The College of the Holy Cross will host a three-day international symposium, “Global Encounters in Early America,” April 3-5, sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society and the Terra Foundation for American Art. The symposium is held in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, currently on view at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery through April 6.
On Thursday, there will be two opening lectures: “An Apostolate of Books: Jesuits, Their Publications and Their Travels through Asia and the Americas” by Rev. Jeremy Clarke, S.J., Boston College and the Australian Centre for China in the World, Canberra, and “The Aesthetics of Tea” by Romita Ray, Syracuse University. Held in the Hogan Campus Center, room 519 at 4 p.m., the lectures will be followed by a reception at Cantor Art Gallery from 5:15 – 6:15 p.m. These events are free and open to the public.
Friday sessions at the American Antiquarian Society, 185 Salisbury Street, Worcester will begin at 1 p.m. and conclude with a reception. Saturday sessions will be held at the Hogan Center Suites A & B and Cantor Art Gallery, College of the Holy Cross from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. To register for the Friday and Saturday sessions, please visit the Gallery website.
Speakers at the symposium include Jennifer Anderson, Stony Brook University; Judy Bullington, Belmont University; Dennis Carr, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Kee Il Choi; Jeffrey Cohen, Bryn Mawr College; Caroline Frank, Brown University; Kirsten Hammerstrom, Rhode Island Historical Society; Holly Izard, Worcester Historical Museum; Yinghe Jiang, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China; Min Kyung Lee, College of the Holy Cross; Gwenn Miller, College of the Holy Cross; Emily Murphy, Salem Maritime National Historic Site, National Park Service; Marina Moskowitz, University of Glasgow; Simon Newman, University of Glasgow; Madelyn Shaw; Karen Turner, College of the Holy Cross; Alan Wallach, College of William and Mary; and James Welu, Worcester Art Museum, director emeritus.
The Cantor Art Gallery exhibit with the same title examines the global visual culture of early America before 1840. It seeks to understand America’s perspective and understanding with connecting to the rest of the world. The main focus of “Global Encounters in Early America” is the emergence of direct trade with China and the rest of Asia after the American Revolution, which is explored through maps, atlases, engravings, and book illustration drawn from the AAS. The exhibition was curated by Patricia Johnston, the Rev. J. Gerard Mears, S.J., Chair in Fine Arts, with Holy Cross curatorial seminar students Brigit Baines ‘16, Katherine Benjamin ‘15, Caroline Fador ‘14, Abigail Hynes-Houston ‘14, Gregory Joyce ‘14, Maddie Klett ‘14 and Lily Meehan ‘14.
The Terra Foundation for American Art awarded the “Global Encounters in Early America” symposium with its Academic Program Grant, which provides funding for scholarly art symposia or colloquia with an international context. The foundation is devoted to supporting American art with a global perspective.
To register for the event, visit the Gallery website or email artsRSVP@holycross.edu.
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