Making and Unmaking Value (Part 1) — Transformations Through Time

Harvard Art Museums: Metals, Minerals, and the Lifecycle Symposium Series

Making and Unmaking Value I interrogates metals and minerals as sources of environmental harm or toxicity, as substances endowed with therapeutic or magical properties, and as materials bearing cosmological and sacred associations across time and space. Moving beyond traditional perspectives rooted in provenance, extraction, regional economic frameworks, and aesthetics, this symposium brings together speakers from diverse disciplines to examine how concepts of permanence, utility, and worth have been continually negotiated for metals and minerals across different temporal and spatial settings.

The symposium includes two interactive seminars: one at the Peabody Museum on November 20 and one at the Harvard Art Museums' Materials Lab on November 21. The keynote lecture will be delivered by Professor Eugene Wang, followed by an introduction to CAMLab and the opening reception on November 20. Morning and afternoon sessions will take place on November 21. The symposium is preceded by the seminar History in Ice: Plagues, Wars, Politics, and Human Health, offered by Professor Joe McConnell, Senior Ice Core Specialist, on November 19. 

The poster and program for the symposium, and the posters for the seminar and the keynote lecture on November 20 can be viewed here. 

To attend the interactive seminars on November 20 and 21, please register using this link.