COLOR/FORMS, the twenty-forth annual Parsons/Cooper Hewitt Graduate Student Symposium, will take place at the Cooper–Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum on April 23 and 24. The event is sponsored by MA Program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies, jointly offered by Parsons ADHT and Cooper-Hewitt. The symposium will explore how color and form create meaning in art and design, looking specifically at major historical shifts in the use of color.
On the first day of the symposium, Jeffrey L. Meikle, professor of American Studies and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin will deliver the Catherine Hoover Voorsanger Keynote Address. Professor Meikle, whose work addresses technology, design and cultural history, will speak on “Postcard Modernism: Landscapes, Cityscapes, and American Visual Culture, 1931-1950.” The second day will feature graduate paper presentations on topics ranging from color in Greek sculpture by Phoebus Ilias Panigyrakis from the Polytechnic School at the University of Patras to the use of synthetic dyes on kimonos during Japan’s Meiji period by Bard Graduate Center’s Claire McRee.
The full list of presentations is reproduced below:
Abeer Alsobahi, Politecnico di Milano, Architecture, Urban and Interior Design, The Influence of Color in Museum Design
Claire McRee, Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, The Meiji Kimono: Historical Context for the Adoption of Synthetic Dyes in Japan
Phoebus Ilias Panigyrakis, Polytechnic School, University of Patras, Architecture, Greek Polychromy and the Total Work of Art
Maleyne M. Syracuse, Parsons The New School for Design, History of Design and Curatorial Studies, Color as Form in Grethe Sørensen’s Digitally Woven Art
Grace Converse, State University of New York, Purchase, Art History, Beyond Material Mimicry: Art and the Public Image of Plastic
Molly Butcher, School of Visual Arts, Design Research, Writing and Criticism, Red, Green, and Blue: Designing Mars for the Public Imagination
The symposium is free and open to the public, but RSVP is required by April 17 to kustras@newschool.edu.
