The University of California, Riverside’s Art History Graduate Student Association is pleased to announce its 13th Annual Conference, Tools for Making/Tools for Thinking. 

Since 2012, the conference has been held each spring at UCR ARTS in Downtown Riverside. It is student-run and supported by the Department of the History of Art at UCR. The conference presents original research from graduate students across the disciplines that deal with visual and material culture, in conjunction with a keynote address from a practicing artist, academic, or relevant interlocutor. A cornerstone event of our community, the goal is to generate dialogue on compelling topics related to the creation, mobilization, theorization, and historicization of the arts, broadly defined. 

This conference champions an expansive conception of the tools which produce culture as we aim to better inquire into the nature of the relationship between production—artistic or intellectual—and its auxiliary artifacts. From the first stylus to AI image generators, twelve graduate students presenters will seek to investigate the materiality and function of tools that allow one to imagine, make, and perceive.

We are honored that Dr. Nina Horisaki-Christens, currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Getty Research Institute, will be this year’s keynote speaker. Her keynote address is titled Against Japanese Video: Process, Discourse, and Translation in 1970s Tokyo.

The conference will be held in person on Saturday, May 18, 2023 at UCR ARTS in downtown Riverside [3834 Main Street, Riverside, CA 92501]. The conference is free and open to the public. Please visit our website for more information: ahgsaconference.ucr.edu/. To join the conference virtually, please register for a Zoom link here.