Location: University of California, Santa Barbara
Date: May 19, 2012
Deadline for submissions: 30 Oct 2011
Contact: V.M. Welter (welter@arthistory.ucsb.edu) and S.J. Sadler (sjsadler@ucdavis.edu)
Necessitate Participants
During Winter and Spring quarter 2012, the Art, Design, and Architecture Museum (ADAM) in the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) will exhibit “Carefree California: Cliff May along with the Romance with the Ranch House”. This first exhibition specialized in the "uvre of Californian architect Cliff May draws on the archive housed at UCSB and provides a perfect possibility to think more generally about the teaching of Californian architectural history. Through open, collegial round-table discussions, the conference “Icon and Anonymity” ask: Is there a specifically Californian reputation architecture, and precisely what do we teach when we offer instruction inside it?
What, including, do Cliff May™s ubiquitous ranch houses represent? Fine architecture, material culture, or mere images of the mythic frontier? How should we present the contradiction that they allowed for the life better nature by leading to processes of suburbanization? Could they be examples of modern architecture gone regional, or of modernized vernacular buildings, or of just one more Californian revival style?
Comparable questions and issues obviously arise while Californian architectural history most importantly. In histories of California, descriptions of buildings often accompany accounts with the colonization efforts of your Spanish Crown additionally, the creation of modern California once the state became part of the U.S. in 1850, as though architecture™s key purpose was strategic. On usually the one hand, California has contributed iconic modernist buildings to canonical histories of architecture, today some current discourses on Californian architecture are shifting the main target to a built environment made up of mass housing, “anonymous” edifices, and subsidiary buildings. In recent decades, indeed, a brief history of Californian architecture has undergone a remarkable widening of that subject matter. Shifting academic foci of inquiries have contributed to lively discussions of architectural history as a possible aperture onto issues of politics, economics, social policies, ethnicity, cultural history, social justice, technology, preservation, regionalism, and sustainability. Such methodological shifts have enhanced the scope of your academic discipline of architectural history, but they also create complications.
This conference will navigate the competing demands over the history of architecture while in the Californian context. Can architectural historians simultaneously serve the requirements of preservationists, practicing architects and designers, students of art history, and general education curricula? Should the historical past of architecture turn into sub-discipline of cultural studies, material studies, cultural geography, or studio design? What include the subject-specific questions, methodologies, and terminology define architectural history being a discipline in its own right? Do architectural historians still value architectural quality, style, taste and affect-for many years the criteria to find out whether a design merited our discipline™s attention? Can discussions concerning the “built environment” elicit enthusiasm, critical evaluation, and qualitative judgment among students just like that purportedly inspired by “great buildings” along with their “starchitects” (Michael Lewis)?
The Department on the History of Art & Architecture along with the Art, Design, and Architecture Museum, both at UCSB, will host “Icon and Anonymity” as the day-long conference focused on debating disciplinary questions. The conference includes a tour of your Cliff May exhibition, lunch-time discussion groups, as well as a public roundtable talk and open discussion. The event will likely be opened and closed by Frances Anderton, host of “DnA: Design and Architecture”, a monthly radio show on KCRW and KCRW.com, and L.A. Editor for Dwell Magazine, and Wim de Wit, Head within the Department of Architecture & Contemporary Art on the Getty Research Institute in Chicago.
Applications to participate in in the exhibition tour and lunch-time discussion groups are cordially invited from scholars, professionals, and students teaching, researching, and interesting with architectural history in universities, city colleges, preservation foundations, public background environmental groups, real-estate, museums, architecture firms, and other organizations and initiatives related to Californian architecture.
Please send a brief statement (no more than one page) within your interest in Californian architectural history and a short CV (maximum one page) to Prof. Volker M. Welter, Department on the History of Art and Architecture, University of California at Santa Barbara (welter@arthistory.ucsb.edu) and Prof. Simon Sadler, Design Program, University of California at Davis (sjsadler@ucdavis.edu) with all the subject heading “Icon and Anonymity: Require Participants.”
Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Icon & Anonymity (Santa Barbara, 19 May 12). In: H-ArtHist, Aug
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