The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino is hosting a two-day virtual conference on Thursday and Friday, Nov. 5 and 6, during which speakers will explore the transmutation, preservation, and loss of paper as a cycle that defined early modern artistic practice, economic transaction, and political statecraft.
“Ecologies of Paper in the Early Modern World” is a Zoom conference from 9:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Thursday and from 9:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Friday.
The conference is free to attend with a reservation.
Speakers will map the various guises of paper, its ability to retain meanings associated with its material origins as well as its desire to conceal its former states, or to encourage belief in a value beyond its material reality.
Charting the journeys of early modern paper in drawing, print, and document, this program not only restructures a person’s understanding of paper’s importance in early modern artistic practice and political life, but also reconstructs the governing roles of environment, place, and origin in modes of making.
The event will open Thursday with a Welcome and Introduction, featuring The Huntington’s Steve Hindle, Shira Brisman of the University of Pennsylvania, and Caroline Fowler from Clark Art Institute.
Sessions on Day 1 include “Documents and Foundations,” with Asheesh Kapur Siddique from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Cheryl Finley form Cornell University and the Atlanta University Center Collective for the Study of Art History and Curatorial Studies, and John Gagné from the University of Sydney.
“Backgrounds and Foregrounds” will feature Jennifer Chuong from Harvard, Caroline Fowler, and Heather Wolfe from Folger Shakespeare Library.
On Day 2, the “Scarcity” session will have Joshua Calhoun of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Shira Brisman.
“The Paper Age” will feature Esther Chadwick from the Courtauld Institute of Art, Nina Dubin from the University of Illinois-Chicago, and Richard Taws of University College London.
Friday’s closing discussion will be led by Clark Art Institute’s Caroline Fowler.
To register, visit www.huntington.org/ecologies-
