This year’s 10th Annual Art History Graduate Student Symposium at the University of Oregon explores the concept of forgery in the world of art. “Reproducing the Original: The Copy’s Role in the History of Art” is centered on the concepts of authenticity, reproduction, and forgery throughout time.
The April 17-18 event, which includes a keynote speech by Winnie Wong, will take place in Gerlinger and Lawrence Halls on the UO campus.
Above: Winnie Wong
Since society has found ease in media reproduction, the complex relationship between an original work and its duplicate is forced into consideration, notes Daniel Borengasser, cocoordinator of the symposium. “That [relationship] is the core idea of what we’re working with. It’s extremely complicated.”
Keynote speaker Wong is a historian of modern and contemporary art and visual culture, with a special interest in fakes, forgeries, frauds, copies, counterfeits, and other non-art challenges to authorship and originality. Her keynote talk, “Van Gogh on Demand: Valorizing the Copy in the Age of China,” will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 17, in Lawrence Hall Room 115.
Wong’s research is based in the southern Chinese cities of Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and her writing engages with Chinese and Western aesthetics, intellectual property law, and popular culture. She is the author of Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade, and is currently writing a second book, a new art history of export painting and the Canton Trade, 1760-1842. Wong recently joined the faculty of the Rhetoric department at the University of California, Berkeley.
The presentation of student papers is a key feature of the graduate symposium. The opportunity to participate was extended not just to art history students but across disciplines, Borengasser said, because the subject of originality and duplication is a concept that can be interpreted differently whether in literature plagiarism to business and copyright law.
Student papers will be presented to educators from across the country on Friday, April 18, beginning at 9:30 a.m. and continuing until 2:45 p.m. in Gerlinger Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
Panelists include Nicole Budrovich, University of California, Davis; Elizabeth Yarina, MIT; Joshua Unikel, University of Buffalo; Greta Suiter, George Mason University; Cristina Morandi, Rutgers University; Zachary Forstrom, University of St. Thomas; Stephanie Chadwick, Rice University; and Megan Cekander, University of Oregon.
In addition, the LaVerne Krause Gallery in Lawrence Hall will feature a student art show tied to the conference theme.
The UO Department of the History of Art and Architecture, and the Art and Architectural History Association are event sponsors.
Above: The complex relationship between an original work and its duplicate—as in this forgery of Van Gogh—has been forced into consideration since society has found ease in media reproduction.
