The Seattle Art Museum will be the only American venue exhibiting Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise from February 9 to April 29. This exhibit examines the complex and dynamic relationship between the artworks of Paul Gauguin and the Polynesian art he encountered after his arrival in Tahiti in 1891 with an emphasis on the exchanges between these two cultures.

The Graduate Students of Art History at the University of Washington would like to invite graduate submissions for their 2012 Symposium in honor of this exhibition. Topics should explore themes of the “Other” as expressed through visual and material culture. Suggested themes can range from, but are not limited to, the following:

• Exploration of cultural beliefs through visual representation
• Visual expressions of cultural crossroads
• Methods of appropriation ranging from appreciation to theft
• Cross-pollination between cultures or cross-cultural perspectives
• The role of the exotic and elusive; investigations into the unknown
• Escapism
• The construction of another cultural identity or alter ego
• Conceptual constructions of the idealized “Other”
• Re-evaluations of previous conceptions of cross cultural artistic exchange
• The fantasy or romanticism of the “Other”
• The role of museums in perpetuating or dismantling the “Other”
Papers may discuss exchange within a culture as well as between cultures. We encourage creative, even unorthodox, thinking in response to this theme. Papers should be 20 minutes in length. Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words, along with a curriculum vitae or résumé to henneman@uw.edu by January 1, 2012.

The Symposium will commence on the evening of Wednesday, April 11th with a panel at the Seattle Art Museum by Dr. Carol Ivory, whose scholarship focuses on Marquesan art in the post-contact period (1774 to the present), and Dr. Caroline Vercoe, a specialist in contemporary Pacific art practice. This will be followed by a full day of graduate presentations on Thursday April 12th culminating with a jazz reception at the Seattle Art Museum and a guided tour of the exhibition.

The Symposium registration fee will be $30 to cover museum and exhibition admission and two meals provided on Thursday April 12th. Limited housing will be provided by UW graduate students for symposium presenters who do not reside in the immediate vicinity.