2005 CAA Symposium in Atlanta

The Canon and California: The Role of Museums
(title changed from Intersections between Art History and Museums:
From Theory and Object to Design and Education)

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 12:00 PM-1:30 PM
Bruce Robertson (LACMA & UCSB), moderator

The task of rewriting the canon is at the forefront of American art today but the task has many parts and many players. Museums continue to play a major role, mobilizing, as they do, much bigger resources and publics than individual scholars.

In the last decade, Californian museums have made a concerted effort to dislodge the supremacy of New York as the fountainhead and moderator of American modernism. To be sure, they are not alone in this effort, as a model of multiple and regional modernisms has been developed by scholars, collectors and museums together. Participants: Jessica Smith (the Huntington), Sarah Vure (Orange County), and Ilene Susan Fort (LACMA).