PIMSPontifical Institute
of
Mediaeval Studies

The papers in this symposium will investigate what it means to see a work of art: how does the mind comprehend the visual material before it to create understanding. This symposium will examine how ideological and cultural systems influence the interaction between objects and their viewers. We seek to investigate the relationship between perception and knowledge, between sight and belief. While papers may consider the changing scientific understanding of sight, this conference specifically interrogates the social construction of sight and the production of meaning. Seeing and Believing will engage with the problems of reception, issues of legibility, the practice of spectatorship, and histories of sight. Ultimately this symposium will problematize notions of vision and visuality and raise questions of the relationship between society, sight, and belief.

Keynote address at 4:30 by Jacqueline Jung (Yale University): “The Kindli of Katharinenthal: The Work of Vision and the Play of Art in a Medieval Convent”

For more information: https://gustasymposium.wordpress.com/