Association for Latin American Art
Fourth Triennial Conference
San Francisco, California

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

“Art at Large: Public and Monumental Arts in the Americas”

The Association for Latin American Art is pleased to invite proposals for papers to be presented at its Fourth Triennial Conference. Hosted by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, the conference will be held the weekend of March 18–20, 2016 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Authors are invited to submit proposals for papers (20–30 minutes) on the theme of “Art at Large: Public and Monumental Arts in the Americas.”

Proposals should consider questions such as: What is the relationship between the public and the monumental? How do public spheres or public personas shape or inform artistic production or expression? Inversely, how do monumental art, architecture, and visual culture affect lived, public spaces? Furthermore, how might separations between public and private arenas of art making be problematized or complicated?

In responding to one or more of these thematic questions, papers might address issues related to:

– architecture and urban form
– scale and monumentality
– landscape and environment
– performance and spectacle
– exhibition, display, property rights, and public access
– civic and community identity
– politics and protest

Papers may address any time period of Latin American art, conventionally organized as: ancient/Pre-Columbian, colonial/viceregal; modern and contemporary. Additionally, for the conference in San Francisco, we encourage paper proposals that address the arts and architecture of California and the Bay Area from all periods, potentially including indigenous or ancestral arts, arts of the Spanish Missions, Latin American art in California, or Latino/a or Chicano/a art and visual culture.

The conference will open with a Friday evening keynote address, followed by two days of papers. Papers will be divided into four panels covering the three main chronological areas and the proposed fourth panel on the arts of California and the Bay Area.

In addition to time spent at the de Young, the hosts anticipate organizing several opportunities for attendees to visit other Bay Area venues including museums, galleries, archives, and public mural programs.

To propose a paper, please send an abstract of ca. 500 words and a cv to alaa2016sf@gmail.com by September 1, 2015. To participate, speakers must be members of the Association for Latin American Art.

2016 Host Committee

Margaret Jackson, University of New Mexico, mars@unm.edu

Matthew Robb, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, mrobb@famsf.org

Lisa Trever, University of California, Berkeley, Ltrever@berkeley.edu

2016 Selection Committee Chairs

Margaret Jackson, University of New Mexico (ancient/Pre-Columbian)

Barbara Mundy, Fordham University (colonial/viceregal)

Maria Fernández, Cornell University (modern and contemporary)