2018 Keithley Symposium – Life an Object: The Thinker as Prism

The Thinker
September 28th, 2018

Location: Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Boulevard, Cleveland, OH 44106

Inspired by Rodin’s The Thinker, the Keithley Symposium offers an exploration of the birth, lives and afterlives of objects. The event honors the sculpture’s centennial and remarks upon its layered history, and includes interdisciplinary conversations about how we interpret impermanence and what it means to our communities through works of art. The daylong symposium will consist of three panels of scholars, artists, conservators, and curators, and a series of concurrent gallery workshops.

Panel I – Birth of an Object

Per Knutas, The Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator, the Cleveland Museum of Art
Tony Lewis, Artist
Ann Hamilton, Artist
Moderator: Emily Liebert Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art

Panel II – Moment(s) of Impact

Basel Abbas, Artist
Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Artist
Adam Lowe, Director and Copyist, Factum Arte
Renata Holod, Professor and Curator in the Near East Section, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania
Moderator: Elizabeth Bolman Elsie B. Smith Professor in Liberal Arts and Chair of Art Historyand Art, Case Western Reserve University

Panel III – Afterlives

Richard Kurin, Distinguished Scholar and Ambassador-at-Large, Smithsonian Institution, and Acting Director, Sackler & Freer Gallery
Laura Wexler, Professor of American Studies and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, Yale University
Fred Wilson, Artist
Moderator: Cyra Levenson, Deputy Director and Director of Public and Academic Engagement, Cleveland Museum of Art

Free and open to the public.  Registration requested.