A workshop led by Jim Harris (Andrew W Mellon Foundation Teaching Curator, Ashmolean Museum).
Over the past three years, the Ashmolean University Engagement Programme has sought to explore ways that the collections of the Museum might usefully be deployed in the teaching and research of the University. This approach has led to an increasing interest across a number of disciplines in the potential of encounters with authentic objects to provoke new and unexpected thinking and inter-disciplinary collaboration.
Jim Harris's own work on polychrome sculpture considers the relationship of materials to the meaning of objects and the question of how patronal and artistic intentionality, function and history are conveyed and embodied in certain media.
At this workshop, Jim will speak from his research and teaching practice, and we will examine a number of objects from the Ashmolean which have been used as points of departure for teaching in English, History, Neuroscience, Psychiatry, Geography, Modern Languages and other subjects, thinking about the shared ideas and enquiries they embody materially, formally and functionally.
Places for this meeting are strictly limited - please email emily.payne@spc.ox.ac.uk if you would like to attend.
Image: Pyx, copper alloy, enamel, gilding; Limoges, c.1200 CE; Ashmolean Museum
Embodiment and Materiality
Contact name: Emily Payne
Contact email: emily.payne@spc.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Open to all
