Creativity Symposium To Be Held At Institute For Advanced Study

"Creativity: The Sketch in the Arts and Sciences" is the title of a symposium to be held at the Institute for Advanced Study on May 24 and 25. The symposium, which is free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by the Institute's School of Historical Studies and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art.

"The purpose of the conference," says art historian Irving Lavin, professor in the School of Historical Studies and organizer of the event, "is to explore the history of the creative process by examining the evidence for trial and error–or its absence–in a variety of periods and disciplines. … The conference includes artists as well as scholars, in the hope of shedding light on the edges of conception."

The Thursday session concentrates on Music, and will run from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. After welcoming remarks from Institute professor Giles Constable and an introduction by Lavin, there will be three talks: Leo Treitler, City University of New York, will speak on "Writing Music, Sketching Music"; Lewis Lockwood of Harvard University will discuss "Beethoven's Sketches: From Conceptual Image to Realization"; and Robert Levin, also of Harvard, will speak on "Experience, Discipline, Fantasy: Improvisation in Classical Music and Jazz." This session will be moderated by Edward T. Cone of Princeton University.

On Friday, a session on Natural Sciences and Mathematics will begin at 9:30 a.m. and finish at noon. Speaking will be Jean Dhombres, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, on "Creation in Mathematics: The Question of the Sketch of a Proof"; Michael S. Mahoney, Princeton University, on "Sketching Science in the Seventeenth Century"; and W. Bernard Carlson, University of Virginia, on "Sketching as Re-representation: Edison and the Development of the Telephone, 1875-1879." The moderator is Horst Bredekamp of Humboldt-Universit�t zu Berlin.

Visual Arts is the focus of the afternoon session, 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. James Cahill, University of California at Berkeley, will discuss "Uses of Sketches by Chinese Painters"; Enrico Castelnuovo, Scuola Normale Superiore, will speak on "Medieval Drawing: From Scheme to Project"; Bredekamp will talk on "The Sketch in the History of the Visual Arts"; and the Museum of Modern Art's Kirk Varnedoe will speak on "A Modernity of Obsessive Calculations and Heedless Haste."

The National Gallery of Art will offer a related series of lectures on May 23 in Washington. The entire symposium is made possible by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the J. Seward Johnson, Sr. Charitable Trusts, and Mrs. F. Merle-Smith.

The May 24 and 25 symposium sessions will be held in Wolfensohn Hall on the Institute for Advanced Study campus, Einstein Drive, in Princeton. For additional information, call 609-734-8175.