— UMSoA professor of architectural design, history and theory Victor Deupi and Nathan Timpano, who teaches Art History in the UM College of Arts and Sciences, will chair a session at the Association of Art Historians annual conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, April 7 through April 9, 2016. In preparation for the conference, the professors are looking for papers related to their session topic, the “Grand Tour in the Caribbean and Latin America, 1800-1950.”

This session explores the changing practice and theory of first-hand, field study within the parameters of the ‘new’ Grand Tour of the 19th and 20th centuries. This session considers a period when the application of new attitudes to drawing and painting could expand the canon of architectural or landscape images to include more individual and expressive modes of representation. For example, though sometimes used as academic studies for more elaborate works, drawn or painted sketches made during a Grand Tour continued to be explored on their own as forms of personal observation. To that end, a modern Grand Tour emerged in the Caribbean region and Latin America, even though Europe was already entrenched in this art historical tradition.

This session consequently explores why modern architects, academics, and travel artists were continually drawn to Latin America and the Caribbean during the modern era. This session will present innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the Grand Tour in the Americas of the 19th and mid-20th centuries. Deupi and Timpano are particularly keen to explore on-site drawing or painting and their critical potential within a global perspective of architectural history, theory, and practice; the drawn or painted sketch as history and documentation; and the transnational examination of architecture, cities, and landscape that were collected during one’s travels on the Grand Tour. Email paper proposals to the session convenor(s) by November 9. Download a copy of the Paper Proposal Guidelines and get more information about the conference at the AAH website.

Image Caption: Emilio Sanchez,View of Ranch El Valle in Camaguey Cuba, 1950, Metropolitan Museum of Art, copyright The Emilio Sanchez Foundation