Collections in Flux

Collections in Flux: the dynamic spaces and temporalities of collecting

May 9-10, 2014

Organizers: Adriana  Craciun (UC Riverside) and Mary Terrall (UCLA)

Location: UCLA Clark Library

This conference will explore diverse methodological approaches for conceiving of collecting, collections, and collectors:  the study of material culture, indigenous studies, the history of the book and print culture, historical geography, and the role of circulation in knowledge-making. How do collections shift their meanings and uses as they move through time and space? How can layers of meanings inhabit a single collection in a specific time and place?  Collections in Flux examines the ways that spaces of display and representation mapped onto geographical and political spaces, and how concerns about permanence and stability shaded rapidly into dissolution and reorganization and, sometimes, re-use. The activity of collecting thus becomes more than curiosity, the desire for order, or the policing of boundaries.  Associated with the UC Multicampus Research Group on Material Cultures of Knowledge, 1500–1830, the conference brings scholars from the University of California together with colleagues from across the U.S. and abroad, working in the intersections of material, historical, visual, and textual studies.

http://www.c1718cs.ucla.edu/content/progs/flux13.htm

Collections in Flux poster 11x17_sml