SYMPOSIUM
This interdisciplinary symposium will examine artists,
patrons, and audiences as agents who desired real, imagined,
or exotic representations of and narratives about the world
and its peoples. n an attempt to expand the monolithic
notion of the period traditionally referred to as the Middle
Ages in Europe, this symposium invites dialogue among
specialists from across the art historical spectrum of the
12th to 17th centuries to include Asia, Africa, and the
Americas. Focusing on manuscripts, this symposium aims
to encourage collaborations across traditional geographic
and disciplinary boundaries and to foster new dialogues
between museums and the academy.
Manuscripts in a Global Context will coincide with a major
exhibition at the Getty Museum, Traversing the Globe through
Illuminated Manuscripts (January 26–June 26, 2016).
6/8 point
Drawn primarily from the Getty’s collection of illuminated
manuscripts, with complementary loans from collections
across Los Angeles, the exhibition considers how portable
objects—like manuscripts, ceramics, textiles, glassworks,
gems, and sculptures—contributed to one’s outlook on the
world in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the early Americas. For
more information on the exhibition, visit www.getty.edu.
Education
The J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687
Tel 310 440 7331
Fax 310 440 7750
www.getty.edu
7/9 point
Manuscripts
— in a —
Global Context
A Symposium at the
J. Paul Getty Museum
Education
Education
The J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum
at the Getty Center
April 16–17, 2016
Education
The J. Paul Getty Museum
at the Getty Villa
Education
Education
The J. Paul Getty Museum
at the Getty Center
The J. Paul Getty Museum
at the Getty Center
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687
Tel 310 440 7322
Fax 310 440 7750
www.getty.edu
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687
Tel 310 440 7322
Fax 310 440 7750
www.getty.edu
Above: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Phil Berg Collection
(M.71.73.33), www.lacma.org. All other images: J. Paul Getty Museum.
Text and design © 2016 J. Paul Getty Trust
Saturday–Sunday, April 16–17, 2016
SPEAKER BIOGR APHIES
Getty Center, Museum Lecture Hall
Suzanne Conklin Akbari is Professor of English and
Medieval Studies and Director of the Centre for Medieval
Studies at the University of Toronto.
DAY 1
9:30–10:00
Check-in
9:30–10:00
Sussan Babaie is the Andrew W. Mellon Lecturer in the
Arts of Iran and Islam at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Check-in
10:00–10:30
Welcoming Remarks
Timothy Potts, Director, J. Paul Getty Museum
Bryan Keene, J. Paul Getty Museum
10:00–10:30
Welcoming Remarks
Session 4
CULTURES IN CONTACT
Moderated by Stephanie Schrader,
J. Paul Getty Museum
10:30–12:30
J. Sören Edgren, Princeton University
“From Buddhist Illuminated Manuscripts to Printed
Sutras in East Asia”
Roland Betancourt, University of California, Irvine
“The Exiles of Byzantium: Form and Historiography”
Suzanne Conklin Akbari, University of Toronto
“Where is Medieval Ethiopia? Mapping Ethiopic
Studies within Medieval Studies”
12:30–2:00
Lunch break and exhibition visit
Session 5
THE GLOBAL TURN:
ACADEMY AND MUSEUM
Panel discussion, moderated by Kristen Collins,
J. Paul Getty Museum
Roland Betancourt is an Assistant Professor of Art
History at the University of California, Irvine.
Suzanne Preston Blier is the Allen Whitehill Clowes
Chair of Fine Arts and of African and African-American
Studies in the Department of History of Art &
Architecture at Harvard University.
Session 1
Sussan Babaie, Courtauld Institute of Art
“Missionary Effects and Messianic Aspirations: The Picture Bible at the Court of Shah ‘Abbas in Isfahan, Iran”
Mark Cruse, Arizona State University
“Illuminating the Silk Road: The Manuscripts of
Marco Polo’s Travel Account”
12:30–2:00
Lunch break and exhibition visit (self-guided)
Session 2
TRADE AND MATERIALITY
Moderated by Christine Sciacca, J. Paul Getty Museum
2:00–3:45
Sylvie L. Merian, Morgan Library and Museum
“Reproducing the Resurrection: From European Prints
to Armenian Manuscripts”
Dagmar Riedel, Columbia University
“The Islamic Manuscript of the Mind as a
Global Commodity”
Elizabeth Boone, Tulane University
“New World Peoples within the Global, Sartorial Frame”
Jill Caskey is an Associate Professor in the Department
of Fine Art at the University of Toronto.
J. Sören Edgren is the Former Director of the Chinese
Rare Books Project at Princeton University.
Helen C. Evans is the Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator
of Byzantine Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Jessica Goldberg is an Associate Professor of History at
the University of California, Los Angeles.
Bindu Gude is Associate Curator of South and Southeast
Asian Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
GLOBAL NARRATIVES
Moderated by Elizabeth Morrison,
J. Paul Getty Museum
10:30–12:30
Elizabeth Boone is Professor and Chair, History of Art,
at Tulane University.
Mark Cruse is an Associate Professor of French at
Arizona State University.
DAY 2
3:45–4:00
Break
Sylvie L. Merian is the Reader Services Librarian at the
Morgan Library and Museum.
Session 3
A GLOBAL OUTLOOK
Moderated by Rheagan Martin, J. Paul Getty Museum
Asa Mittman is an Associate Professor of Art History at
California State University, Chico.
4:00–6:00
Alka Patel, University of California, Irvine
“Stories and Pictures from All the World: South Asian
Book Arts of the 12th–16th Centuries”
Pamela Patton, Princeton University
“Color, Culture, and the Making of Difference in the
Vidal Mayor (Getty MS Ludwig XIV 6)”
Jessica Goldberg, University of California, Los Angeles
“Illumination from the Mundane: Producing Everyday
Writing in the Medieval Islamic World”
Alka Patel is an Associate Professor of Art History at the
University of California, Irvine.
Pamela Patton is the Director of the Index of Christian
Art at Princeton University.
Dagmar Riedel is an Associate Research Scholar at the
Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University.
Galleries will be open until 9:00 pm
2:00–3:45
Suzanne Preston Blier, Harvard University
Asa Mittman, California State University, Chico
Jill Caskey, University of Toronto
Bindu Gude, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
3:45–4:00
Break
4:00–5:45
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Helen C. Evans, Metropolitan Museum of Art
“Illuminated Manuscripts in an Encyclopedic Museum”
6:00
Reception
RELATED PROGRAMMING
A Medieval Picture Book and its Judeo-Persian Lives:
The Shah ‘Abbas Bible in 17th-Century Safavid Iran
Lecture by Sussan Babaie, Courtauld Institute of Art
Tuesday, April 19; 7:00 p.m. Free; advance ticket required.
Getty Center, Museum Lecture Hall