All design engages with the past, even if only to deny it, but many movements in design and decorative arts history are founded on conscious revivals of the past. 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.

This symposium seeks papers, from students all fields, that look at aspects of particular revivalist movements in the history of the decorative arts and design or at revivalism in general. We are interested in proposals that discuss form and style as well as proposals that examine design’s role as a cultural metaphor and as a mediator of sociopolitical perspectives.

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

To submit a proposal, send a two-page abstract, one-page bibliography and a c.v. to:
Dr. Ethan Robey
Associate Director, MA Program in the History of Decorative Arts & Design
robeye@si.edu

Proposal Deadline: January 30, 2012

Bringing It Back: Design and Revivals is the Twenty-First Annual Parsons/Cooper-Hewitt Graduate Student Symposium on the Decorative Arts and Design

Parsons The New School for Design, New York.
April 13 and 14, 2012.

Sponsored by the MA Program in the History of Decorative Arts & Design offered jointly by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and Parsons The New School for Design