The Material Collective

A collaborative of art historians and students of visual culture

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As a collaborative of art historians and students of visual culture, Material Collective seeks to foster a safe space for alternative ways of thinking about objects.

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From the Manifesto

We are the Material Collective, a group of medievalists interrogating visual materials. We seek to cooperate, encourage, share, promote transparency, touch, desire, destabilize, amuse, and blunder.

Our specific interests vary, but we are all committed to prioritizing the materiality of things, the relationships between those things and the human beings who experience them, and the intimacy of past and present moments in time.

We strive for transparency in our practice, and we encourage the same in our institutional surroundings.

“As we celebrate, dwell in, and embrace the basic materiality of our objects, we work to find ways to foreground the material of the objects themselves into larger historical analysis.

Open Letter to the Met RE: Admissions Policy

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Dear Dr. Weiss, We are writing to you, a fellow medievalist, on behalf of several Medieval Studies and Art History organizations concerned about the change in admissions charges at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met has been, for many of us, a guiding institution, a temple, and a home away from home. Many of […]

Slow down!

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(This is a collaborative post with input from Nancy Thompson, Jennifer Borland, and Emma Bergman) The end of the semester always seems hectic and crazy. Between the frantic push to finish grading and the panicked emails from students, not to mention the holiday preparations for however you celebrate, there’s not much time to slow down. […]