Making and Unmaking Value II: Transformations through Space, Harvard History of Art and Architecture, April 23-25, 2026, is the second in a series of five interlinked symposia held at Harvard University and at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin as part of the collaborative project Metals, Minerals, and the Life Cycle (Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 2025–2028). This interdisciplinary forum brings together art historians, historians of science, material culture scholars, conservators, museum curators, and scientists to examine how the circulation of metals and minerals across regions shapes and redefines their value and function. Emphasizing the interplay between artistic practice, scientific knowledge, and material exchange, participants explore how materials acquire or lose meaning as they move through diverse cultural, scientific, and economic contexts. Focusing on trade, craft, and shifting epistemic boundaries, the symposium challenges the idea of fixed value, investigating how materials become foreign, exotic, sacred, or utilitarian—and how these evolving categories inform their use and worth. Ultimately, the symposium highlights how value is continually constructed through spatial entanglements, shaping both historical imagination and global power structures.
This symposium is generously supported by The Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities and is connected to the Harvard courses HAA 73: Money Matters and HAA 274: The King's Money: Power, Art, and Economy in the Global Middle Ages.
LOCATION:HAA Lower Lecture Hall STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20260423T040000Z DTEND:20260426T035900Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR