The Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion at Yale University (MAVCOR) is delighted to announce the public launch of our redesigned website (mavcor.yale.edu). MAVCOR is characterized by its subjects of inquiry and by the forms of scholarly, interdisciplinary activity it promotes. The Center is equally about the study of the material, visual, sensory, and spatial “stuff” of religious practice and about multiplying ways of being in conversation, of sharing information and producing knowledge, about this set of subjects.

This collaboration shapes a multidisciplinary scholarly Center for religion and visual/material culture studies at Yale University. From this local base, the Center aims to facilitate a network of institutional and individual partners in varied settings, including higher education, religious communities, arts and architectural professions, museums, and civic life.

As part of the Center's promotion of conversation around its subjects of inquiry, the Center publishes the Material Objects Archive, a growing database of material and visual objects activated in religious practices broadly conceived, and Conversations, a born-digital, peer-reviewed journal. Conversations includes a variety of contribution types, including Object Narratives, Essays, Material Mediations, Constellations, Interviews, and Medium Studies. Scholars at all ranks of training and profession in related fields are encouraged to contribute to Conversations and the Material Objects Archive. Both text and image contributions may be submitted to the Center's peer review process by emailing mavcor@yale.edu

Over the past year, a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, along with additional support from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, has allowed MAVCOR to complete this work of revision and enhanced functionality. In addition to a more attractive and streamlined interface, the redesign incorporates a number of changes to expand visitor experience of the site. These include a sophisticated search engine specific to MAVCOR’s Material Objects Archive and a global site search engine that allows visitors to search all site content, or to limit searches to our blind-peer-reviewed born-digital journal Conversations. A new Fellows Portal supports MAVCOR’s multi-year project cycles; these center around a specific theme related to MAVCOR’s interests and bring together groups of interdisciplinary scholar/fellows from a range of institutions, national and international.

Two new content types contribute to MAVCOR’s investment in innovative ways of engaging its publics and doing digital scholarship. One of these, Mediations, joins the other content types offered within Conversations. Mediations provides space for theoretical and experimental reflection within the journal.

The second new category, Collections, expands the possibilities of MAVCOR’s Material Objects Archive, allowing individual scholars to curate large, multi-object contributions to the archive. Collections exist both within the Archive and as separate entities, associated with the name of their contributor/author, and accompanied by optional discursive text. Contributors may also divide each Collection into subfields accompanied by further written introductory content. One anticipated use of Collections is to display color images related to print publications, and to do so in numbers that exceed the possibilities of the print format. Such Collections would complement the print publication and include links to the publisher’s page for the volume in question.

MAVCOR welcomes contributions that combine substantial and original scholarship with accessibility to a generally educated public. We look forward to future collaborations and invite you to explore the new site.

Offered in conjunction with the exhibition “Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and the Portrait Print” (5 March – 7 August 2016), the colloquium will include a private viewing of the exhibition, short presentations by Stephanie Dickey (Queen’s University), Jesus Escobar (Northwestern University), Jessica Keating (Carleton College), Claudia Swan (Northwestern University), and Maureen Warren (Krannert Art Museum), as well as a keynote lecture by Antony Griffiths, former Keeper of Prints at the British Museum and the 2014-2015 Slade Professor at the University of Oxford. The program will take place from 9:00 am to 2:30 pm.

RSVP to Judith Broggi at 312-443-3756 or jbroggi@artic.edu.

Free Radicals: Remixing History Through the Power of Print, considers the power of associative thinking and historical mash-ups in the print medium. Graphic media inherently offers artists the potential to remix or reference history. The artists in this exhibition discuss revolution and employ metaphor in sampling and in the free combination of history and politics that might be more limiting in other disciplines. The pursuit of free association may not appear to be directly activist, but the use of artistic license to draw on the subconscious may be a tool for the deconstruction of assumed paradigms.

Thursday, February 25, 2016
Program | 7:00 pm with Jenny Schmid & Tonja Torgerson
Reception | 8:00 - 10:00pm

'Beneath the Covers: The Art of the Imperial Russian Book' presents a visual survey of publications that received official and elite sponsorship during the reigns of Peter the Great (r. 1696–1725) to Nicholas II (r. 1894-1917). Often printed for special occasions, these titles mirror the major cultural events and movements in tsarist Russia.

The majority of the books presented here date to the middle of the nineteenth century when the development of printing and illustration technologies — primarily chromolithography — allowed for oversized, illustrated volumes and large print runs. They were commissioned by the upper echelons of Russian society and lay the foundation for the Silver Age of Russian book arts (1890–1917). The exhibition continues through the transition to the artistic styles of the Mir Iskusstva, or World of Art, movement in the late 1890s and concludes with the development of the avant-garde, futurism, and constructivism movements in the early-twentieth century.

The categories for this exhibition emerge from the common themes featured in the selections, which are drawn mainly from art libraries in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding region. Subjects covered include the secularization of Russian society, travel and exploration of Russia and its empire, architecture, antiquities, royalty, and the military. They are not intended to be comprehensive, but to serve as jumping-off points for inspiration, research, and collaboration.

In the mid 19th century, French artists began depicting shadowy, often nocturnal or twilight scenes in which forms appear to emerge out of darkness. This quest for darkened realms led them to explore new subject matter, such as dream states and non-idealized representations of contemporary life.

The range and availability of black drawing materials exploded with the Industrial Revolution, along with improvements in working methods. This coincided with an interest in painterly techniques, not only in drawing but also in printmaking. It is impossible to say what influences came first, but what followed was a graphic exploration of darkness that constitutes an important moment in the history of Modernism.

This exhibition examines the inspiration that artists drew from their materials, and their expression of darkness in all its imaginative and narrative associations. Works are drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection and loans from private and public Los Angeles collections.

A look across Europe at three series of prints by major artists published in 1816, the year of the founding of the Fitzwilliam.

The period was known as ‘The year without a summer’ due to the after-effects of the 1815 volcano eruption in Indonesia. Global cooling, volcanic ash, darkness, crop failures, food riots and spectacular sunsets influenced artists and writers of the time. A variety of responses can be seen here with Goya’s Tauromaquia, books eleven and twelve of Turner’s Liber Studiorum, and Peter Cornelius’s large-scale Illustrations to Goethe’s Faust.

This annual event features vendors, publishers and artists from around Texas and offers workshops and demonstrations at Flatbed Press Gallery headquarters.

Presented in conjunction with PrintAustin, the third annual Flatbed Contemporary Print Fair showcases nine highly esteemed print publishers and artist self-publishers from across the United States.

New and established collectors are invited to peruse and purchase limited editions. Take advantage of Flatbed's intimate and relaxed setting to meet and talk with fine art print artists, printers, and publishers. Learn more about printmaking techniques during Saturday's on-going printmaking demos in Flatbed's printshop, and about contemporary art and publishing during Sunday's artist and publisher talks.

Cade Tompkins Projects is pleased to announce a printmaking exhibition by a group of artists whose work expands the boundaries of mokuhanga, the traditional Japanese woodcut process. Mokuhanga is achieved with use of water-based inks, hand-printing techniques and Japanese-style printing papers. The prints selected for this show present contemporary imagery and vernacular. Some works adhere strictly to the traditional process and others combine techniques such as etching and hand-stitching.

Highlights include Yoonmi Nam’s Oishii, a masterfully minimal image of cut flowers arranged in an everyday drink carton; Daniel Heyman’s hand-printed book, Sing with a Lovely Voice, which presents testimonies of former inmates at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq; David Curcio’s MS.45, a nun with a gun, red lips and red nails; Stella Ebner’s silhouetted The Hunters which achieves a deep space with expert layering; Allison Bianco’s The Old Jamestown Bridge picturing the 90s dynamite explosion of the rickety Rhode Island landmark; and Hiroki Morinoue’s Dragonfly Pond, a vibrant pseudo-landscape that exploits the grain of the woodblock to stunning success.

Reception
Saturday, February 13
6-8 pm

Cade Tompkins Projects
198 Hope Street
Providence, Rhode Island 02906
(Entrance on Fones Alley between Angell and Waterman)

Free and open to the public, the LA Art Book Fair is a unique event featuring artists’ books, art catalogs, monographs, periodicals and zines presented by over 250 international presses, booksellers, antiquarians, artists and independent publishers.