< Back

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

What is postmodernism and is it a useful concept for understanding American art and visual culture of the past 40 years? The Modern/Postmodern Dialectic: American Art and Culture, 1965-2000 explored the artistic practices in the United States from the mid-1960s to the present in the context of the term postmodern: When and to what extent did modernism wane as a viable force in American art? How have the various liberation movements, from civil rights to feminism, influenced American art and culture and contributed to the rejection of the modernist ethos? How has globalism changed American art and culture? How have the new technologies of the past 50 years—television, personal computers, and the internet—altered the nature of progressive art in the United States? Are any of these changes innately postmodern?

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.

The symposium is now archived on our website and is available for viewing by the public. The proceedings from this discussion are the fifth volume in the series, Issues on Cultural Theory, published by the Fine Arts Gallery at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. In 2003 Maurice Berger edited this book, which is tentatively titled, Postmodernism?: A Virtual Discussion.