When Elizabeth Harney was a first-year student, many of her professors said she would never find a job, should she theoretically pursue the artistic field of modernism.
Years later, interest in the subject is on the rise.
“It’s [become] a completely different field of our history,” Harney said of modernism.
A few dozen people gathered to hear more about Harney, who held a lecture on tracing networks of modernism in post-war Europe on Feb. 28 at the Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG).
Harney is an associate professor at the department of art at the University of Toronto and a specialist in African art.
She is also an award-winning author, an ex-curator of contemporary arts at the National Museum of African Art — Smithsonian Institution, and is on the editorial boards of the University of California, Los Angeles’s African Arts and Cornell University’s Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art journals.
It all started when Harney was pursuing her undergraduate degree.
“I got a work-study job in a museum that had a lot of African art, and I came upon artworks that were a sort of a mix of modern and traditional, and that interested me, so I started writing an honours thesis on that,” she said.
Having been always fascinated by cross-cultural art, her interest in transnational issues and art came together for her.
However, it wasn’t always guaranteed that she’d succeed.
And yet, not everything has been told.
Issues of globalism have always existed and have increased in recent years.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done in terms of people addressing all kinds of histories that have not been told,” she said.
Fourth-year Carleton art history student Elizabeth Johnston said she was also very impressed.
“She’s extremely knowledgeable . . . it’s stuff that you need to take further reflection on, sort of let it sink in, and go from there . . . it’s very stimulating.”
Ruth Phillips, professor of art history at Carleton, who also helped organize the event, said she was delighted to host Harney.
Phillips said that when someone thinks of modernism in art, they tend to think about Picasso, Matisse, and other 20th-century artists who are regarded as the pioneers of modernism.
When another artwork appears similar, it is seen as some kind of an imitation, she said.
“We’re really changing that view quite radically now.”
