VCU to host ninth annual New Scholars/New Ideas Symposium

By Lissette Linares

Virginia Commonwealth University will host its ninth annual "New Scholars/New Ideas Symposium" on March 17-18 at VCU’s Grace Street Theater, 934 W. Grace St. The two-day event provides a professional and scholarly atmosphere for graduate art history students to present their work and receive feedback from peers and professionals.

"The continuing success of the New Scholars/New Ideas Symposium stems from the fact that it is organized primarily by graduate students in our program," said James Farmer, Ph.D., VCU associate professor of art history and faculty chair of the event.

The symposium will begin at 6 p.m. March 17 with keynote speaker Mary Ellen Miller, Vincent J. Scully Professor of Art at Yale University and an internationally known Pre-Columbian art historian. Miller will speak about "The World of Maya Wall Painting." Author of "The Murals of Bonampak" and "The Art of Mesoamerica: From Olmec to Aztec," Miller has written and lectured extensively on Maya art and culture. She has appeared in several film projects including the Time-Life series "Lost Civilizations: The Mystery of the Maya." Miller also serves as consultant to the National Science Foundation, the Getty Trust and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Beginning at 9 a.m. March 20, current and recent graduates from art history programs worldwide will present research papers on various topics. Past participants have come from Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany and Israel. Abstracts of presentations are published annually by Eye-in-Hand, a VCU Department of Art History publication.

Students and topics featured in this year’s symposium are:

• Mia Reinoso Genoni, Institute of Fine Arts, New York, "The Sign Painter: Cailebotte’s Visual Responses to Contemporary Critics."

• Aneta Georgievska-Shine, Ph.D., University of Maryland College Park, "On Juno and Her Semblance in Ruben’s ‘Ixion.’"

• Christopher Gilbert, VCU, "Art and History: Charles Harrison’s Histories of Art and Language."

• Jeong-Eun Kim, VCU, "White-Robed Guanyin: The Sinicization of Buddhism in China Seen in the Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteshvara in Gender, Iconography and Role."

• Leora Maltz, Brown University, "Celebration, Mutation and Differentiation: Strategies of Resistance from the Women of the Valley of a Thousand Hills."

• Ellen McBreen, Institute of Fine Arts, "Documents and Les Noirs."

• George V. Speer, Washington University, St. Louis, "Future (Imperfect): The Dream of Utopia and the Dissenting Vision in Art of the Machine Age."

• Melissa Sprague, City University of New York, "Cross-Cultural Currents of Romanticism: Delacroix’s Lithographs of Goethe’s ‘Faust.’"

• Mark Williamson, Binghamton University, New York, "Blood, Salvation and Ribera’s Martyrs."

The symposium is free and open to the public. The two-day program is sponsored by the VCU Department of Art History and the School of the Arts. For more information, call (804) 828-2784.