SPAN GR

The Early Modern origins of the “public” museum have been studied, in the last decades, under the categories of curiosity and wonder. Revising this literature, the seminar intends to introduce the students to a wealth of primary sources, in order to find novel conceptual avenues of research. We will look at the most important illustrated catalogues that were written, painted and often printed between the 16th and 17th centuries: from Ferrante Imperato’s Dell’Historia Naturale, published in Spanish Naples, in 1599 to the beautiful Manoscritti Campori, the Museum Septalianum (1664) and the Galeria (1666) of the museum opened by Mandredo Settala in Spanish Milan, from the Roman museum of Athanasius Kircher, passing through the public museums of Ulisse Aldrovandi and Ferdinando Cospi in Bologna, of Oleus Worm in Copenhagen, to the documentation about the collections of Juan de la Espina in Madrid, of Lastanosa in Huesca, the Kunstkammerns of Sweden, and that Rudolf II's in Prague, among others. While acquiring a panoramic and critical view on a major field, on its sources and studies, the seminar’s participants will be guided by the following topics: 1) the tight relationship between Iberian colonization and collecting, in the selection and circulation of the art pieces and natural species that will enter the space of the museum and its catalogues 2) the intertwining between art pieces and natural species coming from afar with those produced or generated locally; 3) the different actors implicated in the museification (in space and on paper) of the objects and natural species; 4) the aesthetic education implemented by the items’ public display and by their published descriptions

Subject

SPAN GR

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026

Source

catalog.barnard.edu

Subject

SPAN GR

Credits (min)

2

Credits (max)

2

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026

Source

catalog.barnard.edu

Plato banished poets from his Republic on the account of their being thrice removed from the truth. Accused of artfully and seductively lying, poets were deemed dangerous, confusing, and unfit to guarantee the stability of the polis and were consequently extricated from it. Since then, the relationship between art and truth has been a contentious one. Art is fiction and fiction, at least in common parlance, is opposed to fact, to things as they really are. This historical kinship with lying has often justified accusations of art as being a frivolous, lighthearted discipline, detached from the real. It has also, however, equipped artists with a ‘license to lie’—a prerogative that they have used frequently to reclaim art’s position in the realm of the real, to reinstate the poet’s place in the polis. This seminar will interrogate modern and contemporary artistic practices that have an act of deception at their core—pieces that, for some people and for some time, succeed in obscuring their fictional origins and acquired truth status. We will couple case study analysis with discussion of theoretical works to explore questions such as: How do these practices structure and produce their lies? In what ways do their acts of deception posit a different understanding of the real? How do these practices dialogue with and intervene in the philosophical debates that have explored the tensions between art and truth? What does it mean to lie after the ‘postmodern turn’? How do different definitions of the real affect the interpretation and effects of these works? What is the role of belief in understanding and assessing these practices? Since we will mostly study Latin American works, we will also speculate about the possibilities of identifying the peculiarities of the region’s relation to deception, both inside and outside the boundaries of the art world. The course will culminate with a symposium, open to the public, at which students will present their research. Presentations will be followed by discussion, and the symposium will include the participation of an artist and a scholar whose works explore some of the issues studied over the semester

Subject

SPAN GR

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026

Source

catalog.barnard.edu

Prerequisites: graduate standing. Students register in this course while preparing their M.Phil. examinations and prospectus--usually in the fall and spring of their third year

Subject

SPAN GR

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

6

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026

Source

catalog.barnard.edu