Call for Papers | CAA, 2027, New York
I’ve highlighted here only a selection of CAA panels related to the eighteenth century; so, please consult the Call for Papers for additional possibilities. –CH
115th Annual Conference of the College Art Association
Hilton Midtown, 3–6 February 2027
Proposals due by 31 August 2026
All at Sea: Art and Open Water in the (Long) Eighteenth Century (ASECS)
Chairs: Elisabeth Rivard (University of Virginia) and Dani Rebecca Ezor (SUNY New Paltz)
This panel takes inspiration from what literary scholar Steve Mentz has termed the ‘blue humanities’, or human engagement with the world’s oceans. The challenge is for scholars to center the seas as a dynamic force rather than a passive surface between land or nation-based borders. Historically, the long eighteenth century was marked by efforts to survive or even control the open oceans. ‘All at sea’ meant leaving the sight of land and entering open water. The vast waterways of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans provoked numerous responses from artists and writers, ranging from wonder, indifference, terror, fascination, and opportunism. These sensibilities linger in the second quarter of the 21st century, as the majority of ocean environments remain unmapped and unexplored.
Here, we turn our attention to human-centric attempts to engage with the open seas and oceans, in any dimension or media in visual culture of the long eighteenth century. Papers are invited to explore real or imagined confrontations with the ‘high seas’ and ‘deep water’, whether close to or far removed from the coasts in either direction. Topics may include but are not limited to movements of people and objects, depictions of oceans, and marine material culture. We encourage submissions that consider or contrast Euro-American-centric perspectives with timelines, knowledge, and practices from global cultures and welcome all papers that broadly address visual and/or material culture in the long eighteenth century.
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Assessing Cause, Assigning Responsibility: Responses to Human and Natural Disaster before 1800
Chairs: Sofia Hernandez (Princeton University) and Ashton Fancy (Princeton University)
From earthquakes to sieges, structural collapse to flooding, disasters—whether natural or human-engineered—reshape the built environment. Recent scholarship in disaster studies has expanded our understanding of how catastrophe was experienced in the pre and early modern worlds. This panel builds on such work to ask how natural and human-made disasters might differently transform architecture and urbanism? Foregrounding the relationship between causation and reconstruction, we ask how the origin of destruction—seismic, environmental, military, or technological—shapes the material and spatial responses that follow. What forms of repair, adaptation, or redesign emerge from these distinctions? Post-disaster interventions are never neutral: they are shaped by material limitations, local knowledge, and competing political priorities, and often encode judgments about responsibility and blame. Natural disasters may be framed as acts of God or environmental inevitabilities, while warfare or infrastructural failure more readily invite attribution and accountability. Such distinctions may leave materially legible traces.
Bringing together cases before 1800, this panel examines how societies have historically responded to—and differentiated between—forms of destruction. By foregrounding architecture as a practice shaped by instability and constraint, this session also speaks to the renewed urgency of building amid ongoing environmental risk and uncertainty. We welcome contributions that address: architectural survival or collapse during disasters; comparative approaches to the impact of manmade and natural disasters on material culture; approaches to reconstruction, urban redesign, and their cultural or political significance; disastrous interactions between natural forces and built environments; comparative perspectives across different periods or regions.
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British Art In and Out of Fashion (Historians of British Art)
Chairs: Lindsay Wells (UCLA) and Courtney Tanner Wilder (Vanderbilt University Museum of Art)
British art production, as well as its study within the field of art history, has been subject to sporadic periods of fashionability. At present, British art—or the idea of it, in any case—is having a pop culture moment, from the reimagined Georgian society of Bridgerton to the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic of Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl. Yet British art itself has just as frequently fallen out of fashion, both in popular media and academic scholarship. This panel invites papers that propose new ways of engaging with the waxing and waning of British art’s fashionability, broadly conceived. What insights can an emphasis on fashions bring to our current understanding of British art, and what might such a focus obscure? How have fashions across the arts shaped the representation of Britain’s national and imperial identity? What roles have trends, crazes, tastemakers, and revivals played in the production of British art and its critical reception? How have fashions in dress and design historically intersected with those in the fine arts? Why are Britain’s colonial entanglements essential to understanding the fashionability of British art in different contexts? Papers might also examine moments during which British art contributed prominently to the development of art history as a discipline or, alternatively, moments when British art was notably unfashionable in the academy. Other potential subjects include the reception of British art in popular culture, film, and contemporary art. Abstracts for 15-minute papers on these or related topics are warmly welcomed.
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Napoleon’s Suppression of the Venetian Scuole: Their Historic and Artistic Legacy
Chair: Diana Gisolfi (Pratt Institute, Pratt in Venice)
Napoleon’s decree of 1806 suppressed the ‘scuole’ or confraternities of Venice, large and small. Combined guild, charity and devotional society, the scuole were central to the life and economy of the Republic. Their membership comprised virtually all workers. Carpenters, goldsmiths, butchers, shoemakers, silk-weavers, merchants etc, each of over 200 scuole had statutes and a site for devotion. Sites ranged from one altar to a building with boardroom and two large halls. The scuole grandi had formed in the Middle Ages for devotion and had grown in wealth. Scuole members participated in processions on feast days; processional banners depicted patron saints.
Napoleon’s decree disrupted Venetian society. Confraternities’ property, from altarpieces to buildings, was confiscated, movable items sent to Paris or sold on the art market, a few select objects reserved for the new Accademia. Venetian regret for this loss of patrimony engenders ongoing efforts for recovery. Two scuole buildings were exempt and survived with decorations intact: Scuola Grande di San Rocco and Scuola Dalmata. Some others’ sites have been revived, with changed decorations or virtual installations. Some remaining sites of scuole are identified and purloined works traced.
This session invites papers that study Venice’s confraternities, their histories, their patronage, their displaced patrimony, and their roles in the world of Venice. Papers might attempt to identify works from a particular scuola, or study the specific charitable role of a confraternity in relation to surviving descriptions of an iconographic program.
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Painted Statuary and Statue Paintings in the Global Iberian World (Society for Iberian Global Art)
Chairs: Jessica Weiss (Metropolitan State Univ of Denver) and Ilenia Colón Mendoza (Univ of Central Florida)
In the global Iberian world (1400–1800), painted statuary and statue paintings functioned as sophisticated tools of devotion, illusion, and aura transfer. This not only included polychromed three-dimensional objects but also grisaille, trompe l’oeil, and polychrome techniques that were used to represent painted statues in two-dimensional images. From fresco cycles to altarpieces, sculptures were clearly chosen as a communicative device, but to what end? Was it to showcase the skill of the painter or did it convey a deeper meaning? For example, statue paintings that depicted miraculous images of sculptures with great attention to detail could, by extension, become miraculous images themselves. In this case sanctity becomes transferable. This panel seeks to explore this topic further by asking considering the function of painted statuary within the context of ‘traditional’ painting. Were there overlaps in artistic techniques between creating two-dimensional images of sculpture and sculptural polychromy? How are the statues presented with regard to the picture plane? And what does evidence reveal about their use? Was it possible for paintings, which were transported to distant territories, to provide sculptural substitutes? Ultimately, the relationship between sculpture and painting is at the forefront of the discussion of painted statuary as we seek answers to these questions. This panel invites scholarship on painted statuary and statue paintings created in the global Iberian world from 1400 to 1800.
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Proxy Nature: Specimens, Images, and the Mediation of the Nonhuman
Chairs: Benjamin Pollitt (University of Queensland) and Shing-Kwan Chan (Princeton University)
At the heart of this panel is a deceptively simple question: what is the relationship between a specimen and its image, its trace, or its reproduction? As scholars have long noted, specimens—whether fossils, preserved plants, or taxidermy—are not only scientific objects, but forms that invite imaginative reconstruction. They require interpretation and speculation, even as they remain profoundly artificial. In this sense, the notion of the ‘proxy specimen’ may be something of a tautology: the specimen itself is already a proxy, a mediated form that stands in for a once-living organism that can no longer be fully present. If this is the case, then the images and objects that follow the specimen are not secondary or derivative, but part of the same representational process. Drawings, prints, photographs, and cabinets of natural history do not simply mirror nature, they extend, translate, and transform it, shaping how it is understood, classified, circulated, and valued. What might it mean, then, to bring the tools of art history to bear on the specimen itself?
With particular attention to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—a period of intensified collecting and imperial expansion—the panel situates specimens and their proxies within networks of extraction, circulation, and labour. It considers how these forms shaped aesthetic and epistemic categories such as beauty, vitality, and classification. By repositioning the proxy as fundamental rather than secondary, this panel reframes natural history as a visual and material practice in which life is not simply preserved, but actively reconstituted.
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Shine, Shimmer, and Sheen: Surface Effects and Material Thinking in the Early Modern World (HECAA)
Chairs: Carole Nataf (CASVA, National Gallery of Art) and Cynthia Kok (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
What did it mean for early modern objects to catch the eye? Art history has long privileged line and color as categories of artistic analysis, yet the visual impact of artworks often depended just as much on surface effects. From the shine of silver and gold and the shimmer of silk and tapestries to the gloss of lacquer, the brilliance of porcelain, and the iridescence of mother-of-pearl—or the opacity of earthenware and wool—reflective effects shaped how art, objects, and people were seen, valued, and understood. These qualities were produced not only through finishing techniques such as polishing or glazing, but also through the manipulation of pigments, dyes, binders, and other materials across media.
How did makers manipulate and conceptualize reflective effects such as shine, shimmer, sheen, translucency, iridescence, or brilliance across media? What cultural or symbolic meanings did these reflective effects impart to objects? How might attending to surface effects reframe canonical art historical narratives? What roles did pigments, dyes, and surface treatments play in producing reflective effects?
We welcome papers addressing the social, gendered, and racial stakes of surface. Shine could signify luxury, splendor, and conspicuous consumption, but it also raises questions of ephemerality, artifice, and race. Materials such as porcelain, lacquer, or silver participated in circuits of global trade, colonial exchange, and racialized values of whiteness and blackness. Panelists are encouraged to reflect upon the politics of surface and visibility. As Krista Thompson has shown, shine can be understood as the art of being socially seen.
Williamsburg Historical Dress Symposium | Well Suited
From Colonial Williamsburg:
Symposium on Historical Dress | Well Suited: The Work of the Tailor, 1640–1840
Online and in-person, Colonial Williamsburg, 5–7 November 2026
In-person registration due by 16 October; virtual registration due by 7 November
The 2026 symposium, Well Suited, examines the tailor’s trade, convening an international group of historians, curators, tailors, makers, designers, and scholars to explore the history, craft, and cultural significance of tailoring from the eighteenth through nineteenth centuries. Presentations examine military dress, enslaved and working-class clothing, women in the tailoring trade, international fashion exchange, reconstruction methods, and the technical practices of historical garment making, alongside broader themes of identity, labor, and colonialism.
Keynote presentations by Mark Hutter (Master Tailor, Colonial Williamsburg) and Tom Mahon (Tailor and Head Cutter, Redmayne) offer reflections on the evolution of tailor traditions and the enduring role of the tailor’s craft.
Military and martial dress emerge as a major theme throughout the program. Steve Baule examines the role of military tailors in British regiments in colonial America, while Matthew Keagle explores evidence of tailoring practices embedded in eighteenth-century military clothing. Tim Logue traces the influence of Central European Hajduk, Pandour, and Hussar dress on fashionable menswear, and Zack Pinsent investigates the origins, symbolism, reconstruction, and rediscovery of the Windsor Uniform. International and diplomatic wardrobes are further explored by Timothy Long and Gabriella de la Rosa in a new study of George Washington’s black velvet jacket at Sulgrave Manor.
Several presentations examine tailoring within systems of labor, enslavement, and colonial exchange. James J. Broomall considers the relationship between ready-made clothing and slavery in “The Fabric of Enslavement,” while Kathrin Breitt Brown studies garments produced for enslaved workers at Mount Vernon. Laura Beltrán-Rubio reimagines the colonial Andean tailoring trade through Indigenous research methods, and Michael Weil explores tailoring along the Spanish frontier in colonial Texas. Together, these lectures illuminate tailoring’s role within global systems of trade, empire, and labor.
The symposium also highlights tailoring as a deeply personal and local craft shaped by records, surviving garments, and workshop practice. Kirsten Hammerstrom analyzes a Philadelphia tailor’s ledger from 1763 to 1773 to reveal patterns of alteration, repair, and identity formation, while Henry Cooke uses the William Waine papers to reconstruct working-class clothing production and commercial life in colonial Boston. Brenda Rosseau traces three generations of the Figgatt tailoring family across Maryland and Virginia, and Michael Ramsey examines the overlooked business of making Scottish plaiding hose.
Technical reconstruction and experimental making form another important focus of the symposium. Rowan Brenzie reconstructs an 1820s men’s coat to study period drafting systems and fashionable silhouette, while Wilson LeCount and Emma Cross present new research into the construction of leather breeches. Kristen E. Stewart investigates John Randolph’s buckskin breeches, and Margaret Perry with E. Katherine Hargrove reconstruct mid-eighteenth-century orthopedic stays through experimental archaeology and embodied practice.
Questions of gender, fashion communication, and women’s participation in tailoring are addressed in several talks. Chloe Chapin examines nineteenth-century tailor’s plates as tools for advertising and codifying masculinity, while Hannah Rumball-Croft explores tact, touch, and propriety in relationships between male tailors and female clients. Karin J. Bohleke and Nicholas Sekela revisit the career and influence of nineteenth-century tailoress Amanda Jones, whose innovative drafting systems challenged assumptions about women’s labor and authorship within the trade.
Together, these presentations demonstrate the richness of tailoring history as a field that bridges material culture, social history, technical skill, and embodied practice, offering new perspectives on the makers, wearers, and meanings of clothing across the Atlantic world and beyond.
Conference | New Republic, New Worlds
From Colonial Williamsburg:
New Republic, New Worlds
Fifth and final meeting of the ‘For 2026’ Project
Williamsburg, 23–24 October 2026
Hosted by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, and William & Mary
The American Revolution forged a new nation out of thirteen British colonies, triggering a host of predictable and unexpected consequences. This conference will explore the novel circumstances, challenges, and opportunities of the transitional era that followed victory in the War for American Independence. What were the fresh constitutional and political structures fueled by the Revolution, and what were the possibilities in play then and after? How were families, communities, boundaries, and environments changed in the new era? What were the ambitions of this new nation, and what do we now know about how diverse communities assessed its prospects? How did the various peoples within its borders and beyond respond to this new moment?
New Republic, New Worlds, the final meeting of the five-year For 2026 project, brings into conversation scholarly and public-facing research exploring the far-reaching effects of the American Revolution. It will take place October 23–24, 2026, at the William & Mary School of Education and at Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia. Daytime programs will take place on the campus of William & Mary and throughout the Historic Area of Colonial Williamsburg, with two evening plenaries open to the public with no pre-registration required. Full conference registration information will be available by September.
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e v e n i n g p l e n a r i e s
The Friday and Saturday evening plenaries are free and open to the public. Seating will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, and the recorded programs will be available online on both William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg supported pages following the event.
Ronald Johnson | Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and
Atlantic Diplomacy during the American Revolution
Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, 23 October 2026, 5pm (doors open at 4:30)
Dr. Ronald Angelo Johnson is the 2026–2027 Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the American Antiquarian Society and the Ralph and Bessie Mae Lynn Professor of History at Baylor University. He is the author two books: Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy during the American Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2025) and Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance (UGA Press, 2014). He co-edited the volume In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World (UGA Press, 2021). His current book manuscript We Are All Equal: Turmoil and Triumph in the Early United States and Revolutionary Haiti is under contract with Princeton University Press.
Kathleen DuVal | The American Revolution and the Survival of Native Nations
Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, 24 October 2026, 5pm (doors open at 4:30)
The American Revolution brought unprecedented challenges to Indigenous lives, land, and sovereignty in North America. Yet we can also tell the past 250 years of Native history as the story of surviving the creation of the United States. Focusing on Native history can help us put the American Revolution in the longer context of North America’s long past, present, and future.
Dr. Kathleen DuVal is the Carl W. Ernst Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and the author of Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, and the Cundill History Prize. Her other books include Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent, and the U.S. history textbook Give Me Liberty!, co-authored with Eric Foner and Lisa McGirr. DuVal has published in the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Early Republic, The Atlantic, Time Magazine, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. She also appeared in the recent Ken Burns film, The American Revolution.
New at Williamsburg | Campbell Archaeology Center
The center opened earlier this year; from the press release (17 April 2026) . . . .
The Colin G. and Nancy N. Campbell Archaeology Center opened to the public on Saturday, April 25. The center boasts 40,000 square feet of collection, research, and education space dedicated to advancing archaeological research and deepening public engagement with Williamsburg’s rich history. Visiting the Campbell Archaeology Center is free and open to the public. Once the center is fully operational, visitors can immerse themselves in archaeologists’ daily work, including behind-the-scenes views of the laboratories and other facilities that help researchers uncover new aspects of Williamsburg’s—and America’s—history.
“We believe Colonial Williamsburg will be able to offer a one-of-a-kind experience,” said Jack Gary, associate vice president of Historic Resources and Kahler family director of Archaeology at The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. “So much of what we do as archaeologists goes unseen by the public. With the opening of the Campbell Archaeology Center, visitors will have the opportunity to engage with our process after we discover artifacts in the field and bring them into the lab for further examination.”
In addition to experiencing Colonial Williamsburg’s ongoing archaeological projects, visitors can view a selection of the Foundation’s extensive collection of artifacts on display throughout the center.
“Archaeology has played a pivotal role in Colonial Williamsburg’s first 100 years, from the discovery of many of the buildings that were recreated to recent revelations that enable us to learn about our nation’s history,” said Ron Hurst, Colonial Williamsburg’s chief mission officer. “The Campbell Archaeology Center brings our archaeology right to our visitors, allowing us to showcase our community-engaged approach and educate in a way we’ve never been able to do before.”
This tin-glazed earthenware basin, circa 1760, was excavated from the Thomas Everard House site. Virginia Royal Gov. Robert Dinwiddie was an investor in the Delftfield Pottery of Scotland where it was produced.
The Campbell Archaeology Center is unique in that it is dedicated solely to archaeology. Among the many highlights:
• An early 18th-century brick foundation viewed through a glass floor — The foundation of a building constructed around the time of the founding of Williamsburg was discovered by Colonial Williamsburg archaeologists and incorporated into the design of the new center.
• Wall of Wonder — A wide variety of more than 80 artifacts found in and around Williamsburg, including wine bottles, ceramics, and other items that show everyday life in 18th-century Williamsburg.
• Follow the ‘Squabbit’ — Is it a squirrel, is it a rabbit? It’s a ‘Squabbit’ (inspired by an artifact) that visitors can follow from lab to lab, helping them learn what happens as an artifact goes from the ground to washing to identification to analysis.
Colonial Williamsburg is the birthplace of historical archaeology, a subfield of archaeology that uses material culture to understand the development of the modern world. Decades of archaeological work in the Historic Area have resulted in one of the world’s largest archaeological collections of 17th-through-early-19th-century artifacts from colonial America. In addition to providing expanded storage facilities to properly steward this collection, the Campbell Archaeology Center includes classrooms, exhibition space, and a public archaeology teaching lab with room for visitors and community members to physically engage with artifacts.
“Even though Colonial Williamsburg has 100 years of artifacts, nearly 70% of the Historic Area has not been excavated in a modern way, meaning we have so much more to uncover and learn from,” Gary said. “This center enables us to be good stewards of the materials we excavate. What we have here—and will continue to unearth—is a national treasure, and now, we can provide the community with an emotional connection to our shared history.”
The Campbell Archaeology Center is one of the Foundation’s signature projects commemorating America’s 250th anniversary in 2026. The building, designed by the architecture firm of Clark Nexsen, will join several new sites on Nassau Street to help create a major visitor corridor to the Historic Area. The site of the Williamsburg Bray School, one of the earliest institutions dedicated to Black education in North America, opened to the public in 2025, and the African Baptist Meeting House, one of the first Black church congregations in the nation, will be dedicated in October 2026. Nearby, the Custis Square excavation site offers a self-guided tour that explores the life and opulent gardens of plantation owner John Custis IV.
Funding for the Colin G. and Nancy N. Campbell Archaeology Center was provided in part by a lead gift from the late Forrest E. Mars. Jr., former Colonial Williamsburg trustee and longtime donor, who chose the name in honor of the Campbells’ service to the institution. Colin Campbell, a chairman emeritus of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation who passed away in 2024, served as the organization’s president and CEO from 2000 to 2014, during which time he expanded the Foundation’s educational programs and increased its endowment. Nancy Campbell is chair emerita of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Together, the couple received The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s prestigious Churchill Bell Award in 2014.
Glass Gallery at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery Reopens
Now back on view at Bristol:
Elisa Ricci, “Refreshing the Glass Gallery,” Bristol Museum & Art Gallery News
(17 July 2026).
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery holds a world-class collection of glass, spanning from ancient times to the present day. The gallery has just reopened, having been refurbished using the existing display cases wherever possible, alongside the addition of a new case showcasing Roman, Persian, and Egyptian glass from the Bomford Collection. This three-year project has given new life to a gallery that had been affected by leaks and other structural issues. The redisplay features over 510 objects from the museum’s glass collection, including exciting new acquisitions such as works by Chris Day. The gallery also offers new interactive experiences, with digital displays, tactile objects, and opportunities to explore a range of topics connected to Bristol’s history. These include the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved African people, the working conditions of Bristol’s glassworkers in the 18th century, and the environmental impact of glass production.
We are deeply grateful for the support of the Friends of Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives, Giles Woodward, Bristol Museums Development Trust, the generous bequest of Sylvia Coppen-Gardner through the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society and Linda Wilson and Graham Mullan, all of whom helped make this project possible.
Elisa Ricci is Curator of Applied Art at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
Exhibition | Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier: Rococo Goldsmith
Covered Tureen on Stand (Pot-à-oille), 1735–38, designed by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier and made by Pierre-François Bonnestrenne and Henry Adnet, silver (The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1977.182).
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Opening in October at The Cleveland Museum of Art:
Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier: Rococo Goldsmith in Focus
The Cleveland Museum of Art, 25 October 2026 — 14 March 2027
Curated by Ada de Wit
Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier (1695–1750) was the most revolutionary forerunner of the Rococo style in the decorative arts. Multitalented with entrepreneurial skills, he worked for the French court and European nobility. Considered a genius goldsmith by his contemporaries, he was also a prolific designer and aspiring architect, seamlessly maneuvering between media and disciplines.
Born and trained in Turin, Italy, Meissonnier moved to Paris around 1715 to advance his career, although the conservative guild of Parisian goldsmiths made it practically impossible for newcomers to register as masters and open their own workshops. Meissonnier’s ambition, creativity, and determination in pursuing his desired career path are apparent from his work and limited biographical information and continue to resonate today.
Few of Meissonnier’s works survived political upheavals; the most celebrated is a silver tureen in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, made for the Duke of Kingston. A striking sculpture rather than a functional object, the tureen epitomizes the Rococo style with its movement, asymmetrical design, fluid unity of form and ornament, and elements inspired by nature. The tureen has recently undergone scientific analysis, which has provided new insights into its sophisticated creation process.
The catalogue is distributed by Yale UP:
Ada de Wit, ed., with additional contributions by Michèle Bimbenet-Privat, Beth Edelstein, Peter Fuhring, Alexandre Gady, and Colleen Snyder, Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier: Goldsmith, Designer, and Architect (Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2026), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-0300282306, $50.
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From the press release for the recent acquisition of a snuffbox (7 May 2026) . . .
Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, Gold Box, 1728–29, gold and lapis lazuli, 3 × 8.3 × 5.2 cm (The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2026.12).
The Cleveland Museum of Art has acquired an extraordinarily rare gold snuffbox made in Paris in 1728–29 by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier. Of exceptional art historical importance, the box is one of only five known objects in precious metals firmly associated with Meissonnier to have survived the political upheavals of subsequent centuries, during which works in gold and silver were frequently melted down. For many years, it was the only known work bearing the maker’s mark of Meissonnier, until the 2019 discovery of his mark on a gold mount for a rock crystal ewer belonging to Marie Antoinette, now in the Louvre. The snuffbox is distinguished as a work executed by Meissonnier himself, without the involvement of other master goldsmiths.
This acquisition significantly strengthens the museum’s Meissonnier collection and will play a central role in Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier: Rococo Goldsmith in Focus, an exhibition of the artist’s work, which opens at the CMA in October 2026. Notably, the object has never before been displayed in a museum.
“This important acquisition reinforces the museum’s standing as one of the world’s leading collections of 18th-century French decorative arts,” said the CMA’s Sarah S. and Alexander M. Cutler Director William M. Griswold. “It also strengthens our position as a preeminent center for the study and appreciation of Meissonnier’s work.”
“Meissonnier’s box is one of the most sophisticated works of art in our collection, whose extraordinary qualities can be fully appreciated only through close, in-person looking,” said Ada de Wit, the Ellen S. and Bruce V. Mavec Curator of Decorative Arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art. “This remarkable acquisition further enhances the CMA as a destination for both scholars and the broader public.”
The snuffbox was acquired through a private sale facilitated by the auction house Christie’s. The deputy chairman of Christie’s Department of European Furniture and Works of Art, Will Strafford, said: “We have a long and proud history of private sales to storied institutions such as the Cleveland Museum of Art and we are thrilled that this sublime masterpiece of the decorative arts has gone to such a worthy home; I have no doubt that this work amazes and delights visitors to the museum for generations to come.”
This Meissonnier box has long been regarded as among the finest of its kind and described as “an object in a class of its own.” It stands out from others due to its superior design and execution, the strong sense of movement achieved by its dynamic contour, its extraordinary level of detail, and the dramatic contrast of its gold and lapis lazuli materials. Together, these qualities position the box at the pinnacle of Meissonnier’s artistic achievement.
Small, ornate boxes such as this were used to hold snuff tobacco and functioned as highly personal luxury objects that conveyed the owner’s wealth, refinement, and social standing. Often exchanged as prestigious gifts, they were among the most sophisticated expressions of craftsmanship and design in 18th-century Europe.
The snuffbox also carries an important royal and modern history. It was made for the dowager Queen of Spain, Maria Anna of Neuburg, and bears her coat of arms alongside that of her late husband, Charles II. During World War II, it was looted by the Nazis from the collection of Parisian collector David David-Weill. The object was restituted to him in 1946 after passing through the Munich Central Collecting Point, administered by the Allied Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program.
Exhibition | These Truths: The Declarations of Independence
Now on view:
These Truths: The Declarations of Independence
American Philosophical Society Museum, Philadelphia, 10 April 2026 — 3 January 2027
These Truths: The Declarations of Independence explores how Americans used and reproduced the document during the first fifty years of its history.
At first it served as a pronouncement of news, later a political tool, and then transformed into a national symbol. The creation of the Declaration was a process, not an event, and its story is more complex than assumed. The many copies of the Declaration in the exhibition offer a reminder that the Declaration’s ‘truths’ were never static and each era reevaluated their meaning.
These Truths draws on the APS’s extensive Library and Museum holdings. Highlights of the exhibition include a first printing of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the chair Thomas Jefferson sat in while writing the Declaration of Independence, John Binns’ 1819 printing of the Declaration, and William James Stone’s 1823 printing of the Declaration.
Distributed by Penn Press:
David Gary, Emily Sneff, and Patrick Spero, These Truths: The Declarations of Independence (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society Press, 2026), 100 pages, ISBN: 9781606181744, $30.
Call for Submissions | Metropolitan Museum Journal
Metropolitan Museum Journal 62 (2027)
Submissions due by 15 September 2026
The Metropolitan Museum Journal publishes articles and research notes that contain original research on works of art in The Met’s collection. Works from The Met collection should be central to the discussion. Articles contribute extensive and thoroughly argued scholarship—art historical, technical, and scientific—whereas research notes are narrower in scope, focusing on a specific aspect of new research or presenting a significant finding from technical analysis, for example. The maximum length for articles is 8,000 words (including endnotes) and 10–12 images, and for research notes 4,000 words (including endnotes) and 4–6 images.
The process of peer review is double-anonymous. Manuscripts are reviewed by the Journal Editorial Board, composed of members of the curatorial, conservation, and scientific departments, as well as scholars from the broader academic community.
Articles and research notes in the Journal appear in print and online, and are accessible in JStor on the University of Chicago Press website. The deadline for submissions for Volume 62 (published in December 2027) is 15 September 2026. Submission guidelines are available here. Please send materials, as well as questions, to journalsubmissions@metmuseum.org.
New Book | The A–Z of Georgian London and Its Environs, 1746–47
From The London Topographical Society:
Sheila O’Connell and Laurence Worms, eds., with an introduction by John Montague, a checklist of Rocque’s London maps by Ashley Baynton-Williams, and an index by Roger Cline, The A–Z of Georgian London and Its Environs: John Rocque’s Maps, 1746–1747 (London: The London Topographical Society, 2026), 207 pages, £23.
This publication reproduces at about fifty per cent actual size John Rocque’s two great maps of London in the 1740s: the 24-sheet Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster and Borough of Southwark and the 16-sheet Exact Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark with the Country near ten Miles round.
John Montague’s introduction tells the complex story of the development of the maps, incorporating new information on Rocque’s early life courtesy of Sandra Robinson. Roger Cline has produced an index of 6000 place names, over 250 places of worship, and sixty-four estates outside the urban centre.
New Books Network Podcast | City of the Gallows
Many of you will already know about the New Books Network, but if not, this conversation between Meredith Gamer and Kelsey Brosnan is a fine introduction! As described by the Wikipedia entry for the network:
The New Books Network (NBN) is a podcast network featuring interviews with scholars, researchers, and writers about their new books. Most of the books the NBN covers are non-fiction and published by university or independent scholarly presses. The mission of the NBN is public education. The NBN is the largest book-focused podcast enterprise in the world. It features over 130 ‘organic’ author-interview podcasts (“New Books in…”) produced in-house and over 100 ‘hosted’ podcasts produced by university presses, academic institutes, and scholars. The NBN publishes 70 episodes per week and has published over 30,000 episodes to date, all of which are permanently accessible for free on the NBN website. The NBN reaches 200,000 listeners monthly; those listeners download approximately one million episodes each month. . . .
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From the NBN website:
Podcast | Meredith Gamer, City of the Gallows, hosted by Kelsey Brosnan on the art channel of the New Books Network (27 July 2026), 62 minutes.
Meredith Gamer, City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2026) uncovers the complex and often unexpected connections between eighteenth-century London’s sites of punishment and its spaces of art-making, instruction, and display. Drawing together a wide range of images, objects, and texts—from popular woodcuts and anatomical sculptures to moral tracts and dictionaries of slang—it offers new readings of works by major artists, such as William Hogarth, Johan Zoffany, and Joseph Wright of Derby, and shines a light on others that traditional accounts of the period have overlooked or ignored. In doing so, this book shows how state violence shaped the art and visual culture of this era, whose legacies persist to this day.
Kelsey Brosnan is an art historian specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French art. Her book on the still-life painter Anne Vallayer-Coster was published by Lund Humphries and Getty Publications in 2026.
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