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HIAA PhD Candidate Emily Hirsch has been invited to present at the esteemed annual Symposium on the History of Art organized by The Frick Collection and the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. Since 1940, this jointly sponsored an annual symposium on the history of art has invited graduate students in the northeastern United States who were nominated by their doctoral programs to present original research in any field of art history.
Emily Hirsch's talk, “Wonderful and Rarely Made: Lucas Faydherbe’s Ivory Dance of Children around Pan (ca. 1639)”, considers the Flemish sculptor Lucas Faydherbe’s Dance of Children Around Pan (ca. 1639, Madrid) in parallel with Peter Paul Rubens’ theoretical writing, late artistic production, and lifelong interest in sculpture. Hirsch proposes that the execution of the Dance, which reinterprets a painting by Rubens that itself reinterprets an earlier painting by Titian, can be understood as an experiment in Rubens’ own theory of art that the painter set for his pupil Faydherbe, rather than simply being a rote imitative task. Just as Rubens copied and then transformed Titian twice over, Faydherbe was faced with the same process—to copy and transform his master, but this time in three dimensions.
The symposium will take place on April 9 and 10, 2026 at The Frick Collection and the Institute of Fine Arts, respectively. The symposium is free with registration for in-person attendance, and will also be livestreamed, for which no registration is necessary.