"Collecting and Gathering: Making Worlds and Staking Claims" Conference, Columbia University, Saturday May 23rd, 9-5

This Saturday May 23rd, from 9 AM to 5 PM, Columbia University's Center for Archaeology will be hosting a one-day interdisciplinary conference on the topic of collectors and collecting entitled "Collecting and Gathering: Making Worlds and Staking Claims." Organized by the Columbia graduate anthropology department and augmented by an exhibition curated by the museum anthropology department entitled "Out of the Box: Anthropology Collections Unpacked", this conference--full schedule following--is free and open to the public. If you attend the reception following the conference, you can catch a projection of photographs of public and private collectors--some drawn from Anatomical Theatre, some from the Private Cabinets Series, some from this blog, and some previously unshown--that I will be presenting for the occasion. More information on the above invitation; click to see larger version.

Here is the description, and full schedule:

Practices, institutions and ideas centered around collections and collecting offer a fruitful area for interdisciplinary inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. Whether in the processes through which collections come to be formed, or the ways in which existing collections are experienced by a variety of publics, the impulse to collect is often key to knowing a wider world, and also knowing oneself. This conference aims to bring a wide variety of critical perspectives to bear on this topic; including anthropological, historical and art historical, literary, architectural and museological.

Schedule:
9:00 AM Welcome and Introduction

9:15 AM Session 1: Power of collecting
Discussant: Severin Fowles, Barnard College

Savannah Fetterolf and Fran Ritchie, Columbia University
The Violence of Collecting: an Examination of the Museum

Jane Tippett, University of Delaware
Selling a Crown: Provenance and Collecting in the Age of the Royal Auction

Courtney Stewart, Bard Graduate Center
(R)evolutions in Display: The Mevlânâ Museum of Whirling Dervishes.
10:45 AM Coffee Break
11:00 AM Session 2: Collecting and haunting
Discussant: Angie Heo, Barnard College

Tom Jacobs, New York Institute of Technology
Herding Ghosts: History, Collecting, and the Anti-Collective Impulse in Pynchon and McCarthy

Oisin Wall, London Consortium
Futurist Art and the Crypt

James Wilkes, London Consortium
Peter Riley’s Excavations: Some Thoughts on the Poem as Space of Collection

12:30 PM Lunch

1:15 PM Session 3: The performance of collecting
Discussant: Terry D’Altroy, Columbia University

Catherine Howard, University of Oxford
Representing Performances, Performing Representations: The Photographs Collection of Darrell Posey

Lina Hakim, London Consortium
Collecting in art as system of thought. Looking at Susan Hiller’s From the Freud Museum (1991-6)

Brinda Kumar, Cornell University
Coomaraswamy and Collecting for Indian Art

2:45 PM Coffee Break

3:00 PM Session 4: The temporality of collecting
Discussant: Zoe Crossland, Columbia University

Victoria Ehrlich, Cornell University
From Death to New Breath: Marcantonio’s Judgment of Paris

Antonia P. Young, University of California, Berkeley
Picture Galleries and the Wall Paintings of the Villa Farnesina: Art and Artificiality in the Early Roman Empire

4:15 PM Conclusion

The conference will be held on the Columbia University Campus in Schmerhorn, room 612; click here to see where this building is located on the campus grounds. You can find out more information about the conference here and about the exhibition (scroll down a bit) here. Hope to see you there!