IVAN GASKELL
Welcome to my personal website. I am a cultural historian
working at the intersection of history, art history, anthropology, museology,
and philosophy. I incorporate philosophy of art and artifacts into historical
writing and exhibition practice.
New: I shall be on leave for the fall semester,
and am fortunate enough to have been awarded the Beinecke Fellowship at the Clark Art
Institute, Williamstown. Thereafter, although I shall retain a Harvard
affiliation, I shall take up a new position as professor of cultural history
and museum studies at the Bard Graduate
Center, New York City. This new adventure begins in January.
Lots has been happening around the new General Education course
I taught last semester with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Tangible Things: Harvard Collections in World History, and its
associated exhibition at the Harvard University Collection of Historical
Scientific Instruments and six other venues, Tangible Things. See the reviews in the Boston
Globe (by Sebastian Smee, on the front page!), on WBUR’s Radio Boston
website, the Harvard
Gazette, the Harvard
Crimson, and the Harvard
Gazette again. Now Laurel and I are preparing a Tangible Things book with our co-conspirators, Sarah Anne Carter,
Sara Schechner, and Sammie Van Gerbig.
Please click on the headings for details.
I realize that my combination of interests confuses
people—it confuses me—but interdisciplinarity, rather than narrow
academic specialization, is our fate. It’s also in my temperament to define and
ask the question behind the question (and the question behind that question).
It annoys so many people.
Recent Thoughts: July 9, 2011
and December 21, 2011. (For the
complete list, click the heading.)
In a career at London University’s Warburg
Institute, Cambridge University, and—since 1991—Harvard University,
I have written, edited, and contributed to a bunch of books and academic
journals, and published contemporary art criticism. My subject
matter is diverse because I am concerned with the principles of writing history
from art and artifacts. My work on early modern Dutch and Flemish
art—notably Johannes Vermeer—
attracts some readers, while that on museum practice engages others. Yet others
dip into my philosophy contributions, notably Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and the Arts, the book
series I edited with Salim Kemal.
I have curated numerous long-term museum
installations and art exhibitions. I work on the Web: check out “I Have a Son to Offer”—An Online Exhibition of
American Civil War Artworks in Harvard Collections.
[Temporarily suspended in May, 2009 as part of the redevelopment of the Harvard
Art Museum web site.]
While acknowledging the inescapability of my European and
American identity, I promote cultural decentering (no more centers and peripheries).
I advocate attention to the visual creativity of a wide range of societies.
Recently, I have written and lectured on topics from Polynesia, Congo, and
Native American nations in the USA.
I am starting to make podcasts of lectures available: try
listening by following the link to my podcast page. Here’s a
link to a video of a lecture I gave at the Getty in June, 2009, “Art
and Beyond: Some Contemporary Challenges for Art and Anthropology Museums.”
It’s
far longer than anyone could reasonably bear.
Prospective students who are interested in working with me
should also visit my Harvard History Department webpage.
Teaching is important to me, but I also have other responsibilities, from July,
2010 in the Office of the Provost. And after my leave, September through
December, 2011, you will be able to find me at the Bard Graduate Center.
