Finding the Viewer: The Reception of Ancient Art and Architecture

This graduate seminar will explore the role of viewers in the creation of meanings for ancient art and architecture. The perspectives of the makers of a work of art, patrons and artists, tend to get greater attention in art historical inquiries, in large part because those agents leave more visible traces in the literary and material records. Yet the agency of viewers, although less apparent, can be recovered through careful examination of diverse types of evidence—textual, archaeological, visual—and by relying on viewer-centered theoretical models such as phenomenology and reception theory. A