library Book of Kings, and the Capetian Court”

*Please note: This lecture will be held in Thomas 110*

Among the greatest achievements of thirteenth century art in France, the Sainte-Chapelle and the Morgan Library Book of Kings were also complex reflections of the crusading agenda of King Louis IX and the Capetian dynasty.  During the past decade, our understanding of Capetian politics and the Frankish role in the Crusades has been advanced by close study of these works, which anticipate a new secular era in art, even as they arise from a venerable medieval tradition.

Assistant Professor
Department of History of Art, Temple University

“Biennial as Catalyst: The Formation of a Postwar Avant-Garde and the São Paulo Bienal”

In the late 1940s–1950s, Brazilian artists in large numbers adopted geometric abstraction and formed self-consciously avant-garde groups. These artists sought to delineate a genealogy within the history of modern art that validated their artistic project. As I will demonstrate, a key incubator, forum, and model for the re-definition of modernism abstract artists in Brazil undertook was the Bienal de São Paulo (São Paulo Biennial) and, in particular, the second Bienal of 1953–1954.

Scheuer Family Professor of Humanities and Chair of the Department of Art, Swarthmore College

“Reflections on Modern and Postmodern Historiographies of Gothic Stained Glass”

In the aftermath of World War II, medieval stained-glass studies developed from a “modernist French school” to a “postmodern American school”, which came to dominate the field in the later twentieth century. Yet neither of these approaches has much impact on current views of the “meaning” of the medium and the paintings created in it during the height of Gothic architectural arts. This paper explores the reasons for the disconnect between earlier and current approaches to the field and muses about future directions in the study of medieval stained glass.