This event is part of the New Work in the Arts & Humanities: Bodies of Knowledge series.

Photographic archives play a fundamental role in contemporary art. They complement an artist’s work in other media, document an artist’s creative process or personal history, offer a visual record of a museum, gallery, or publication, or inspire artists to make new work based on the archive itself. Until recently, scholars tended to view such collections as secondary material. Yet as institutional and private collections become newly available, photographic archives are sparking profound shifts in our understanding of art and its fortune in the second half of the twentieth century. This is particularly true in Italy, where during the economic boom of the 1950s, artists, critics, and curators alike took up photography to document and shape their understanding of Italy’s rapidly changing culture and art’s role in it.

Organized by the American Academy in Rome in collaboration with Dipartimento degli Studi Umanistici di Roma Tre, this one-day workshop offers scholars and artists a forum to share and discuss work-in-progress that considers how photographic archives generate new ways of thinking about contemporary art. The workshop will provide a springboard for a major public conference on photographic archives and contemporary art to be held in spring 2016.

Presentations will be in English and Italian. Participation is by invitation only.