San Antonio Museum or Art

16th Annual Mays Symposium: From the Opulent to the Mundane: Design and the Decorative Arts

Special Events


Saturday, February 2, 2013
9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Auditorium

Price:

Registration is $40 for SAMA members, $60 for non-members and $20 for students.
Lunch is included. You may mail your payment to the San Antonio Museum of Art or call 210.978.8185 to register by phone. Space is limited. 

Purchase Ticket

Join our distinguished speakers as they explore the tradition of ornament from Renaissance interiors recalling ancient Greek and baroque architecture to the anti-classical inspirations of curving rococo and chinoiserie to twenty-first century design interests.

Speakers:

Ornament: A Social History Since 1450
Michael Snodin

Director, The Strawberry Hill Trust; Former Head of Design in the V&A’s Word and Image Department; Senior Curator of the V&A/RIBA Architecture Partnership, Richmond, Surrey, UK; author: Ornament: A Social History Since 1450 (1996); Design & the Decorative Arts: Britain, 1500-1900 (with John Styles, 2004)

Rococo: The Continuing Curve
Sarah D. Coffin, MA

Curator of 17th and 18th Century Decorative Arts; Head of Product Design and Decorative Arts Department, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, NY; author Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730-2008 (2008)

‘Upstairs, downstairs, In My Lady’s Chamber’: Early American Decorative Arts in Context
Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett Widmer MA

Independent lecturer, author, curator, Newberryport, MA; former head Sotheby’s American Art Course Masters program; former senior vice-president Christie’s New York, Director Classes in Connoisseurship; author: At Home: The American Family 1750-1870 (1990)

Enchanting Machines: Clockwork, China, and the European Vision of the East
Catherine Pagani, PhD

Professor and Chair, Department of Art and Art History, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL; author: Eastern Magnificance and European Ingenuity: Clocks of Late Imperial China (2001); First Emperor Of China (with R.W.L. Guisso and David Miller, 1991)

 

 

“Man is not only a passive, sensory recipient, but also a desiring, active being who wishes to interpret the world in such a way (varying from one people, region, or epoch to another) that it most clearly and obligingly meets his desires. “

Alois Riegl (Stilfragen, 1893)

This is the sixteenth in a series of decorative arts symposia underwritten by the Mays Family Foundation.