Bringing it Back is a symposium that looks at revivalist movements in the history of the decorative arts and design. The symposium examines design’s role as a cultural metaphor and as a mediator of sociopolitical perspectives. This event considers how design engages with the past and considers revivals from a variety of perspectives. Whether Egyptian, Greek, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Colonial, or Modernist, revivals can look back just a few decades or millennia. Revivals can be soberly archaeological or promote a historical fantasy. Some revivalist movements are primarily stylistic, while, for others, idealized notions of history are invested with social, political or moral meaning in the present.

The Twenty-First Annual Parsons/Cooper-Hewitt Graduate Student Symposium on the Decorative Arts and Design, Parsons The New School for Design will be held in New York, April 13-14, 2012.

The symposium’s Catherine Hoover Voorsanger Keynote address will be delivered by Thomas Denenberg, Director of Shelburne Museum, and a scholar of the retrospective culture of New England.

For more details, contact Dr. Ethan Robey Associate Director, MA Program in the History of Decorative Arts & Design at: robeye@si.edu.