ICMA Viewpoints Book Launch
Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe
by Karl Whittington
Tuesday 17 February 2026
12pm ET, online
Register HERE
We are delighted to invite you to a virtual event celebrating the publication of the third volume of the ICMA Viewpoints book series, sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art and Penn State University Press! Please join us!
with
Karl Whittington, Melanie Holcomb, and
Roland Betancourt
What role does desire play in the making of art objects? Art historians typically answer this question by referring to historical evidence about an artist’s sexual identity or to particular kinds of imagery. But what about anonymous artists? Or works whose subject matter is mainstream?
We know little about the identities and personalities of most premodern artists, but this should not hold us back from thinking about their embodied experience. In this book, Karl Whittington contends that we can “queer” the works of anonymous makers by thinking about their embodied experiences creating art. Considering issues of touch, pressure, and gesture across substances such as wood, stone, ivory, wax, cloth, paint, and metal, Whittington argues for an erotics of artisanal labor, in which the actions of hand, body, and breath interact in intimate ways with materials. Whittington takes seriously the agency of materials and technical processes, arguing that they necessarily placed the bodies of artists and artisans into physical situations and psychological states that can be read through the lens of desire.
Combining historical evidence with speculative description, this evocative set of essays broadens our understanding of the motivations and experiences of premodern artists. It will appeal to scholars and students of art history, medieval studies, gender studies, queer studies, and anthropology.
ICMA ANNUAL MEETING
Tuesday 17 February 2026, online
11:45am ET before the ICMA Viewpoints Book Launch
Join us for a special online Annual Meeting with remarks by outgoing ICMA President Stephen Perkinson as we look to the future of ICMA.
The link provided for the ICMA Viewpoints Book Launch will be valid to attend the online Annual Meeting, so register HERE.
An in-person celebration will take place at the CAA Annual Conference in Chicago on Friday 20 February 2026 from 6:00 pm until 7:30pm CT. Click HERE to register for the happy hour only.