The Bard Graduate Center invites proposals by graduate students for its fourth annual Graduate Student Symposium. This symposium seeks to explore the interpretation of surfaces of objects, structures, and settings within larger art historical, cultural, and social contexts. Surfaces are often interpreted as representative of the whole. Is this approach valid or is the surface merely one of many layers of form, substance, space, and meaning? We hope to address how surfaces are defined and how they function in decorative arts, design, painting, sculpture, architecture, and landscape.

Papers could address the following inquiries:

What is the significance of surface as texture, veneer, ornamentation, embellishment, trompe l'oeil, et cetera?

How does the definition of a surface as a starting point or tabula rasa influence the process of design and creation?

How do surfaces redefine or replace other strata – and vice versa? What is the relationship between surface and what lies beneath, behind, or on top?

How does a surface function as a membrane between interior and exterior? How are surfaces ruptured or made impermeable?

How do surfaces mediate social forces or impact national or cultural identity?

As surfaces change over time, what is the effect of their degradation, reconstruction, and/or historic preservation? Please send a one- to two-page abstract for a 20-minute presentation together with a CV to: