Portraiture, Modernity, and the Materiality of Objects
14th Annual Art History Graduate Student Association Conference, University of California, Riverside | May 16, 2026 from 1:00-5:30 PM | Via Zoom
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Jenni Sorkin, Professor and Chair, History of Art & Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Riverside’s Art History Graduate Student Association is pleased to announce its 14th Annual Conference, Portraiture, Modernity, and the Materiality of Objects.
The distant jadeite stone–its cool blue-green echoing young maize–was carved in the Olmec world into the sacred form of the Kunz Axe. Cobalt carried along Mongol-era trade routes met Jingdezhen’s kaolin clay and, through kiln fired, produced blue-and-white porcelain. In Roman art, materials such as marble, bronze, and pigment shaped movement, light, and the sensory experience of power. Across cultures and histories, materials have shaped not only objects, but the conditions of making, meaning, and use.
This conference invites graduate students to examine portraiture, modernity, and materiality as active forces rather than a passive surface. Matter speaks: their voice awakening the impulse to make. Objects are encountered through the body and the senses: handled, worn, repaired, and transformed over time. Drawing on approaches including phenomenology, material culture studies, and new materialisms, we ask how materials carry memory, structure experience, and demand particular modes of making, care, and interpretation.
The conference will be held on Zoom on Saturday, May 16, 2026.
The conference is free and open to the public.
Advance registration is required: https://ucr.zoom.us/meeting/register/qu4-ZpdFQeabc5cbX6eOVQ#/registration
