WILLIAMSTOWN, MA.- The Graduate Program in the History of Art, sponsored jointly by Williams College and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, will present the Fourteenth Annual Spring Symposium on Friday, June 5. Members of the M.A. class of 2009 will present papers on topics ranging from twelfth-century Italian sculpture to contemporary film, from sixteenth-century Italian drawings to karaoke in video, and from nineteenth-century French painting to books by mid-twentieth-century artists. The day will include consideration of themes as diverse as the depiction of women in war and as artists, and talks on how museum and exhibition contexts shift an object’s meaning. This day-long free symposium will begin at 9 am at the Clark, and the public is invited to attend.

Symposium papers are developed from longer qualifying papers that each student writes during the second-year winter study period, revising and refining work from an earlier seminar. The symposium comprises public, scholarly performances aimed to inform and challenge those interested in the visual arts.

The graduate program is among the United States’ foremost master’s programs in art history, with both a national and international reputation. One of only three jointly sponsored programs in the country and among the premier art education programs in the world, it has produced almost 400 graduates who have taken their place as leaders in the art and academic fields. The Clark and Williams work symbiotically, offering their professional staffs, libraries, and art collections to the students as invaluable resources. Program professors are drawn from both institutions and the program is housed at the Clark. The Clark’s extensive research facilities, such as the library, support the original academic scholarship conducted by the students.