On Friday, March 13 and Saturday, March 14 2015, the Society for Art History and Archaeology (SAHA) hosted New Terrains: The Landscape Reviewed, an IPRH-funded interdisciplinary symposium and exhibition aimed at re-considering the landscape in visual practice, co-sponsored by the Krannert Art Museum, the departments of Art History and Art Education, and the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies. On Friday, a number of presentations explored different considerations of land use throughout history. These talks centered on both physical and imagined landscapes. Throughout the panels, notions of land were grounded in terms of de-colonization, the depiction of land in the 19th century, and the relation between media and space. The first day of the symposium was closed with keynote speaker Deke Weaver’s stunning performance of “Choose Your Grizzly.”
Over the weekend, symposium attendees also had a chance to see visual representations of the landscape in the New Terrains art exhibition, which ran concurrent to the symposium. This exhibition featured artwork which interrogates landscape and interactions with space, natural resources, and memory. Saturday’s events featured a round-table talk with the participating artists, as well as a panel with professional artists, Benjamin Luzzatto, Ryan Griffis, and Kevin Hamilton, discussing their practice as it intersects with lands. Attendees of the New Terrains: The Landscape Reviewed symposium and exhibition worked together to challenge the notion of the landscape as a passive setting, considering it instead as an active force.
