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Georgia O`Keeffe Museum Online Symposium The 1980s: An Internet Conference

This month, through November 13th, 2005, The Georgia O?Keeffe Museum Research Center will hold `The 1980s: An Internet Conference` online symposium at okeeffemuseum. The real Georgia O?Keeffe Museumm, a 12,000-square-foot Museum, is dedicated to furthering the artistic legacy of Georgia O?Keeffe and to the study and interpretation of the artistic era of American Modernism (1890?present). The original museum is home to a permanent collection of over 130 works by O?Keeffe.

During its two-week run, the dialogue will be online 24 hours a day and will explore an extraordinary period in American art and life?a time when American politics and culture underwent dramatic shifts. The Conference will address a range of questions central to this important moment in American art, politics, and ideas: Why and how did the `multiculturalism` of the 1980s emerge? To what extent did the modern-day `culture wars` begin in the 1980s, and what are their continuing effects today? Did painting die as a relevant artistic medium in the 1980s, as some critics argued at the time? To what extent did photography and other means of mechanical reproduction supplant it? How did new methodologies in criticism, art history, and cultural writing change the nature and style of cultural writing in the United States? To what extent did the center of the American art world shift from SoHo to the East Village and to other cities, such as Los Angeles, Boston, and Philadelphia? What was the impact of AIDS on the art and culture of the United States? To what extent is it problematic or inaccurate to `periodize` the 1980s?to divide history into neat historical periods and sensibilities?

The Conference will be moderated by Maurice Berger, Senior Fellow at The Vera List Center for Art and Politics, New School University, New York, and Curator, The Center for Art and Visual Culture, University of Maryland Baltimore County. More than 30 well-known individuals in the art community will participate in the two-week-long discussion, which the public can access, ask questions, and offer comments via a special e-mail address.