Call for Applications | Distant Viewing Workshops
From ArtHist.net and the University of Richmond’s Distant Viewing Lab:
Mellon Distant Viewing Workshops
Online, 15–18 February 2026, meets virtually each day from 10am to 2pm (Eastern time)
In-person, University of Richmond, 8–11 March 2026
Applications due by 31 October 2026
The Distant Viewing Lab at the University of Richmond invites applications for two separate training workshops in 2027 sponsored by the Mellon Foundation.
Over four days, participants will learn
• ways to formulate humanities questions that are amenable to computational analysis
• how to apply state-of-the-art AI algorithms to study visual and multimodal collections
• develop custom AI annotations to understand an image archive of their choice
• theory and method of distant viewing
The March workshop will have an emphasis on teaching and research in a liberal arts environment.
We welcome applications from researchers with a range of backgrounds and experiences, including but not limited to: art history, data science, digital humanities, film and media studies, library and information science, museum studies, and science and technology studies. Whether based in the United States or abroad, participants may also be at different points in their careers, including PhD candidates, early-career researchers, faculty at any rank, and those based in museums, archives, libraries, and related areas. We anticipate about 15 people per workshop.
Due by 31 October 2026, application materials include: CV/résumé and a statement of interest (300–500 words) that addresses current research or interests related to distant viewing or visual culture, what you hope to gain from the workshop, and (optionally) how you might apply what you learn. There is no technical background required for participation; however, please briefly describe any relevant background you may have (prior coursework, tools you’ve used, related projects).
A stipend to cover travel and related expenses will be provided thanks to a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation. Applicants can expect to hear back by 13 November 2026. More about the Distant Viewing Lab is available here. Please address any questions to jennifer.marine@richmond.edu. Please submit applications to https://distantviewing.org/workshops/.
New Book | Birth of a Global City: London in a Revolutionary World
From Penguin Random House:
Jerry White, Birth of a Global City: London in a Revolutionary World, 1789–1815 (London: Bodley Head, 2026), 528 pages, ISBN: 978-1847927354, £30.
The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars changed London beyond recognition, turning it into the capital of the world—the centre of international finance and trade. Victory over France in 1815 ushered in the ‘British Century’: the next hundred years would be defined by Britain’s capitalist innovation and financial might, naval supremacy and imperial ambition. In this brilliant portrait of these pivotal years, Jerry White looks at how revolution and war on the Continent transformed the capital. While the manufacture of war materials brought wealth for some, high food prices led to bread riots. The war divided public opinion, with ultra-patriots clamouring for the defeat of ‘Boney’, while others sought to emulate the democratic reforms pioneered across the Channel. Crucially, the chaos and uncertainty on the continent led to a mass flight of aristocratic wealth, foreign bankers and European merchants to London, which would help turn the capital into the world’s leading financial centre.
Jerry White shows how huge docks transformed the Port of London into the world’s trading centre; how the City of London financed the war against France and Nathan Mayer Rothschild provided the gold that crushed Napoleon at Waterloo; how a newly embellished Paris stimulated the reconstruction of central London and fuelled its expansion; and how this moment of Britain’s greatest imperial expansion revived briefly the London slave trade before it was finally ended in 1807. It was this turbulent period of war and political turmoil that created London as we know it today.
Jerry White teaches London history at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the author of an acclaimed trilogy of London from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. His more recent books include Mansions of Misery: A Biography of the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison and Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War. He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by the University of London in 2005 and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
c o n t e n t s
A Note on Money
Maps
Prologue: A World Turned Upside Down
Part 1 | Chaos, 1789–1801
1 Divided City
2 Gateway to a Turbulent World
3 Pitt’s Gold
Part 2 | Foundations, 1802–1815
4 Revolution on the River
5 Party v Country
6 Wellington’s Gold
7 London Remade
Afterword: The End of the Beginning
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Exhibition | An Enamel Revolution: China and the World
From the press release for the exhibition:
An Enamel Revolution: China and the World
The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, 20 October 2026 – 21 February 2027
Curated by James Lin with Joyce Chou
An Enamel Revolution: China and the World is a unique collaboration between The Fitzwilliam Museum and the Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The display explores the history of painted enamel in China, a field that has, until recently, received relatively little scholarly attention. Beginning with the transfer of painted enamel technology from Europe to China in the late seventeenth century, the display traces the emergence of hybrid artistic traditions that developed through interactions between China and the wider world. In doing so, it offers new perspectives on cross-cultural exchange, artistic innovation, and global trade.
Elephant–Handled Zun Vase with Flowers, Fruits, and Insect, late 18th to early 19th century, copper and painted enamel (Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong).
The display features an exceptional group of painted enamel objects on loan from the Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, many of which are being shown in the United Kingdom for the first time. These works are displayed alongside important examples from The Fitzwilliam Museum’s own collection. Together, they reveal how Chinese craftsmen working in the imperial workshops of Beijing and the commercial workshops of Canton adapted and transformed the painted enamel technique to decorate objects made of porcelain, glass, silver, and copper.
The first section of An Enamel Revolution examines the origins of painted enamel through the lens of international exchange. Painted enamel on copper became fashionable in Europe from the late fifteenth century onwards and was widely used for luxury objects such as watch cases, miniature portraits, snuffboxes, and other personal accessories. These finely crafted items were often regarded as precious jewels. Centres of enamel production flourished in places such as Limoges, in France and Nuremberg, in Germany before the technique eventually reached China.
Following the lifting of the maritime trade ban in 1684, European painted enamel technology entered China through the southern port of Canton brought by alongside missionaries, merchants, and diplomatic envoys. The Kangxi (r. 1662–1722), Yongzheng (r. 1723–1735), and Qianlong (r.1736–1795) emperors were fascinated by this sophisticated European art form and instructed craftsmen in the imperial workshops to master and develop enamel production. Painted enamels were created to decorate the imperial palaces and to serve as prestigious diplomatic gifts. At the same time, works by renowned European enamellers, including Jacques I Laudin (c. 1627–1695), were brought to China as models for local craftsmen to study and emulate. As European enthusiasm for Chinese art and design—often described as ‘Chinoiserie’—grew, Chinese workshops also began producing enamels specifically for overseas markets.
Sweetmeat Set with Flower, Butterfly, and Scholars’ Rock Designs, China, 1750–1800, copper and painted enamel (Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Gift of Mr. Anthony K. W. Cheung in memory of Prof. Xu Xiaodong, 2024.0138).
The second section explores painted enamels within the context of global commerce. To meet the demands of international consumers, Chinese artisans adapted designs inspired by ancient bronzes, jade carvings, and ceramics for domestic patrons, while also producing a wide range of objects tailored to foreign tastes. Large quantities of tableware and household items, including candlesticks, tureens, punch bowls, and breakfast sets, were commissioned for the growing European middle and upper classes. Workshops also created objects in Islamic-inspired forms and produced Benjarong-style wares for markets across Southeast Asia and beyond.
This section further highlights tea and coffee services—including tea caddies, kettles, teapots, cups, and saucers—which reflect the growing popularity of these newly fashionable beverages during the eighteenth century. Armorial enamels bearing coats of arms commissioned by European aristocratic families were specially made to commemorate marriages, alliances, and other significant occasions. Once these luxury goods arrived in Europe, many were redistributed through complex trade networks to regions far beyond their original destinations.
The dazzling painted enamels seen in this display tell stories of the movement of materials, technologies, artistic knowledge, and ideas across continents. They reveal how innovations travelled between East and West, how artistic traditions were adapted and transformed through cultural encounters, and how new products were created, traded, and consumed within an increasingly interconnected world. The development of painted enamel in China was made possible through the contributions of imperial patrons, European missionary intermediaries, and skilled craftsmen working in Jingdezhen, Beijing, and Canton (today’s Guangzhou). Together, they played vital roles in shaping one of the most remarkable examples of artistic exchange and early globalisation in the eighteenth century.
An Enamel Revolution: China and the World is jointly organised by the Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and The Fitzwilliam Museum, with generous support from the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The exhibition is curated by Dr James Lin, Senior Curator of Chinese Art at The Fitzwilliam Museum and supported by Dr Joyce Chou, Research Associate at The Art Museum, CUHK.
New Book | Performing Enlightenment: Buddhism and Theater
From Harvard UP (Professor Wang will present on the book at Yale this Thursday at 4pm as part of the China Colloquium Lecture Series) . . .
Mengxiao Wang, Performing Enlightenment: Buddhism and Theater in Early Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2026), 348 pages, ISBN: 978-0674303423, $53.
In early modern China, a major revival of Buddhism coincided with a surging fascination with theater. Buddhist monastics and laypeople increasingly participated in viewing, discussing, and writing plays. Far from merely serving as a medium for conveying religious teachings and practices, drama became a source of deep concern for Buddhists due to the perceived tension between spiritual discipline and worldly entertainment.
In Performing Enlightenment, Mengxiao Wang examines how Buddhist clerics and laity engaged with and drove innovations in theater during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Drawing on an extensive range of sources—including clerical sermons, scriptural commentaries, temple gazetteers, morality books, literati prose, and dramatic texts and paratexts—Wang argues that Ming-Qing Buddhists resolved the conflict between religion and entertainment by transforming theater into a creative mode of devotional practice. Consequently, playwriting, stage performance, and theatergoing all emerged as legitimate pathways to spiritual enlightenment. This interdisciplinary work provides fresh insights into Chinese studies, Buddhist studies, and theater studies while offering a comparative perspective on the complex interplay between religion, literature, and performance across cultures.
Mengxiao Wang is Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature at the University of Southern California. She received her PhD from Yale University and was the Sheng Yen Postdoctoral Fellow in Chinese Buddhism at UC Berkeley.
c o n t e n t s
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Note to the Reader
Introduction
1 Forbidding Theater
2 Philosophizing Theater
3 Playwright as Buddha
4 Drama as Scripture
5 Staging as Ritual
Coda
Appendix 1 Translation of Zhuhong’s “Jiyue”
Appendix 2 Translation of Zhida’s “Xiju gongtong”
Appendix 3 Plot Synopsis for Tanhuaji
Appendix 4 Plot Synopsis for Guiyuanjing
Appendix 5 Extant Editions of Guiyuanjing
Bibliography
Exhibition | Floating Worlds: Prints from Osaka and Kyoto
From the press release for the exhibition:
Floating Worlds: Prints from Osaka and Kyoto
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 30 January — 18 April 2027
Curated by Russell Kelty
Shunkōsai Hokushū, Actors Arashi Kichisaburō II as Prince Koretaka and Nakamura Utaemon III as Katō Masakiyo, 9/1820, Osaka, color woodblock print (nishiki-e) with metallic pigment, ōban, 38.6 × 26.3 cm (Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, Bequest of M.J.M. Carter AO).
The Art Gallery of South Australia will present Floating Worlds: Prints from Osaka and Kyoto from 30 January 2027, the first exhibition in Australia to explore the unique woodblock print culture that emerged in Japan’s historical Kamigata region of Osaka and Kyoto during the Edo period (1603–1868). Through striking images of Kabuki actors, celebrated beauties, the supernatural, sumo wrestlers, and sweeping landscapes, alongside dramatic examples of samurai armour and finely crafted kimonos, the exhibition will showcase the ‘floating worlds’ of theatre, beauty, fashion, and entertainment that dominated the vibrant urban centres of Osaka and Kyoto. Revealing the artistic innovation, sophistication, and vitality of Kamigata print culture, Floating Worlds will feature works by more than ninety woodblock print artists rarely seen in Australia.
The ‘floating world’ (ukiyo) refers to the pleasure-seeking lifestyle that emerged in Japan during the Edo period. As Japan’s lower classes (chōnin) flourished, they sought escape from their daily obligations and spent their leisure time in theatres, teahouses, and pleasure quarters. From these urban centres arose ukiyo-e, or ‘pictures of the floating world’, a celebrated art form that captured the beauty, drama, and enchantment of these entertainment districts. At the heart of this thriving culture were the legendary stars of the kabuki stage, whose rivalries inspired intense public admiration and fuelled the production of woodblock prints commissioned by devoted admirers and collectors.
Jason Smith, Director, AGSA, said, “Floating Worlds will offer audiences in Adelaide and from across Australia a rare encounter with the captivating ‘floating worlds’ of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Osaka and Kyoto. Demonstrating an extraordinary level of craftsmanship and creativity, these prints mark AGSA’s first major acquisition through the M.J.M. Carter AO Bequest that forms the foundation of this exceptional exhibition. Thanks to this transformational bequest, AGSA is now home to the most comprehensive collection of Kamigata prints in Australia, on par with major collections around the world.”
The Hon Kyam Maher MLC, Deputy Premier and Minister for Arts, said, “Floating Worlds will offer visitors an unprecedented opportunity to delve into the remarkable woodblock print culture of Edo-period Japan. Even today, this artform remains hugely influential and enduringly popular, and this exclusive exhibition will be a must-visit event for Japan enthusiasts, families, and art lovers this summer.”
Offering a fascinating insight into the cultural heart of historical Japan, Floating Worlds showcases the craftsmanship and distinctive visual language of woodblock prints from the Kamigata region of Osaka and Kyoto. It was in Kamigata that a distinctive school of woodblock printmaking emerged, with a remarkable mastery of materials and inventive visual language that was distinct from works produced in Edo (present-day Tokyo). While Edo sustained Japan’s most prolific print industry, the Kamigata region cultivated an exceptional aesthetic sensibility and supreme level of artistry.
Floating Worlds will present woodblock print designers who are rarely seen in Australia, including the pioneering Osaka-based artist Ryūkōsai Jokei (1776–1811), whose realistic depiction of the faces of kabuki actors set the standard for succeeding generations. Floating Worlds also includes luminaries of the nineteenth century such as Shunkōsai Hokushū (1802–1832), Shunbaisai Hokuei (active 1828–1836), Ryūsai Shigeharu (1803–1853), and the initiator of the only true familial lineage of artists which continues today, Hasegawa Sadanobu (1809–1879). The masters of the late nineteenth century, such as Utagawa Sadamasu (active c.1830–1854) and Gosōtei Hirosada (active c.1847–1863, d. 1865), also feature. Showcasing more than 200 works from the AGSA collection, alongside loans from public and private collections, Floating Worlds will reveal the artistic traditions, skills, and cultural practices passed down through generations, many of which continue to shape Japanese society today.
Exhibition curator Russell Kelty, Curator of Asian Art, AGSA, commented, “Floating Worlds seeks to reveal the beauty and sophistication of Kamigata ukiyo-e, by offering a new vision of this artform and expanding conventional understandings of Kamigata woodblock prints to present a more holistic view of the culture that captivated the region. Alongside celebrated actor prints are depictions of highly skilled courtesans, sumo wrestlers, comic, and at times bawdy interludes, tales of samurai heroism, landscapes, and scenes from everyday life. Together these works reveal the breadth, complexity, and dynamism of Kamigata visual culture.”
Lecture | Richard Goddard on Huguenot Craftsmen in London, 1713–1744
From Eventbrite:
Richard Goddard | Protestant But Still French: West End Craftsmen, 1713–1744
French Protestant Church, London, 22 October 2026, 5.30pm
Richard Goddard will speak on “Protestant But Still French: West End Craftsmen during the Long Peace of 1713–1744.” The talk will be followed by a 6.30 concert, as Bloomsbury Baroque presents a musical celebration of David Garrick and his Huguenot connections.
Richard Goddard has published on his Huguenot ancestors, the Basire family as printmakers (2017), and on the Grignions as clock and watchmakers (2022); both studies are available as free downloads here.
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From Bloomsbury Festival:
Bloomsbury Baroque | Huguenot Music and David Garrick
French Protestant Church, London, 22 October 2026, 6.30pm
An evening of music by Huguenot composers with period instruments and readings of letters by David Garrick.
Bloomsbury Baroque will play a selection of music from the main Huguenot composers since their initial appearance in England during the seventeenth century to their established role in English cultural life in the late eighteenth century. We will focus on David Garrick’s work with musicians and connections to France to illustrate the changing place of this community within British life, with extracts from his letters read during the performance. Composers featured will include Nicholas Lanier, Peter Prelleur, and members of the Barthelemon family.
Members of Bloomsbury Baroque are active in a wide range of musical ventures, reflecting the diversity of London’s current early music scene, mirroring its eighteenth-century counterpart. The ensemble’s activities regularly include sacred music, theatrical productions, solo and chamber concerts, large-scale choral works, and music in taverns.
Philippa Hyde, soprano
William Summers, Baroque flute, recorder
Diane Moore, Baroque violin
Ibrahim Aziz, viola da Gamba, Baroque Cello
Yeo Yat-Soon, harpsichord
Concert tickets are available here»
Symposium | Strangers, Silk Weavers, and Citizens
From the Huguenot Museum in Rochester with tickets available via Eventbrite:
Strangers, Silk Weavers, and Citizens:
The Lives of Walloon and Huguenot Immigrants to England, 1560–1800
Huguenot Museum, Rochester, 30 September 2026
Coffee from 11am, with lectures from 11.30 until 4.30pm. Ticket prices include a buffet lunch; please let us know of any dietary requirements or allergies at least one week in advance by emailing admin@huguenotmuseum.org.
• The keynote speaker, Dr Vivienne Larminie, will consider the context of Huguenot immigration to England in the 16th and 18th centuries.
• Professor Jackie Eales will speak about new research on the Canterbury Walloon and Huguenot community, 1575–1800.
• Architect, Clive Bowley, will explore the topography of Canterbury silk weaving.
• Operations Manager Lara Dix will discuss the Museum’s collections.
• The day ends with an examination by Victoria Harley of a remarkable 18th-century silk waistcoat made by the Spitalfields designer and master weaver, James Leman.
New Book | Objects in Conflict
The papers grew out of the 2023 conference at the University of Regensburg. From Routledge:
Volker Depkat and Harriet Rudolph, eds., Objects in Conflict: The Material Culture of Intercultural Diplomacy, 1600–1830 (New York: Routledge, 2027), 348 pages, ISBN: 978-1032884691 (hardback), $234 / ISBN: 978-1032884691 (ebook), $55.
This book presents case studies that analyze the diplomatic uses and functions of robes, furniture, weapons, tools, jewelry, paintings, sculptures, books, food, and other material objects in early modern inter-cultural diplomatic encounters in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific world. Readers will gain insights into the material dimensions of early modern diplomacy and the cultural logics and diplomatic rationales of object use in a wide range of regional, political, and imperial contexts spanning the Habsburg Empire, France, Spain, the Ottoman Empire, British and French colonial North America, colonial Mexico, Hawaii, and the South Seas. Transcending the established topic of gift exchanges, the volume aims at an analysis of the overall material settings of early modern diplomatic encounters. With its clear temporal focus on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the source-driven case studies on concrete objects and object groups open multiple paths into the complexities of the early modern era as a formative phase in the history of diplomacy.
Volker Depkat is Professor of American Studies at the University of Regensburg, Germany. His recent publications include American Exceptionalism (2021), A New American Confederation: How German Federalism Inspired the US-Constitution (2024; co-authored), and Representations and Uses of the American Revolution in Past and Present (2025; co-edited).
Harriet Rudolph is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Regensburg, Germany. Her publications include Material Culture in Modern Diplomacy from the 15th to the 20th Century (2016; co-edited) and “Istanbul as a Collection Site: Cross-Cultural Networks of Knowledge in the Alba Amicorum of Ernst Brinck and Wolfgang Leuthkauff” in WissensWelten – Worlds of Knowledge (2026).
c o n t e n t s
1 Introduction — Volker Depkat and Harriet Rudolph
I | Where are the Objects? Tracing the Material Culture of Intercultural Diplomacy in European Collections
2 Exotic Gifts, On the Lobbying of Indigenous Elites to Influence European Colonial Policy: Selected Examples from around the World in European Museums — Viola König
3 Crafting Diplomacy: Extraordinary Embassies and the Programmatic Display of French Luxury Goods, 1662–1789 — Barbara Lasic
4 Immaterial Diplomacy: Dissimulating Muslim Embassies in Habsburg Spain — Rubén González Cuerva
II | Beyond Official Procedures: Individual Material Practices of Diplomatic Actors in a Transcultural Setting
5 Materialities, Spaces, Emotions: The Leuthkauff album amicorum as an Entangled Object and the Challenges of Researching the Material Culture of Diplomacy — Harriet Rudolph
6 Diplomatic Homes Abroad: Exploring Ottoman and Habsburg Relations through Furniture and Decoration in the Early Modern Period — Gamze İlaslan Koç
7 Material Culture and Practices of Friendship in Intercultural Diplomacy: A Case Study from Late Seventeenth-Century Istanbul — Christine Vogel
III | Material Procedures of Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in Imperial and Local Centers of Power
8 Gift Exchange, Marketing, and Memory: The Material Culture of the Moroccan Embassy to Vienna in 1783 — Mark Häberlein
9 The Stool, the Curtain, and the Robes of Honour: A Ludic and Material Reading of the Diplomatic Space at Baron Kuefstein’s Reception in Ottoman Hungary (1628) — M. Halef Cevrioğlu
10 Mere Container or Object of Intrinsic Value?: A Leather Wallet on Diplomatic Mission in the Ottoman-Habsburg Wars — Suraiya Faroqhi
IV | Frontier Objects: The Material Culture of Diplomacy on Imperial Peripheries
11 Textile Diplomacy: Tahitian Bark Cloth in the Age of Early Pacific Encounter — Anne Mariss
12 English Liquor, Indian Corn: Food Diplomacy and Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Haudenosaunee Relations — Markus J. Diepold
13 Objects, Power, and Anishinaabeg-British Diplomacy at Fort St. Joseph, 1796–1810 — Jonathan Quint
Call for Papers | New Horizons in American Art History
From ArtHist.net:
New Horizons in American Art History
Philadelphia, 15–16 April 2027
Proposals due by 15 December 2026
The field of American art history was only just emerging in 1976. The Bicentennial generated a series of ambitious and influential exhibitions, including Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art (Philadelphia Museum of Art), Two Centuries of Black American Art (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Selections of Nineteenth-Century Afro-American Art (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), American Art 1750–1800: Towards Independence (Yale University Art Gallery), and America as Art (National Collection of Fine Arts, now the Smithsonian American Art Museum). These shows and others asserted the vitality of American art, which, as one contemporary New York Times critic remarked, had previously been “widely condescended to in high places and often relegated to the storeroom.”
Fifty years on, American art’s position in the canon is secure but the shape and terrain of the field as defined by those exhibitions has shifted. Questions about the meaning of ‘America’ have only become more complex and urgent despite promises, at the Bicentennial, of a freer, more open, and more just future. What, then, is the state of American art history at the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, and what might the next fifty years bring? How have the exhibitions and publications inspired by the Semiquincentennial—including A Nation of Artists at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts—shaped our understanding of creativity in the United States? More broadly, how have methodologies or critical frameworks that have gained strength in recent decades—among them, materiality, ecocriticism, critical race theory, dialogues about ‘self-taught’ and ‘folk’ artists, the field’s hemispheric turn, post- and decolonial discourses, and Indigenous Studies—changed what it means to be an Americanist? What conversations are we having now, and which are still needed?
Toward that future, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, will convene a symposium for emerging scholars working on art—defined as all visual and material culture—of the Americas across every period and medium. Proposed papers should reflect on the current moment in scholarship, highlight new modes of inquiry, and/or propose creative approaches to teaching, interpreting, or exhibiting American art of all types. Interventions that are interdisciplinary in nature and/or that push the traditional boundaries of ‘American art’ are encouraged.
Submission Guidelines
• Current graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and scholars in the early stages of their careers (within 5–7 years of receiving their terminal degree) should submit abstracts of ca. 300 words as well as a brief curriculum vitae by 15 December 2026 to academicengagement@philamuseum.org.
• Proposals will be evaluated by a committee made up of staff from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Papers that are selected for the symposium will be grouped into panels to be moderated by mid-career and senior scholars in American art history. Presentations will have a maximum duration of 20 minutes.
• Applicants will be notified of the outcome of the selection process by mid-January 2027. Participants should plan to attend both days of the symposium and will have their travel and lodging expenses reimbursed.
Exhibition | Joshua Reynolds’s Portrait of Mai
Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Mai (‘Omai’), detail, ca. 1776, oil on canvas (Purchased jointly by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Board of Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, London, 2023).
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Now on view at The Getty:
Joshua Reynolds’s Portrait of Mai and 18th-Century Portraiture
Getty Center, Los Angeles, 15 September 2026 — 14 March 2027
This selection of painted and sculpted portraits by such artists as Gainsborough, Goya, and David explore the interplay of status, character, and identity in an age of global encounter. At its center is the US debut of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Portrait of Mai, a compelling painting of the first Polynesian visitor to Great Britain. Portrayed in a full-length format traditionally reserved for the European elite, this depiction of Mai subtly reconfigured the genre’s conventions.
Portrait of Mai was purchased jointly by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Board of Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, London, 2023. Support provided to NPG by the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund and other generous supporters.
The 2023 press release explaining the joint purchase is available here»
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