The possibilities of presenting contemporary art through digital technologies have multiplied in recent years. Particularly through the pandemic, programming and exhibitions have migrated online, breaking down barriers for public appreciation. Out of necessity, putting arts engagement at the core of all programming will effect long term transformations in discourse and knowledge building.

Within this broader shift, the specific technology of blockchain offers the extraordinary opportunity of simultaneously elevating and democratizing art’s reception and public engagement by dismantling hierarchies and decentralizing the art world.

Beth Citron, Curator, Art Historian and Artistic Director, Education and Provenance, of Terrain.art

Deeksha Nath, Curator and Artistic Director, Exhibitions and Provenance of Terrain.art

Rizio Yohannan, Writer, and Publisher at The Marg Foundation

SAP is co-sponsoring this event hosted by the Marg Foundation, Mumbai, India.

This presentation reflects on the Connecting Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia (MAHASSA) project, which brought together a team of international faculty and emerging scholars to investigate the cultural histories of these regions. Shaped by shared developments, these regions are marked by similar experiences that include the rise of modern art practices associated with the withdrawal of colonialism and the consolidation of nationalism, the founding of institutions such as the art school and the museum, and increasing exchange with international metropolitan centers via travel and the movement of ideas through publications and exhibitions. MAHASSA emphasized a connected and contextualized approach to better understand both common developments as well as divergent trajectories, and included two intensive 10-day workshops, Hong Kong (Aug 2019), and Dhaka (Feb 2020).

MAHASSA is a partnership between Asia Art Archive, Dhaka Art Summit, and Cornell University’s Institute for Comparative Modernities, and has been generously supported by the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative.

For more details on MAHASSA, see https://www.past.dhakaartsummit.org/connectingarthistories

This event is co-organized by the Institute for Comparative Modernities (ICM) and the South Asia Program (SAP).

Advanced Registration is Required.

Presenters include:

Diana Campbell Betancourt is a Princeton educated American curator working in South and Southeast Asia. Since 2013 she has served as the Founding Artistic Director of Dhaka-based Samdani Art Foundation and is Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit, leading the 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 editions.

Iftikhar Dadi is Associate Professor and Chair of Cornell University’s Department of History of Art, Director of the South Asia Program, and Board Member of the Institute for Comparative Modernities. He researches art from a global and transnational perspective, with emphasis on questions of methodology and intellectual history.

Anissa Rahadiningtyas is a PhD candidate in the Department of History of Art at Cornell University. She received an MA from the Faculty of Art and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia. Her primary research area is the history of modern and contemporary art in Indonesia.

Muhammad Nafisur Rahman is a PhD student in Architecture at the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, University of Cincinnati, and Assistant Professor in the School of Design. His research focuses on Dhaka’s urban fabric and its complex visual amalgamation of building facades, images, symbols, and letterforms.

Amie Soudien is a curator, researcher and art writer from Cape Town, South Africa. Her interests include histories of slavery in Cape Town, archival studies, gender, sexuality, and emerging artists from Africa and the diaspora. Soudien is currently a PhD student at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Akshaya Tankha is an art historian working on modern and contemporary South Asian art and visual culture, with a focus on aesthetics and politics, postcolonialism, and Indigeneity in India. Tankha completed his PhD from the University of Toronto and will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University in November 2020.

John Tain is Head of Research at Asia Art Archive, where he leads a team in Hong Kong, New Delhi, and Shanghai. In addition to MAHASSA, he has organized several exhibitions, and is a series editor for Afterall Exhibition Histories. He was previously a curator at the Getty Research Institute.

Ming Tiampo is Professor of Art History, and co-director of the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis at Carleton University. She is interested in transcultural models and histories that provide new structures for understanding and reconfiguring the global. She has published on Japanese modernism, global modernisms, and diaspora.

Over the past decade, democracy has been in retreat in a large number of countries in different regions, at least partially reversing the wave of democratization that swept across much of the world in the late 20th century. This webinar explores patterns of "democratic backsliding" in different world regions and their implications for democratic rule and its political resiliency in the face of autocratic challenges.

Panel: Valerie Bunce, Tom Pepinsky, Rachel Riedl, and Kenneth Roberts

Co-sponsored by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Latin American Studies Program, Institute for African Development, Institute for European Studies, and Southeast Asia Program.

Please register through the following link:
https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_PWKFidVjSgy3Pwxf7xmmXg

Join author Adom Getachew for a discussion on her new book, Worldbuilding After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination. This event is sponsored by Buffalo Street Books in downtown Ithaca.

The event also serves as the Peace and Conflict Studies Institute Reading Group for October 1.

Register at https://www.buffalostreetbooks.com/event/adom-getachew.

Please join us for a virtual talk by Charles Hallisey, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures at Harvard Divinity School. Professor Hallisey's research centers on Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, Pali language and literature, Buddhist ethics, and literature in Buddhist culture. His most recent book is Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women (Harvard University Press, 2015). He is currently working on a book project entitled "Flowers on the Tree of Poetry: The Moral Economy of Literature in Buddhist Sri Lanka." This event is funded by the GPSA and generously co-sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies, the Department of Religious Studies and the South Asia Program. All are welcome to attend. Please contact Bruno at bms297@cornell.edu for any special arrangements you may require in order to attend this event.