Exhibitions and Lectures

Saintly: Christian Women in Early Modern Europe

Thursday, April 11 2024 - Thursday, May 9 2024

Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery

Saintly: Christian Women in Early Modern Europe, showcases our unique opportunity for students to complete a Master’s Thesis in the form of an exhibition. Saintly explores the relationship between laywomen and holy women from the Christian canon by examining depictions of the Virgin Mary and Women Saints in works from the 16th through 18th centuries. Curated by graduate student Nikki Ranney, this thesis exhibition brings perspective to the religious lives of women during this period and the expectations to which they were subjected.

April 11 through May 9, 2024

Opening Reception: April 11th from 5 to 7pm with curator remarks at 5:30pm

UWM Emile H. Mathis Gallery
Mitchell Hall 170
3203 N. Downer Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53211

What the Folk? American Objects from the UWM Art Collection

Thursday, April 11 2024 - Thursday, May 9 2024

Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery

Accompanying a course on American Folk Art taught by the UWM Art History Department, What the Folk? explores the terminology and history that have shaped understandings of folk art, self-taught art, Americana, outsider art, and visionary art. It asks which artists and objects are included in such categories, why people have invested in the concept of folk art, and how we can uncover the stories of American artists whose work deserves greater attention, no matter what it is called.

Co-curated by Dr. Kay Wells and Leigh Mahlik

April 11 through May 9, 2024

Opening Reception: April 11th from 5 to 7pm with curator remarks at 5:30pm

UWM Emile H. Mathis Gallery
Mitchell Hall 170
3203 N. Downer Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53211

Insignificant Things in the Archives of Atlantic Slavery

Thursday, March 28 2024 4:30pm - 6pm

Mitchell 195

Barra Boat

Friends of Art History Lecture

What forms of visual evidence can, and should, one use to materialize and memorialize the history of Atlantic slavery? In this talk, Matthew Rarey argues that this question, far from being a contemporary ethical challenge, was of critical importance to Africans and Indigenous people swept up in the Atlantic traffic of ideas and lives in the early eighteenth century. Critically analyzing a series of surreptitious and visually benign objects contained or referenced in colonial archives in Brazil and Portugal, Rarey suggests that mapping the visual culture of Atlantic slavery ethically requires engaging objects produced as challenges to, and archives of, their makers’ experiences of displacement and diaspora.

Matthew Rarey
Matthew Rarey

Associate Professor of African and Black Atlantic Art History
Chair of Art History
Oberlin College and Conservatory

Matthew Rarey researches and teaches the art history of the Black Atlantic, with a focus on connections between West Africa, Brazil, and Portugal from the seventeenth through twenty-first centuries. His research looks to visual and material culture to centralize Africans’ contributions to histories of slavery, racial formation, religion, and commodity exchange.

Thursday, March 28, 2024
Mitchell Hall 195
4:30-6pm

Co-sponsors:

African and African Diaspora Studies, Anthropology, C21 and History

Event Flyer

Juliao Street Vendor

Robo-Buddhism: Kokoro, Technology, and Spirituality in Japan Today

Wednesday, April 10 2024 4pm

Lubar S151

Public lecture by Dr. Jennifer Robertston, Professor emerita, Departments of Anthropology and Art History, Michigan State University

Kokoro (心) is widely and innovatively used in everyday parlance and figures in many Japanese idioms. Kokoro connotes intellectual, emotional, and spiritual states and attributes. Kokoro is also a key lexeme in Japan’s two main religions: the animistic native Shintō and Buddhism. In August 2017, SoftBank’s humanoid robot Pepper role-played as a Buddhist priest at a funeral services expo under the supervision of a human priest who assessed whether the robot was able perform “with kokoro.” When theorizing human-robot interactions, roboticists also include kokoro as a crucial quality and effect of social engagement. Kokoro figures centrally in the titles of several Japanese books on robots and AI. Several cognitive roboticists are working to “imagineer” (imagine + engineer) robot kokoro through innovative software algorithms and creative interpretations of AI. Pepper was conceived as a humanoid robot “with kokoro.” Technology and robots have been developed and applied for both secular and religious purposes, although the appropriation of robotic technologies and AI for religious purposes is perhaps less recognized than their secular applications. This presentation explores how religious technologies and affective human-robot relations are conjointly imagineered theoretically and in practice.