2008–2009 Research Theme

The study of the visual arts can and does cross cultural, civilizational, ethnic, religious, and geographic boundaries. Cultural exchange takes place through kaleidescopic networks that are themselves dynamic and transformative. These exchanges are integral to the construction of boundaries, contributing to definitions of self and other. The contact zones within which they occur are marked by appropriations, hybridizations, and syncretisms—all of which remap cultural boundaries. The study of the visual arts has its own networks and boundaries, including interdisciplinarity and divisions between national, area, and world histories. How freely have artists, art objects, and artistic concepts and practices moved across socio-political and cultural boundaries? And with what results? How closely do artistic crossings and their analyses map onto larger networks of power and economics? How do we negotiate the different demands of local cultural contexts with larger regional and/or global concerns?

The Getty Research Institute welcomes applications from researchers in the arts, humanities, and social sciences who wish to be in residence at the Institute in 2008–2009 and whose projects explore cross-cultural exchange and the visual arts. Scholars in residence will find that the special collections of the Research Library are especially rich in primary materials that bear upon this topic, ranging from nineteenth-century photographs by European travelers in Asia to the collection of the Association Connaissance de l'histoire de l'Afrique contemporaine (exploring the influence of French colonialism in Africa); from the papers of international architect Bernard Rudofsky to documentation of such global activities as Fluxus and mail art.