PAINTING AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN AMERICAN ART: SOURCES, IDEAS, AND INFLUENCES
1890s to the Present

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center hosted a three-day symposium, Thursday, July 6 through Saturday, July 8, 2006, in celebration of the Research Center’s fifth anniversary. Thirteen well-known leaders in the art world from around the United States participated in "Painting and Photography in American Art: Sources, Ideas, and Influences, 1890s to the Present." Their presentations explored and offered new insights into the relatively uncharted history of the exchange of ideas between painters and photographers that has influenced both mediums since photography came into being in the 19th century.

"Because making photographs is a mechanical process, photography was first viewed as something separate from and unequal to the art of painting," says Barbara Buhler Lynes, Museum Curator and The Emily Fisher Landau Director, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center. "Photographers first sought to legitimize their work as a fine art by infusing it with painterly qualities, but by the early 20th century a new generation of photographers, led by Alfred Stieglitz, challenged the Pictorialists by claiming that photography could achieve stature equal to painting if photographers used and asserted the distinctive characteristics of their medium. As 20th-century photographers explored and realized this objective, painters and photographers increasingly turned to what was being produced in each medium as sources of ideas for their own work. This symposium explores the history and significance of this fascinating exchange, as well as how each medium influenced and shaped the development and history of the other."

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THE 1980'S: AN INTERNET CONFERENCE

Moderated by Maurice Berger, Senior Fellow, The Vera List Center for Art & Politics, The New School and Curator, Center for Art & Visual Culture, University of Maryland Baltimore County

The 1980s: An Internet Conference explored an extraordinary period of change in American art and life. During this period, American politics and culture underwent dramatic shifts. The election of Ronald Reagan brought about profound changes in Federal policies. And a range of political and cultural groups-crossing all ideologies-emerged as a powerful force in the nation.

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MUSEUMS OF TOMORROW: AN INTERNET CONFERENCE

What is the future of the art museum? For a two-week period, October 6-19, 2003, a national group of thirty scholars, artists, museum directors, and curators discussed and debated the role of the art museum in this Internet conference. Given the increasing commercial-as well as global-direction of culture, the future of the art museum as we now know is it no longer certain. Participants explored a range of issues about the viability, relevance, effectiveness, responsibility, and role of the museum in an ever-changing world.

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THE MODERN/POSTMODERN DIALECTIC: AN ONLINE SYMPOSIUM
American Art and Culture, 1965-2000

For a two-week period, October 1–14, 2001, an international group of scholars, artists, and curators discussed and debated the issue of postmodernism. This online event was moderated by Maurice Berger, Senior Fellow, The Vera List Center for Art & Politics, New School University, and offers a continuation of Defining American Modernism (1890-Present), a symposium that was held at the new Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center July 12-14, 2001. The conference offered scholars, curators, artists, and the interested public from all over the world an unprecedented opportunity to talk to and listen to each other.

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DEFINING AMERICAN MODERNISM

In celebration of its opening in July 2001, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, organized the three-day symposium, “Defining American Modernism.” The event began on July 12 with a keynote address by Robert Storr, then curator the Museum of Modern Art and now Dean of the Yale School of Art, that addressed the meaning and significance of “modernism” in American Art from the 1890s – present. Over the next two days, thirteen distinguished scholars of American art presented papers to a standing-room only crowd about issues pertaining to American Art that dealt with various decades of the period 1980 to the present.

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