Ecologies of Paper in the Early Modern World: Virtual Conference

This conference explores the transmutation, preservation, and loss of paper as a cycle of archiving and forgetting that defined early modern artistic practice, economic transaction, and political statecraft. Speakers map paper's various guises, its ability to retain meanings associated with its material origins as well as its desire to conceal its former states or to encourage belief in a value beyond its material reality. Charting the journeys of early modern paper in drawing, print, and document, this program not only restructures our understanding of paper's importance in early modern artistic practice and political life but also reconstructs the governing roles of environment, place, and origin in modes of making and address.