HECAA@30

Hosted by Professor Kristel Smentek (MIT Architecture/HTC) in the Bartos Theater (E15) 

Additional sessions took place elsewhere in Boston and in Providence, RI.

The Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA) held their 30th anniversary conference at MIT on Thursday 10/12-Friday 10/13. https://sites.google.com/umb.edu/hecaa30

HECAA@30:ENVIRONMENTS, MATERIALS, AND FUTURES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

On the land of the Massachusett and neighboring Wampanoag and Nipmuc peoples, Boston developed in the eighteenth century as a major colonized and colonizing site. Its status today as a cultural and intellectual hub is shaped by that context, making it a critical location to trace the cultural legacies of racism and social injustice between the eighteenth century and today. For whom is “eighteenth-century art and architecture” a useful category? What eighteenth-century materials, spaces, and images offer tools or concepts for shaping our collective futures? 

In considering these questions, the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA) aim to be deliberate about expanding the group's traditional focus on Western European art and architecture and specifically encourage proposals from scholars working on Asia, Africa and the African diaspora, Indigenous cultures, and the Islamic world. This conference marks our 30th year as a scholarly society dedicated to facilitating communication and collaboration among scholars of eighteenth-century art to expand and promote knowledge of all aspects of the period’s visual culture. 

HECAA@30 is sponsored by the Paul H. Tucker Endowment Fund at UMass Boston; MIT's History, Theory + Criticism of Architecture and Art and Art Culture and Technology programs, the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, the Department of Architecture, the Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, Philip Khoury, Associate Provost and Ford International Professor of History, and the Arts at MIT; at Brown University, the Brown University Arts Initiative, the Dean of the Faculty, the History of Art and Architecture Department, and the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia; the Art History Department and the Leslie Center for the Humanities at Dartmouth College; the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS); and a History of Art Grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Generous in-kind support has been provided by the Boston Athenaeum, RISD Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.