In the Foreground: Conversations on Art & Writing
What does it mean to make art history? In the Foreground: Conversations on Art & Writing considers the role of art in society, how knowledge is shared (or obscured), and the way histories are made and unmade—while also considering the personal stakes of scholarship. Each episode offers a lively, in-depth look into the life and mind of a scholar or artist working with art historical or visual material. Discussions touch on guests’ current research projects, career paths, and significant texts, mentors, and experiences that have shaped their thinking. We invite you to join us and listen in on these conversations about the stakes of doing art history today.
Episodes
58 episodes
“Fragmentary Ruins and the Enduring Image”: Cammy Brothers on Drawing as a Way of Thinking
In this final episode of the season focused on the craft of writing, Sara Houghteling (special projects coordinator in the Research and Academic Program) speaks with Cammy Brothers, a scholar of art and architecture at Northeastern University. ...
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Season 8
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Episode 4
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43:20
"A Critique of What Art Can Do”: Jennifer Nelson on Undoing Mastery
In this episode, Sara Houghteling (special projects coordinator in the Research and Academic Program) speaks with Jennifer Nelson, a poet and scholar of early modern art at the University of Delaware. Through the lens of their first book on Hol...
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Season 8
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Episode 3
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40:15
“To Give Shape to a Way of Seeing the Past”: Shira Brisman on the Intimacy of Writing the History of Social Art
In this continuation of a season focused on the craft of writing in art history, Sara Houghteling (special projects coordinator in the Research and Academic Program) speaks to Shira Brisman, a historian of early modern art and assistant profess...
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Season 8
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Episode 2
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44:15
“The Magic Art of Framing”: Alexander Nemerov on Writing History and Making a World
This is the first episode of a new season focused on the craft of writing in art history. Sara Houghteling (special projects coordinator for the Research and Academic Program and a fiction writer) speaks with Alexander Nemerov, professor of art...
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Season 8
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Episode 1
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41:11
"On Living Archives": Tsedaye Makonnen on Collaboration and Black Performance Practices
In this episode, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program) speaks with artist and curator Tsedaye Makonnen about her multidisciplinary studio, curatorial, and research-based practice. They discuss how Tsedaye’s s...
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Season 7
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Episode 5
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36:54
"Attention Becomes a Kind of Politics": Sarah Hamill on Sculpture and Interpretation
In this week episode Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program) speaks with Sarah Hamill, a scholar of modern and contemporary art and professor at Sarah Lawrence College, about the role of description in art hist...
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Season 7
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Episode 4
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33:45
“Shifting Focal Points”: Sergei Tcherepnin on Sonic Attention
In this episode, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program) speaks with Sergei Tcherepnin, an artist who works in the intersections of sound, music, sculpture, theater, and photography. We discuss how his work is ...
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Season 7
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Episode 3
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42:16
“What ‘Minor' Histories Allow Us to See”: Donette Francis on Writing African Diaspora
In this episode, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program) speaks with Donette Francis, an Associate Professor of English at the University of Miami, Coral Gables. A founding member of the Hemispheric Caribbean S...
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Season 7
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Episode 2
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41:34
"I Never Start with Nothing": Mary Lum on Collage and Constructed Geographies
In this episode, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark) speaks with Mary Lum, a visual artist based in North Adams, Massachusetts, about how her intricate collages, paintings, and photographs expl...
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Season 7
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Episode 1
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41:53
“An Outward-Looking Model”: The Future(s) of the University and Higher Education in a Digital Age with Koenraad Brosens and Blake Stimson
In this episode, guest interviewer Anne Helmreich (The Getty Foundation) speaks with Koenraad Brosens, professor of art history at the University of Leuven in Belgium, and Blake Stimson, professor of art history at the Univ...
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Season 6
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Episode 5
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57:01
“What are Our Important Questions?”: Collaboration and Interdisciplinarity in a Digital Age with Jacqueline Francis and Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi
In this episode, guest interviewer Paul B. Jaskot (Duke University) speaks with Jacqueline Francis, a scholar of contemporary art and chair of the Graduate Visual and Critical Studies Program at the California College of the Arts,...
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Season 6
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Episode 4
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56:56
“To Make Visible the Structures”: Challenging the Canon, Digital and Beyond, with Niall Atkinson and Min Kyung Lee
In this episode, guest interviewer Anne Helmreich (Getty Foundation) speaks with Niall Atkinson, associate professor of art history at the University of Chicago, and Min Kyung Lee, assistant professor of Growth and Structur...
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Season 6
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Episode 3
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1:03:03
“Distance and Criticality”: The Digital Humanities and the Potential for Art History Scholarship with Hubertus Kohle and Emily Pugh
Paul B. Jaskot (Duke University) speaks with Hubertus Kohle (professor of art history at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany) and Emily Pugh (an art historian and the Digital Humanities Specialist for The Gett...
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Season 6
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Episode 2
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1:02:05
“Directed Towards How We See Ourselves”: Social Art History in a Digital World with Paul B. Jaskot and Barbara McCloskey
This fourth season of In the Foreground is a special series of five roundtable conversations dedicated to “the Grand Challenges” – a phrase frequently adopted in the sciences to refer to the great unanswered questions that repres...
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Season 6
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Episode 1
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1:06:57
“A Mechanism for Survival”: McClain Groff on nibia pastrana santiago’s NO MORE EFFORTS
Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist nibia pastrana santiago’s video NO MORE EFFORTS (2020) uses humor, dance, and site-specificity to critique contemporary labor conditions and challenge histories of colonialism, dispossession, and m...
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Season 5
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Episode 6
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9:29
“A Picture of Resilience”: Ashley Lazevnick on Charles Demuth’s "Red Poppies"
A still life, like a poem, may be charged with private meaning, and yet it is offered like a gift that the viewer may open for themselves, not unlike the delicate unfurling of a flower. Charles Demuth’s watercolor Red Poppies of 1929 e...
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Season 5
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Episode 5
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10:16
“An Expression of the Poetic Self”: Yuefeng Wu on the Stele Inscription of the Jiu-Cheng Palace
The Jiu-Cheng Palace Stele inscription, created in China in 632, during the early Tang dynasty, is an influential work of Chinese calligraphy that embodies a skillful balance between liminality and tranquil harmony.
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Season 5
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Episode 4
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11:58
“From Imitation to Evolution”: Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen on Georges Seurat’s "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte–1884"
Georges Seurat’s masterpiece A Sunday on La Grande Jatte–1884, is the kind of painting that has become so ubiquitous it almost disappears into itself, but within this busy scene of curiously automata-like human interaction lie many clu...
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Season 5
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Episode 3
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17:57
“An Allegory of Representation”: Byron Otis on Gabriel Metsu’s "View into a Hall with a Jester, a Boy, and his Dog"
Gabriel Metsu's painting View into a Hall with a Jester, a Boy, and his Dog from c. 1667 subtly upends expectations of Dutch genre painting from this period. Rather than depicting a placid scene of everyday life, Metsu reflexively call...
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Season 5
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Episode 2
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12:15
"Touching at a Distance”: Ellen Tani on Nadine Robinson’s "Coronation Theme: Organon"
Nadine Robinson’s installation Coronation Theme: Organon of 2008 uses its monumental sculptural presence and an immersive soundscape to weave complex layers referencing aspects of Black life in America over the past century, ...
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Season 5
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Episode 1
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10:41
“Between the Personal and the Historical”: Asma Naeem on Listening to Art and Visual Culture
In this episode, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with Asma Naeem, the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Asma shares her circuit...
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Season 4
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Episode 9
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41:00
“The Ethics of Seeing”: Kaira M. Cabañas on Creative Care and Art’s Histories
In this episode, which continues the miniseries focused on sound, media, and visual art, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with Kaira M. Cabañas, professor of art ...
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Season 4
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Episode 8
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54:38
“Grounded by a Set of Relations”: Nancy Um on "Horizontal" Cultures within Art History
In this episode Caro Fowler (Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with Nancy Um, professor of art history at Binghamton University in New York State, whose research explores the Islamic world fr...
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Season 4
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Episode 7
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51:57
“To Approach the Object from Outside”: Joseph Koerner on History, Trauma, and Wonder
In this episode Caro Fowler (Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with Joseph Leo Koerner, professor of art history at Harvard University, who teaches and writes about the history of art from th...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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55:23
“To See the Effects of Sound”: Niall Atkinson on Acoustic Topographies of the Early Modern
In this episode, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) continues the miniseries on sound and visual art in conversation with Niall Atkinson, an associate professor of art history at...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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45:42