Competing Truths: Art and the Objects of History after the Council of Trent

This is a two-day symposium to be jointly held at the Italian Academy and The Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library on November 15 and 16. The event will bring together scholars and museum professionals in order to investigate how Italian art helped to formulate competing truths in the long aftermath of the Council of Trent, and how the strategies of that era continue to affect our understanding of historical truth today. Italian art of this period is often dismissed as propagandistic and derivative. This symposium instead fosters recent scholarship that shows the potency of art in shaping people’s beliefs during a time of deep political and spiritual divisions. Understanding how images and objects give shape to history and knowledge has never been more urgent. Thus, the aim of the symposium is not merely to advance scholarship, but to meet an acute contemporary need for perspective on how to navigate an era of competing truths.

Day 1: Italian Academy, Columbia University

3:30pm–4:00pm
Registration and Coffee

4:00pm–6:00pm
Welcoming Remarks: Barbara Faedda (Executive Director, Italian Academy, Columbia University)

Introduction: Alessandra Di Croce, Hannah Friedman, and Grace Harpster

Roundtable: Historical Methodology and Discourses of Truth
Moderator:
Karl Appuhn (Associate Professor of History and Italian, New York University)
Participants:
Christia Mercer (Gustave M. Berne Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University)
Felipe Pereda (Fernando Zóbel de Ayala Professor of Spanish Art, Harvard University)
Alessandra Russo (Associate Professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University)
Pamela H. Smith (Seth Low Professor of History; Director, Center for Science and Society, Columbia University)
Stefania Tutino (Professor of History and Italian, UCLA)

Day 2: Frick Collection & Art Reference Library