The Art Schools of Asia Symposium culminates a monthly seminar series conducted in 2021–22 with a cohort of eighteen emerging scholars from around the world. The online event will take place over six days, between 31 May to 10 June, and feature presentations by the cohort, along with interventions by renowned scholars. Together, the panels and discussions will highlight the contribution of art schools and art education to the development of modern and contemporary art across the region and beyond—considering topics such as the relation of schools to the nation-state, the development of media such as prints, the connection to artistic institutions and associations, and the place of experimentation. They will also tease out some of the broader methodological and theoretical implications that thinking about schools and education have for the writing of histories of art and institutions more broadly.
Art Schools of Asia cohort:
Alice Ashiwa, Katherine Bruhn, Shanshan Chen, Kiko del Rosario, Zohreen Murtaza and Amina Ejaz, Elizabeth Emrich-Rougé, Chabib Duta Hapsoro, Vishal Khandelwal, Sooyoung Leam, Yiqing Li, Vera Mey, Deepti Mulgund, Minh Nguyen, Santhosh Sakhinala, Gemma Sharpe, Dipti Sherchan, Yuliya Sorokina
Guest interlocutors:
Lily Chumley, Clare Harris, Salima Hashmi, R. Siva Kumar, Amanda Rath, Sanjukta Sunderason, Tsewang Tashi, Zheng Shengtian
Symposium Agenda
Tue, 31 May, 8pm HKT
Instruments of Instruction
- Deepti Mulgund, “School and Beyond: Drawing Pedagogy in Nineteenth-Century Industrial Capitalism and Empire”
- Santhosh Sakhinala, “Art Institutions and Pedagogy in Twentieth- Century Hyderabad”
Followed by a conversation on Santiniketan and response by R. Siva Kumar & Sanjukta Sunderason
Moderated by Noopur Desai
Wed, 1 Jun, 8pm HKT
Schools between Society and State
- Dipti Sherchan, “Art of Nation-Building: Cultural Politics of State-Sponsored Art Institutions in Nepal”
- Chabib Duta Hapsoro, “State-Commissioned Art under Depoliticised Cultural Policy: A Case Study of Decenta in the New Order”
- Yuliya Sorokina, “Astral Nomads: Art of Post-Soviet Asia in the Flow of Time and Meanings”
Followed by presentation and response by Amanda Rath
Moderated by Chương-Đài Võ
Fri, 3 Jun, 8am HKT
Experiments in Education
- Katherine Bruhn, “’Nature Acts as Our Teacher’: Art Making in and by Artists in Minangkabau”
- Minh Nguyen, “School of Thought: Language-Based Pedagogy in Contemporary Vietnam”
- Shanshan Chen, “The Vanguard Class: A Case Study of the First Experimental Art Education Programme in China”
Followed by presentation and response by Lily Chumley
Moderated by John Tain
Tue, 7 Jun, 8pm HKT
Learning Inside Out
- Alice Ashiwa, “Formation and Transformation of Post-World War II Avant-Garde Art through the Sogetsu Art Center”
- Vera Mey, “Artistic Alignment: Pagoda Muralists and Alternative Pedagogies in Modern Cambodia”
- Sooyoung Leam, “Sites of Un/learning: Art Education and Cultural Centres in Cold War Korea”
Followed by conversation and discussion with Clare Harris and Tsewang Tashi
Moderated by Congyang Xie
Wed, 8 Jun, 8pm HKT
Printmaking and Pedagogy
- Gemma Sharpe, “Printmaking in Pakistan”
- Kiko del Rosario, “Registers of Relief”
- Elizabeth Emrich-Rougé, “Woodblock Print Artists and the Academy: New Perspectives on Printmaking in 1930s China”
Followed by presentation and response by Salima Hashmi
Moderated by Sneha Ragavan
Fri, 10 Jun, 8am HKT
Teaching in Transition
- Yiqing Li, “Passion, Hope, and Anxiety: Modern Art Schools and Politics in Early Twentieth-Century China”
- Zohreen Murtaza and Amina Ejaz, “Decolonisation and Nationalism? From Mayo School of Arts to National College of Arts”
- Vishal Khandelwal, “Documentation as Design: Photography at the NID”
Followed by presentation and response by Zheng Shengtian
Moderated by Anthony Yung
Free and open to the public with registration.
Sponsor:
The Art Schools of Asia project is made possible with the generous support of the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative.
