From the Conference Convenors
The Australian and New Zealand Art History Conference is a conference for art professionals – art historians, curators and artists. It takes place in December each year, and typically includes between 200 and 300 participants, including keynotes, panel convenors, speakers and audience members.
The conference takes place under the auspices of the AAANZ, and thus serves those from Australia, New Zealand the Pacific Region. The Conference is one of the key ways that the AAANZ seeks to further its mission, which is “to promote, provide for, foster, and encourage study and research into art […] by sustaining standards of criticism and scholarship in art.” (The Rules of the AANANZ.)
Each year, the conference takes place in a different city, with a different set of convenors, alternating between Australia and New Zealand.
The Goals of AAANZ 2021
In 2021 the conference will take place in Sydney, and is convened by the Power Institute and the Department of Art History at the University of Sydney.
In light of the overall purpose of the conference, we have set ourselves the following goals for AAANZ 2021:
- To create a platform for the region’s art professionals to gather, to share their professional research and experiences, and to conduct a collective discussion about the broader conditions underpinning art scholarship in the region.
- To make this platform accessible to the greatest number of art professionals.
- To make the conference programming representative and inclusive of the diversity of the region’s art professionals and their work.
As organisers, we aim to be mindful of the norms that have shaped the region’s disciplines and institutions, and we seek to welcome forms of difference that these norms have marginalised or excluded, including (but not limited to) differences of gender, ethnicity, nationality, physical and mental abilities, sexual orientation, race or socioeconomic status.
To implement these goals, we have focused on the following:
- Spreading word of the conference as widely as possible.
- Accepting as many panel proposals as possible, to offer the greatest diversity of topics and more opportunities for speakers to join the conference.
- Making the conference more affordable and welcoming by significantly lowering registration costs, and offering bursaries for Indigenous, low-income and early career art professionals.
Indigenous Sovereignty and the Impact of Settler-Colonialism
One of the most important underlying conditions of the AAANZ’s annual conference, as for all the region’s art work and institutions, is the ongoing sovereignty of the Indigenous people on whose land this work takes place.
The conference convenors recognise this sovereignty, and join the AAANZ in acknowledging and paying our respects to all Indigenous people throughout Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
In 2021, the conference will take place at the University of Sydney’s Camperdown campus, which is located on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. For thousands of years, Gadigal people have cared for this land, and used it as a site for the transmission of knowledge. We recognise and pay respect to this history, and to Elders past, present and emerging.
We also recognise the history of colonial practices that have sought over the past two centuries to undo and obscure Indigenous sovereignty. The AAANZ conference, and the professions it supports, are entangled in this history in complicated ways.
The AAANZ21 seeks to provide a welcoming platform for all art professionals to critically reflect on this history and how it impacts each of us, and the institutions where we work. We also hope to provide space for non-Indigenous art professionals to learn from our Indigenous colleagues, and the longer histories of Indigenous survival, resistance and flourishing.
Guidelines for Panel Convenors
As in previous years, the content of AAANZ21 will be determined by Panel Convenors, speakers, and their audiences. Panel Convenors have an especially important role, by determining the theme and scope of their panels, and the speakers that will populate them.
As Panel Convenors finalise their panels, we urge them to consider the following questions:
- What are the histories of inclusion and exclusion that have shaped your panel topic? Should this be addressed in the panel abstract or one of the papers?
- Which voices have typically shaped your panel topic, and who has been excluded from this conversation? How might these voices be better included in your panel?
We encourage Panel Convenors to actively seek out proposals from Indigenous people and people of colour. This may require you to specifically reach out to people, networks, and organisations outside major art institutions.
Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property
The convenors are mindful that a key aspect of Indigenous sovereignty is the right of Indigenous peoples to maintain, control, protect, and develop their Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP). ICIP includes all aspects of Indigenous peoples’ cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions.
It is our expectation that any speakers using or discussing ICIP in the Conference have followed due process in terms of communication, consultation and consent, as well as attribution.
Contact Us
Planning AAANZ 2021 is an ongoing process, that involves many collaborators. If you have other ideas how we could achieve our goals, please let us know!