Call for Papers: 2019 Nasher Prize Graduate Symposium on Isa Genzken

The 2019 Nasher Prize Graduate Symposium offers master’s and doctoral students from any academic discipline the opportunity to present scholarly work on a host of questions and topics related to the work of 2019 Nasher Prize Laureate Isa Genzken.

The Nasher Sculpture Center announces an open call for participation in the Nasher Prize Graduate Symposium, which aims to expand scholarship on the field of contemporary sculpture in its many forms. Submissions should address themes related to the work of the 2019 Nasher Prize Laureate Isa Genzken. With a career spanning four decades, Genzken has continually reinvented the language of sculpture by creating objects inspired by popular culture and historical events that explore the complexities of contemporary realism. Engaging a diverse range of media such as wood, plaster, concrete, textiles, and detritus and working in a variety of modes, including sculpture, photography, filmmaking, painting, drawing, and collage, Genzken transforms vernacular materials into wholly unique forms. Her inventive, ad hoc approach to making, as well as her fearless embrace of chaos and change, has inspired a generation of artists, even as she continues to adapt, expand, and redefine her protean oeuvre.

Addressing a broad audience of art historians and museum professionals, participants will receive feedback from fellow presenters, the keynote speaker, and audience members. Students selected to present papers will also have their work published in the annual symposium compendium, together with the paper delivered by the keynote speaker, Dr. Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, renowned art historian, curator, writer, and Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, Harvard University.

Suggested Topics* for the 2019 Nasher Prize Graduate Symposium: Isa Genzken
–Sculpture, Architecture, and the Body
–The “Unskilled” Aesthetic in Post-War Art
–Genzken’s Narrative Urbanism
–Historical Trauma in Post-War Sculpture
–Contemporary Realism via Sculptural Assemblage
–Art, Branding, and Identity Within Genzken’s aesthetic
–Fashion, Architecture, and Sculpture in the Work of Genzken

*Preference will be given to those papers that address Genzken’s work directly.
Those applicants who express intention to be in Dallas to present will be favorably considered.

Submissions may include, but are not limited to:
–Excerpt of a MA/MFA paper or thesis
–Excerpt of a seminar paper
–Excerpt from a dissertation 

Keynote speaker: Dr. Benjamin H.D. Buchloh
Benjamin H.D. Buchloh is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences since 2005, teaching courses on the history of Weimar culture and Post WW II American and European art history. A selection of his essays on American and European artists of the post WWII period, has been published in two volumes, Neo Avantgarde and Culture Industry (MIT Press, 2006), and Formalism and Historicity (MIT Press, 2016). A third volume, Refuse and Refuge is currently being prepared for publication. With Rosalind Krauss, Hal Foster, Yve-Alain Bois and David Joselit, Buchloh is the editor of the two volume history of the arts of the 20th century, Art since 1900 (Thames & Hudson). As a co-curator of the retrospective exhibition of the work of Gerhard Richter at the Metropolitan Museum/Met Breuer, New York in 2020, Buchloh will publish his forthcoming monograph on the artist on that occasion. Buchloh was awarded the Golden Lion for Contemporary Art History and Criticism at the Venice Biennale in 2007.

Complete proposals must include the following:
–Contact information, participant’s field and university affiliation, and CV
–Paper title and abstract of no more than 200 words that includes 3 to 5 keywords 

Proposals are due by Sunday, December 9, 2018.
We hope to notify successful applicants by January 14, 2019.
Send submissions and questions to symposium [​at​] nashersculpturecenter.org
Registration information will follow.

With proof of need, eligible candidates may be considered for scholarship funding to offset travel costs.

Nasher Prize Presenting Sponsor: JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Nasher Prize Media Partners: Presenting: Belo Media Group / KERA’s Art & Seek and PaperCity