The pandemic has affected my work in a lot of ways, from the prevalence of Zoom meetings to the limited accessibility of archives, but it’s especially impacted my conference and presentation work. In 2020 and 2021, nearly all of my conference papers were given online, some after significant delays. This past spring, for instance, I gave a paper at the annual Space Between Conference, a presentation that I was actually slated to give in 2020, but was postponed for a year due to infection rates. The pandemic has also affected the frequency with which I’ve been able to present. This fall I was scheduled to share my work at three different conferences, but due to the cancellation of two of those events, only one presentation actually took place. Today, I’d like to talk about all three of those conferences, paying homage to the sessions that didn’t happen while reviewing the one that did.
The first conference to get cancelled was SECAC 2021, which focuses on art and art history in the southeast region. I presented a paper last year and had a positive experience with it, so I was looking forward to sharing my work again. While last year’s conference took place online, the 2021 conference was going to happen in-person in Lexington, Kentucky. I was excited because I’d not only get to see a new state, but would have the opportunity to visit an old friend of mine who moved to Louisville a few years ago.
The paper I planned to present focused on the first chapter of my dissertation by looking at the connections between outreach exhibitions and nineteenth-century mobile entertainments such as moving panoramas and magic lantern shows. While last year I presented at the general American art session, which was open to papers on any topic or time period, this year I was taking part in a more specialized panel. Entitled “Dark Amusements: Turn of the Century American Spectacles and Race,” the session received so many submissions that it had to be divided into two sections taking place on different days. It was shaping up to be a full, exciting conference, but with the Delta variant surging in Kentucky, an in-person conference looked increasingly unlikely. Since the organizers had planned on an in-person session though, there wasn’t enough time to plan a virtual conference, so they reluctantly canceled the event.
The second conference to get canceled was the Modernist Studies Association’s annual meeting, which was going to focus on migration as its organizing theme. I hadn’t presented here before, but a lot of my colleagues at the Space Between Society have, and I thought it would be a good place to network given its scale and interdisciplinary approach. The conference was set to take place in Chicago, a city I’ve visited plenty of times thanks to my undergraduate years at Lake Forest, but am always happy to visit again. I’d already gotten in touch with my best friend from college about meeting up during the conference, and was even looking into the possibility of having Brandon come with me, as he’s always wanted to see the city.
Whereas the paper for SECAC would have focused on Chapter 1, this presentation was going to take a preliminary look at Chapter 3, which will focus on the Washington, DC end of the Community Art Center Project. I was going to argue for the CACP’s transit routes as an expression of modern infrastructure, and take a look at the tensions between the the program’s reliance on trains as a means of enabling art access, and the increasing popularity of the automobile as a means of transit, both for personal use and shipping. I probably would have offered a preview of chapter 5 as well, which will look at artmobiles, and how art museums would come to favor cars or trucks over trains as a means of transit, with conservation concerns such as temperature control aligning with the overall dominance of car culture. Like SECAC, MSA had planned on an in-person event, but with the Delta variant again surging and no time to plan a virtual back-up, the organizers cancelled the conference.
That left the one conference that did plan on being virtual, the annual meeting for T2M, or The International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility. While the organizers did consider the possibility of having in-person sessions in Lisbon, they ultimately opted to host everything online. Like MSA, I hadn’t presented with this organization before, but given my interest in the intersections between museums, mobility, and art access, I thought it would be another good opportunity to network and learn about new methods.
This third paper was a combination of Chapter 1 and what will probably end up being the conclusion, with the overall argument being that current digital initiatives launched by museums during the pandemic should be contextualized within a longer history of art outreach and collections sharing via extension exhibitions. The first half focused on the historical origins of outreach exhibitions during the Progressive Era, as museums such as the Met and other institutions shared their permanent collections in schools, libraries, and other facilities to both teach art appreciation and to incentivize viewers to visit their main building. The second half then discussed digital collections initiatives, noting that while experientially different from in-person exhibitions, they rely on both the permanent collection and sites familiar to their various viewers, i.e. their home, to establish connections and become part of their routine.
I’ll be honest, while I think the organizations that cancelled their conferences made the right call, losing these opportunities to share my work was disappointing. Whereas most of my presentations have been based on previous term papers or essays, the papers I would have given this fall were all drawn from the dissertation. I essentially viewed the conferences as opportunities to workshop my research, and to get feedback on my methods and arguments. While I did get to present some of this new work, it would have been nice to share my research at all three. On a personal level, it also would have been good to catch up with old friends and visit new places.
At the same time, I won’t deny that there’s also been a sense of relief in not having to present at so many conferences. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, this fall has been especially busy, and it would have been even more so if all three conferences had happened. As much as I would have loved to present new work, these papers would have probably all been very preliminary because I would have had limited time to work on them. The SECAC paper would have been especially challenging to give because my research has moved in a different direction from the initial abstract, so the connection to the panel would have been tenuous at best.
It also didn’t help that these conferences were all scheduled for early November, with two of them overlapping (in all fairness I didn’t expect to get all three abstracts accepted). Fortunately one of these overlapping sessions would have been virtual, but it would have meant presenting in a hotel room while in Chicago for another conference. If they had all happened, I would have likely been run ragged, driving or flying back and forth between different places while maintaining my other professional and personal commitments. As it was, I ended up having to leave the T2M conference early because of another obligation, so even without the other two sessions it ended up being a harried week.
So it’s probably for the best that only one conference happened, but that doesn’t meant I can’t mourn the other two and what they could have offered. At the same time, I can admit my relief to not having to give all three, and to use that time to rest and focus on my other work. Most importantly, I need to maintain my motivation regarding sharing my work. This year’s conference schedule may have been a wash, but there will likely be more sessions in 2022, and I need to be ready to take part in them. Given that I’ll be chairing a virtual panel at CAA 2022, next year is already shaping up to be a busy one.