Images out of time

Visual and Material Culture in a Digital Age

National Endowment of the Humanities Humanities Initiatives at Colleges and Universities (2022–2025)

Co-PIs: Prof. David Albertson, Prof. Vanessa R. Schwartz

Images Out of Time considered how images travel through time, dropping in and out of linear histories and reshaping perception, institutions, and social practices along the way. Faculty and student affiliates of the Visual Studies Research Institute at the University of Southern California came together to study images and objects that are at odds with the moment of their appearance, whether they outlived their initial function or lost contact with their original cultural contexts.

Monuments to unjust pasts; icons manifesting fallen gods; ancient ruins in modern structures; replicas and forgeries; old images restored by new technologies: these images force a paradox into view. While they endure within continuous histories, they also remain stubborn signs of vanished worlds, out of step with the present. Images in the wrong place at the wrong time have justified the civilizing mission of empire and acts of iconoclasm. They continue to structure debates about repatriating artifacts, dismantling monuments and museums, and preserving cultural heritage destroyed by war or exploitation. When “images out of time” suddenly upset our faith in the march of history, they challenge our ability to measure our distance from the past, to understand ourselves, and to imagine collective futures.

Events included lecture series, reading groups, and writing workshops that intersected art history, religious studies, history, anthropology, literature, and film, and cut across divisions separating premodern and modern, as well as European, Atlantic, and Pacific spheres. The capstone of this project was a week-long excursion for VSRI doctoral candidates and advanced undergraduates to Museumsinsel, Berlin (June 2025).