Sovereignty, Art, and its Histories

In this inaugural session of four leading up to CIHA Washington DC 2028, the National Committee for the History of Art (NCHA) invites proposals for papers reflecting on the question of “sovereignty” and considering how artists, patrons, art institutions, and audiences have engaged, debated, or contested the concept and practices of sovereignty. We open with two broad questions: firstly, how issues of sovereignty, personal and institutional, have been involved in the exploration of the philosophies, politics, and knowledge-structures that have been central to writing about the production of art in all media and across time; and second, how the realm of art production structures ideas like that of territory, borders, belonging, personhood, bare life, Indigeneity, exclusion, and migrancy.