Convening of Scholars: El Dorado

Convening Program

MEETING 1: Dreams
November 19, 2021

This meeting will set the tone for the rest of the meetings and discussions. It will be organized around the idea of “dreams” and aspirations in connection to gold. 

Welcome and Introductory Remarks 

“Gold: That Obscure Object of Desire”   
Edward Sullivan, Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University 

Keynote Lecture — “Artifacts that Speak: The “Hearst Chalice’s” Symbolic Universe”    
Ilona Katzew, Curator and Department Head, Latin American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art 

“Sacred Egesta: Gold in the Ancient Americas”    
Joanne Pillsbury, Andrall E. Pearson Curator, Arts of the Ancient Americas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 

“Dreams of Gold: Mesoamerican Metalwork and the Question of Form”  
Andrew Finegold, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Illinois at Chicago 

Conversation between speakers 

Audience Q&A 

MEETING 2: Trade
January 28, 2022

This meeting will deal with ancient indigeneity throughout the Americas. Topics may include trade and exchange of luxury commodities; the ultimate encounter with Europeans principally in search of gold and the consequences of this coming together of vastly different cultures; religious conversion; the creation of legal and social institutions around gold and the emergence of urban settlements around gold economy, such as Ouro Preto in Brazil.

Welcome and Introductory Remarks   
Edward Sullivan, Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University 

Keynote Lecture — “Trade in New Spain: Verb and Noun”   
Clara Bargellini, Research Professor (Investigadora), Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City 

“The Cacique Monopoly: Gold, Trade, and the Taíno Legacy”  
James Doyle, Director, Matson Museum of Anthropology; Associate Research Professor, Penn State University 

“Mexican Jewels on Display: From Monte Albán to Manhattan”   
Cristóbal Jácome-Moreno, Research fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Nantes, France 

"Es el oro, no el Dorado!: Adam Smith's moral sentiments in retrospect"  
Walter Mignolo, William Hane Wannamaker Distinguished Professor of Romance Studies, Duke University 

Conversation between speakers  
Moderator: Edward Sullivan

Audience Q&A 

MEETING 3: Greed
February 25, 2022

This meeting will deal with the theme of gold as catalyst for imperial interventions, enslavement and extraction and destruction of nature; the collecting of gold objects from the European Renaissance onward; European Industrial Revolution enabled surplus created by colonial exploitation; intersections of Asia and Africa, the California Gold Rush, American expansionism and American exceptionalism. 

Welcome and Introductory Remarks   
Edward Sullivan, Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University 

Keynote Lecture—“The Art of Alchemy: Golden Pictures, Or, Turning Extractive Capitalism into American Individualism”   
Jennifer Raab, Associate Professor, Department of the History of Art, Yale University 

“California Gold and American History”   
H. W. Brands, Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History, University of Texas at Austin 

“Gold Fever:" Accumulation on the Cerro El Burro, Marmato, Colombia”   
Elizabeth Ferry, Professor of Anthropology, Brandeis University 

“Weapons of the Argonauts: Carleton Watkins’s Gold Rush Still Life and Portrait”   
Monica Bravo, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Southern California 

Conversation between speakers   
Moderator: Edward Sullivan 

Audience Q&A 

MEETING 4: Travel
March 18, 2022

This meeting deals with the concept of the “New Golden Lands” of the Americas; gold as metaphor of Utopia, the Americas as seen from abroad; the gold rush spurring immigration to the Americas and migration within the Americas; travel and exchanges of information and value system; systematization and control of products and peoples from the Americas. 

Welcome and Introductory Remarks   
Edward Sullivan, Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University 

Keynote Lecture — “Slavery, Unsettlement and the search for Rivers of Gold in Colombia’s Southwest Pacific littoral”   
Sherwin K. Bryant, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History; Co-Director, Andean Cultures and History Working Group, Northwestern University 

“Notes on Circulation”   
Siobhan Angus, Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art at Yale and incoming Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Carleton University 

“Golden carvings, soiled hands: remarks on the gold mining activity in Brazil”   
Valéria Piccoli, Chief Curator, Pinacoteca de São Paulo 

Conversation between speakers and Audience Q&A   
Moderator: Edward Sullivan 

MEETING 5: Heaven
April 22, 2022 

This meeting deals with gold as a metaphor in the Americas in all possible dimensions. Here we will consider the notion of “gold” as a metaphorical concept to include a wide variety of natural elements and/or commodities that have been coveted, fought for or hoarded over time, including oil and water 

Welcome and Introductory Remarks   
Edward Sullivan, Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University 

Keynote Lecture — “Contending with Religion and Spirituality in the Works of Mathias Goeritz and Luis Barragán”   
Jennifer Josten, Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh 

“Gold Amongst the Ruins: Archaeology and Treasure Tales in Contemporary Mexico”   
Sandra Rozental, Associate Professor, Humanities Department, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa 

“A Modern Take on El Dorado: Reflecting on Gold in Colombian Abstract Art”   
Ana Franco, Associate Professor in Art History, Universidad de los Andes 

“Ambiguous Glints. The Metaphors of Gold in South American Colonial Art”   
Gabriela Siracusano, Ph.D. in Art History, CONICET-UNTREF-UBA 

Conversation between speakers   
Moderator: Edward Sullivan 

Audience Q&A 

MEETING 6: Hell
June 10, 2022 

This session deals with gold in contemporary times and how it can also connote debasement, chaos, violence, and social discord. Commodity culture and aesthetics, camp, artifice, grotesque, excess, materialism. Globalization and the mobility of international capital flocking to and from developing countries, following neoliberal agendas; the International Monetary Fund acting as de facto sovereign power. 

Welcome and Introductory Remarks   
Edward Sullivan, Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University 

Keynote Lecture — “All That Glitters: Rolando Peña Gilds the Barrel”   
Sean Nesselrode-Moncada, Assistant Professor, Theory and History of Art and Design, Rhode Island School of Design 

“Black, Green, Yellow: The Colors of Gold in Contemporary Art of the Orinoco Basin”   
Tatiana Flores, Professor of Art History and Latino & Caribbean Studies; Director, Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey 

“‘An Unfinished Country:’ Incidents of Travel and Failure in the Old New World”  
Julia Bozer, PhD in Art History, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University 

Conversation between speakers   
Moderator: Edward Sullivan 

Audience Q&A