Cornelia Parker’s “Transitional Object (Psychobarn)” was installed on the Met’s rooftop in 2016. The work alludes to Hitchcock’s Psycho and to Edward Hopper’s paintings, as well as to the concept of transitional object from psychoanalyst D. Winnicot.

Margaret Iversen is Emeritus Professor at the School of Philosophy and Art History at University of Essex, UK. She is one of the leading international authorities in the field of art theory and contemporary art. Her first book was on one of the founders of Art History as a discipline: Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory (1993). Since then she has continued to write occasionally about the history of art history (‘Retrieving Warburg’s Tradition’), but has made her main areas of study psychoanalytic art theory, publishing Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes (2007) and Photography, Trace and Trauma (2017). Her present and future research is devoted to the overlapping fields of photography and contemporary art. Recently published work includes a book called Writing Art History (with Stephen Melville) and a number of articles including ‘Analogue: On Zoe Leonard and Tacita Dean’, ‘Index, Diagram, Graphic Trace,’ ‘Desire and the Diagrammatic,’ and ‘The World without a Self: Edward Hopper and Chantal Akerman.’ Iversen is currently working on what she is calling “the Diaristic mode” of art.

A seminar will be held on Thursday, April 11th, 212 O’Brian Hall, 12PM. Moyra Davey’s “Fifty Minutes.” Canadian, New York-based Moyra Davey’s video regarding her own psychoanalytic treatment, 9/11, and everyday life.

Sponsored by the McNulty Chair, the Eugenio Donato Chair, the Melodia Jones Chair, David Johnson, the Honors College (Faculty Fellow Course Infusion Fund, Fernanda Negrete), and the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis & Culture.