4th Annual Graduate Student Conference: On Whose Authority? (Re)Assessing the Malleable Canon of Visuality

Minor White, American, 1908-1976, Cemetery, Ponce Puerto Rico, 1973, Gelatin silver print, 14in x 11in, California Museum of Photography, gift of James Haddad (1982 0039 0002) , Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum (MWA 73-16), © Trustees of Princeton University

Dr. Rafael Cardoso, Keynote
2014 – 15 Getty Research Institute Scholar
Professor, Universidade do Estadodo Rio de Janiero

Although the term canon implies rigidity, internal and external pressures have often forced canons to be reevaluated and reformed. A look at art and objects a global scale, from past to present, inevitably reveals the complexity as well as the exclusionary equality of canonicity. As such, a canon can be shown to have a malleable nature, one that yields or resists challenges to authority. Because the concept of a canon in relation to visuality permeates a wide variety of disciples, this multidisciplinary conference seeks explore the relationship between canonicity and the arts, in any of its forms, within an expanding global context. Read more