Integrating Process: Cross-Temporal Approaches in Art History, session at SECAC 2019, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, October 16–19, 2019

As a discipline art history suffers from a lack of integration. There is no established process-focused framework for the history of art before the 21st century. Although there is a great deal of scholarship concerning process in contemporary art and production integral to objects in circulation, discussions of art processes in antiquity are rare. In part, this lacuna exists because scholars have mistakenly discounted the possibility of ancient work with a processual focus. This session will investigate this gap.

In what ways and to what extent can a cross-temporal approach to art history establish a disciplinary framework with which to address process informed by complementary counterparts from ancient and contemporary visual culture? This panel seeks to redefine process in visual art by focusing on aspects of production from any geographic location approached through a cross-temporal lens by juxtaposing themes and material from antiquity and the 21st century. Papers will address debates concerning issues such as, but not limited to: active beholders as co-creators; private studio vs. public commercial spaces; and processes (for example, in-process, serial, unfinished, completed, erased, repaired, re-made work). This session seeks to engage in a dynamic debate about process by transforming disciplinary conversations.

Interested scholars should submit for consideration an abstract on the SECAC portal.

Session organizer
Meredith Hallie, Washington State University

SECAC is a national non-profit organization devoted to education and research in the visual arts. Founded in 1942, SECAC provides advocacy and support for arts professionals and engenders opportunities for the exchange of scholarship and creative activities through an annual conference and publications.