This special two day event will explore the decade that witnessed the end of Reconstruction, endured a major depression and saw an expansion of American arts and culture. The event is part of Syracuse Symposium™, a semester-long festival celebrating the interdisciplinary humanities at Syracuse University.
Cloud Shadows, 1890 Winslow Homer
A SYMPOSIUM IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE EXHIBITION
WINSLOW HOMER'S EMPIRE STATE:
HOUGHTON FARM AND BEYOND
Sponsored by the SUArt Galleries,
The SU Humanities Center, organizer of
Syracuse Symposium 2009: LIGHT, and the
Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation initiative.
THIS EVENT IS FREE
AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Friday, September 25
10:00 A.M. Shemin Auditorium
Robb Goldstein, The Troubadour
Winslow Homer and the Democratic Vista
Robb Goldstein, Lecturer/Musician/Performer has performed at national museums and schools integrating American fine arts with American folk wisdom. Goldstein will perform Winslow Homer and the Democratic Vista, an original presentation combining spoken word, music and images that will consider the impact on American culture of Homer's pictorial press images.
Saturday, September 26
9:00 A.M. Slocum Auditorium
This day-long event will include:
David Tatham
Professor Emeritus, Department of Fine Arts
Syracuse University
Winslow Homer, Houghton Farm, and Far Beyond: Isolation and Community in the Anglo-American Art World
Erin Crissman
Curator, The Farmers' Museum, Cooperstown, NY
Farming Houghton: A Window into American Agriculture in the 1870s
Judith C. Walsh
Associate Professor of Paper Conservation
Buffalo State College
Kenneth Haltman
H. Russell Pitman Professor of Art History
University of Oklahoma
Winslow Homer and the Reach of Desire
* Keynote Address
Sarah Burns
Ruth N. Halls Professor of History of Art
Indiana University
Shadows in the Sunshine: Winslow Homer's Nervous Nostalgia in the 1870s
Dr. Burns will focus on Homer's imagery of childhood in the 1870s, in particular the Gloucester watercolors of 1873 and 1880. Homer produced these works during a time of intense popular nostalgia for lost youth, both personal and, in aftermath of the Civil War, national. Along with nostalgic sentiment, images of children in the 1870s proffered the vision of a bright new generation that would smooth away the scars of war. But for Homer, who had witnessed and documented that war, forebodings tempered such hope, and shadows haunted both past and present. Burns will discuss Homer's seemingly carefree scenes as expressions of the artist's own acute awareness of time's passage and as modern variants on the romantic metaphor of the "Voyage of Life."
JOIN US FOR A GALLERY RECEPTION AT THE SUART GALLERIES IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE SYMPOSIUM
Shaffer Art Building · Syracuse, NY 13244
TEL: (315) 443-4097 · EMAIL: suart@syr.edu
WEB: suart.syr.edu
