Children’s Art from the Past and Present: An Interdisciplinary Symposium
image © Molo Songololo, Issue No. 40, August 1985, Cape Town.
Children’s Art from the Past and Present: An Interdisciplinary Symposium
April 11, 2014
9:45 AM – 6:00 PM
CEREV Exhibition Lab
Room LB-671.00
J.W. McConnell Library Building, Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd W.
Montreal, QC, Canada H3G 1M8
Click here for symposium schedule and presenter biographies
This symposium is open to the public, but seating is limited. RSVP to cerev@concordia.ca (Mandatory for admittance).
Across time and cultural context, the most common tangible form of children’s self-expression may be found in their artwork. Children’s art has the potential to provide important visual testimony of children’s life experiences, as well as how “childhood” itself has been understood in various times and places.
“Children’s Art from the Past and Present” is a one-day, interdisciplinary symposium spread across three panels and a closing roundtable discussion that will explore the challenges and possibilities of interpreting children’s art as an important source of cultural knowledge and historical evidence.
The day will bring together both scholars and practitioners inside and outside the Concordia community. In addition to examining a range of contextualized studies of children’s art, participants will be asked to identify and develop a set of interdisciplinary methods and resources for interpreting and contextualizing children’s art.
General themes:
- – What can we learn from children’s art?
- – What models, methods, and sources are available for analyzing children’s art as historical and cultural texts?
- – How can/should children’s art be best contextualized?
- – Are there universal qualities to children’s art?
- – How can cultural and historical specificity be recognized?
- – What are the limits of interpretation?
This symposium would not be possible without the generous support of the the Réseau d’études sur Amérique latine (RÉAL), Université de Montréal and the Government of Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
The CEREV Exhibition Lab is located on the 6th floor of the Library (LB) Building in Concordia’s downtown (SGW) campus. Once inside the Library Building, take the escalators next to the Bookstore up to the 6th floor and follow the signs to room 671.00. You can find more information here.
