Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

Thinking with Materials across Histories and Practices

Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design, Prague, 1–2 October 2026

Proposals due by 31 March 2026

The Centre for Doctoral Studies UMPRUM is pleased to announce an international doctoral conference focused on materials and materiality in the methodology of art history. We invite participants to join us in October for a two-day conference at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague.

Referring to the material, linguistic, or pictorial turn has become a convenient way for art historians to register methodological change. However, such labels risk smoothing over more gradual transformations or historiographical precedents. If we understand the objects of our inquiry as silent messengers (Dupré, 2011), it is their material that underpins their communicative force. In what is ostensibly an object-oriented discipline, one might expect material to be a fundamental point of inquiry. As Ernst Gombrich observed, even the most ordinary object, such as a teacup, opens questions rooted in its substance, physical behaviour, and mode of production (Gombrich, 1988). An object may invite multiple avenues of analysis, yet it is the material itself that first sets these questions in motion.

However, as the material turn itself demonstrates, the interest in material has gradually slipped into the background, overshadowed by approaches that tended to privilege formal or iconographic concerns. If the material turn may be understood as an invitation to re-examine the discipline’s own history (Fricke and Lehmann, 2024), the forthcoming conference seeks to pursue it with more horizontal perspectives and microhistories in mind.

We aim to explore the following thematic areas:

Voices from beyond the Canon

In the historiography of material-oriented art history, figures such as Michael Baxandall and Henri Focillon are frequently invoked, while less canonical voices whose work engaged with materials still await fuller inclusion into this discussion. During the conference, we aim to recover perspectives from diverse linguistic and regional traditions, as well as voices that may have been overlooked or forgotten in existing historiographical frameworks.

Potential avenues of inquiry include, but are not limited to, the following questions:
• How have local art-historical discourses responded to and expanded upon the work of canonical art historians—such as Baxandall—when accounting for material and technical specificities?
• To what extent have art historians historically challenged the long-standing privileging of form over matter (material) in their interpretations of artworks?
• How has the primacy of disegno interno, or the inner idea, shaped the understanding of matter (material) as subordinate in artistic creation?
• How have art historians reflected philosophical conceptions, such as hylozoism, that treat matter as an active agent in creation?
• To what extent did modern vitalist notions of matter—as lively, self-organizing, or possessing formative capacities—shape the emergence of art history and its early approaches to objects?

Rethinking Hierarchies

The recent fascination with materiality has drawn renewed attention to objects made from diverse materials, long relegated to the category of craft, such as glass, ceramics, metalwork, or textiles. Objects historically excluded from canonical art-historical narratives, particularly those grounded in artisanal knowledge, are now becoming central to emerging efforts to rethink the canon.

Possible questions for contributors may include:
• How have art historians specializing in objects relegated to the realm of craft navigated within a scholarly discourse and jargon originally shaped by the highest-ranked genres and media, such as painting or sculptures?
• Practitioners bring processual and materially grounded forms of knowledge that can redirect theoretical questions, yet their expertise often remains marginal in methodological debates. How have practitioners of art and craft—past and present—thought about materials? What insights do they contribute to reenactments and reconstructions, particularly with regard to material intelligence?

Logistics

The conference will be held in person, but online participation is also possible. The main language of the event will be English, and papers should not exceed 20 minutes. PhD students and early career researchers are particularly encouraged to apply. To be considered, please submit a proposal of 200–300 words along with a short bio (up to 150 words) to monika.drlikova@umprum.cz and david.blaha@umprum.cz by 31 March 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by the end of April 2026.

Meals for all presenters during the conference will be covered, and we hope to offer travel support, depending on pending funding arrangements. We will update participants when funding is confirmed.

Organizing Committee
David Bláha, Denisa Dolanská, Monika Drlíková, Tomáš Klička, Veronika Králíková Červená, and Veronika Soukupová

From ArtHist.net:

Atlantic Circulations: Architecture and Travels between

the Americas and Europe since the 18th Century

Seville, 4–5 June 2026

Proposals due by 28 February 2026

The inclusion of the Americas within the horizons and intellectual concerns of travelers interested in architecture and the city since the Age of Enlightenment is essential within a series dedicated to the architect’s journey. The Americas, understood as a plural and heterogeneous continental space encompassing North, Central, and South America, were not only the stage for the extension of European itineraries but also the starting point for journeys to Europe by figures of American architectural culture, as well as a substantial part of the beginnings of Atlantic circulations that, since the 18th century, have intensified between both shores of the Atlantic. A few years before the journeys to Greece by Julien-David Le Roy and James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, the naval officer and scientists Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa traveled to the Peruvian Pacific coast and promoted the drawing of “Maps of City and Port Plans,” later published in the account of the voyage (1748), decisively contributing to stimulating European curiosity about South American territories and cities. From the mid-18th century onward, in fact, transatlantic circulations of architectural culture between different regions of the Americas and Europe found in travel a central element.

The role of the journeys through central Italy by the Mexican Jesuit Pedro José Márquez, between 1773 and 1813, for his studies of ancient Mexican architecture, or the Royal Expedition of Mexican Antiquities (1805–08), which included the American horizon within the antiquarian concerns of Spanish cultural circles, are just examples of shared and intersecting interests in architectural culture that found in travel a crucial element on both sides of the Atlantic since the 18th century. Parallel to scientific expeditions that documented American geography, flora, and fauna, the need to better understand territories and cities also motivated transatlantic journeys of profound political significance. Transatlantic travelers contributed to the construction of identities between Europe and the Americas, especially after the dynamics of revolution and independence. Cases such as that of Thomas Jefferson illustrate the complexity of processes involving the circulation of architectural ideas with political, social, and scientific-pedagogical implications.

The processes of colonial and capitalist globalization in the 19th century, together with the rapid technical innovation in communication and transportation, transformed the culture of transatlantic travel throughout the American continents. At the beginning of the 20th century, the shift from transatlantic sea voyages to air travel, leading to the revolution of commercial aviation in the 1950s, shortened distances while transforming the mentality and objectives of the architect’s journey between Europe and Americas. Without these transformations in the material culture of transatlantic travel, the impact of so-called ‘Americanism’ (and its counterpart, ‘anti-Americanism’) on the development of modern architecture would be incomprehensible. For several decades, the journey to o North, Central, and South America constituted a ritual act loaded with symbolic meanings linked to notions of civilization, progress, and modernity. Journeys to Europe by architects from different American contexts complemented circulating ideas with cultural values tied to history and tradition, but also to artistic avant-gardes, innovative pedagogical models, and new technologies. The transoceanic journeys of architects wove a dense network of relationships and meanings that persist to this day. If changing means of transportation conditioned the culture of transatlantic travel, successive generations of architects developed their own motivations, themes, and destinations, adding new content to its symbolic weight.

This international congress aims to investigate the role of architects’ journeys in the evolution of architectural culture between the Americas and Europe from the mid-18th century to the present day. The congress will focus on different types of journeys, traveler profiles, and territories across the American continents, from North to Central and South America, that have contributed to the Atlantic circulations of architectural culture in the Americas, from the twilight of the Enlightenment, the processes of identity construction following independence phenomena starting with the United States and later the Ibero-American nations, journeys in search of identity within Pan-American architecture up to the European wars, America and Europe in early modernity, or the role of travel in the circulation and networks of architectural culture during the second half of the 20th century. The congress will address both journeys through Europe by architects from the Americas, and journeys through the different American regions by Europeans, with special interest in transatlantic circulations and the back-and-forth exchanges of architectural culture on both sides of the ocean, emphasizing both the interpretation of architecture in the places visited and the repercussions of these journeys for the travelers’ own architectural culture, as well as for the construction of transoceanic ties, including those of a conflictive nature. The congress will gather a limited number of contributions, representing original studies on specific cases or themes to be debated at the meeting in order to reflect on the role of architects’ journeys in the evolution of architectural culture between the Americas and Europe from the mid-18th century to the present day.

This will be the seventh conference of the series, The Architect’s Journeys: Circuits and Cultural Transfers across the Mediterranean and Beyond, 18th–20th Centuries (2023–27), which aims to deconstruct any univocal interpretation of the idea of travel and to highlight the multiplicity of its methods and interpretations, as well as the material and immaterial transfers produced through the connections established with history, human geography, contexts—in the broadest sense of the term—and the places visited. During the period from the 18th to the 20th century, architects’ journeys in the Mediterranean and beyond must be read and repositioned within the broader context of the problem of confronting otherness and the very way in which the notion of identity of places is defined through their perceptions and representations from the outside.

These six congresses have already taken place:
1  Du voyage de formation au voyage professionnel en France et en Europe (París, Académie d’Architecture e all’Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture Paris-La Villette, 1–3 June 2023).
2  I viaggi dell’architetto, La scoperta della natura e l’invenzione del paesaggio: Percezione, analisi e interpretazione dei territori oltre l’architettura, 1750–1989 (Nápoles, Palazzo Donn’Anna, 12–14 October 2023).
3  Los arquitectos y el viaje a Oriente, mediados del siglo XVIII–años 1960 (Granada, Palacio de Carlos V, la Alhambra, 23–24 May 2024).
4  Travelling in Search of the Middle Ages in Italy and Europe (Pavía-Turín, università Di Pavia-Politecnico di Torino, 11–13 November 2024).
5  L’exil comme voyage: La Méditerranée des architectes et le monde, XVIIIe–XXe siècle (Poitiers, Università de Poitiers, 3–4 April 2025).
6  Architects and Engineers: Journeys in the Polytechnic Culture Networks, Media, and New Destinations since 1794 (Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe Institute für Tecnologie, 6–8 November 2025).

The contributions of each congress will be published as part of a collection by Campisano Editori (Rome). The series I viaggi dell’architetto has already published the proceedings of the second congress La scoperta della natura e l’invenzione del paesaggio: Percezione, analisi e interpretazione oltre l’architettura, 1750–1989, edited by Gemma Belli, Fabio Mangone, and Rosa Sessa.

To propose a presentation for the June 2026 congress, please submit an abstract (maximum 2500 characters, including spaces) along with a brief author biography (maximum 500 characters, including spaces), two representative images, and a reference bibliography to viajes.arquitectura.americaeuropa@us.es before 2pm on 28 February 2026. The scientific committee will select a maximum of 20 papers. Selected proposals will be invited to participate in the edited volume derived from the congress.

The conference languages are Spanish, French, Italian, and English. The congress will be held in-person, with the opportunity for online presentations by researchers affiliated with American universities. There is no fee to participate.

Scientific Coordination
Joaquín Medina Warmburg, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
Carlos Plaza, University of Seville

Organizing Commitee
Marta Parra, University of Seville
Teresa Rodríguez Miró, University of Seville
Marco Silvestri, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie

Organizing Institution
Universidad de Sevilla

Collaborating Institutions
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de la Universidad de Sevilla
Instituto Universitario de Arquitectura y Ciencias de la Construcción
Grupo de Investigación Ciudad, Arquitectura y Patrimonio Contemporáneos
Asociación de historiadores de la Arquitectura y el Urbanismo (AhAU)

Scientific Coordination of the Series
Antonio Brucculeri, AHTTEP, ENSA Paris-La Villette HESAM Université (FR)
Massimiliano Savorra, Università di Pavia (IT)

Scientific Committee of the Series
Paola Barbera, Università di Catania (IT)
Antonio Brucculeri, AHTTEP, ENSA Paris-La Villette HESAM Université (FR)
Juan Calatrava, Universidad de Granada (ES)
Vassilis Colonas, University of Thessaly (GR)
Cristina Cuneo, Politecnico di Torino (IT)
Marie Gaimard, ATE, ENSA de Normandie (FR)
Marilena Kourniati, AHTTEP, ENSA Paris-La Villette HESAM Université (FR)
Fabio Mangone, Università di Napoli Federico II (IT)
Caroline Maniaque, ATE, ENSA de Normandie (FR)
Joaquín Medina Warmburg, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (D)
Nabila Oulebsir, Université de Poitiers (FR)
Sergio Pace, Politecnico di Torino (IT)
Carlos Plaza, Universidad de Sevilla (ES)
Massimiliano Savorra, Università di Pavia (IT)