UCLA Department of Art History Graduate Symposium, Fri. Nov. 13

This year’s annual UCLA Department of Art History Graduate Symposium will be held at the Hammer Museum’s Nimoy Studio on Friday, November 13, 2026. This year’s theme is Bodies Under Duress: Violence, Pressure, and the Visual.

Across art and visual culture, bodies have served as both the objects upon which power is exercised and the means through which its effects become visible, imaginable, and contested. Bodies Under Duress invites scholars to consider how visual and material practices register the forces exerted upon bodies, while also asking not only what happens to bodies under violence, but how violence is made possible, legitimized, enacted, and remembered or forgotten.  We are honored to welcome Meredith Gamer, Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, as our keynote speaker. Specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art, her research explores the intersections of visual culture, violence, punishment, and power. Her recent book, City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London (2026), examines the relationship between art and public execution.