Call for Applications | Blue Paper Workshop
From ArtHist.net and the Blue Paper Research Consortium:
Blue Paper Workshop
Moulin du Verger, Puymoyen, France, 3–7 August 2026
Applications due by 15 April 2026
The Blue Paper Research Consortium (BPRC) is pleased to announce a five-day intensive workshop dedicated to the history and manufacture of handmade blue paper. Held at the Moulin du Verger, a working sixteenth-century papermill in the Charente region, near Angoulême, this workshop is a rare opportunity to bridge historical research with material practice. Participants will work alongside a team of specialists to explore pre-industrial papermaking and dyeing methods, drawing on years of interdisciplinary research into Western European blue paper.
This immersive program explores the manufacturing of Western European blue paper and its historical applications in European art. Participants will experiment with traditional techniques, preparing their own reference sheets with various coloring methods.
Objectives
• Discovering traditional Western European papermaking techniques
• Preparing blue dyes from natural colorants
• Identifying papermaking- and dyeing techniques from samples
• Exploring the applications of blue paper by artists in Europe (prints, drawings, pastels, books) before 1800
Cost: 1300 EUR (includes all workshop materials; excludes travel, dinner, and accommodation)
Capacity: Limited to 8 participants to ensure a high-quality learning experience.
Grant Opportunity: Supporting Diversity and Future Professionals
Through the generous support of the Tavolozza Foundation, we are proud to offer six full-tuition grants for the 2026 workshop. The BPRC and the Tavolozza Foundation are committed to ensuring that specialized knowledge in historical paper technology remains accessible to a broad and inclusive community. These grants are intended to support graduate students, junior professionals, and colleagues from under-resourced institutions.
The program aims to
• Expand Access to Specialized Knowledge: Provide emerging scholars and professionals with hands-on training in historical papermaking and dyeing techniques that are rarely accessible through conventional academic programs.
• Bridge the Resource Gap: Provide high-level professional development to those whose institutions may lack the funding for international specialized training.
• Empower Emerging Voices: Support the next generation of paper historians, conservators, and curators by providing direct access to master craftsmen and leading researchers.
• Enrich Scholarly Dialogue: Foster a diverse group of participants whose varied geographic, institutional, and cultural perspectives contribute to a richer exchange of ideas and research.
The grant includes full workshop registration (€1300 value) and daily lunch at the mill. Grant recipients are responsible for travel, accommodation, and dinners. To apply for the grant, please submit:
• Motivation letter explaining how the workshop will benefit your research or professional practice
• Curriculum vitae (maximum 2 pages)
Applications should be sent to Leila Sauvage (leila.sauvage@gmail.com) and Edina Adam (EAdam@getty.edu) by 15 April 2026. Please include ‘Blue Paper Workshop Grant Application’ in the subject line.
In addition to the funded places, two standard registration spots are available at the fee of €1300. Places are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Please contact Leila Sauvage and Edina Adam.
Call for Papers | Women Artists in Italy, 1607–Unification
From ArtHist.net:
Reframing Methodologies: Women Artists in Italy, 1607 to the Italian Unification
Sixth Edition of the Annual International Women in the Arts Conference (AIWAC)
University of Arkansas Rome Center, 15–17 October 2026
Proposals due by 30 April 2026
Following the two exhibitions Roma Pittrice: Artiste al lavoro tra XVI e XIX secolo (Rome, Palazzo Braschi, 25/10/2024 – 04/05/2025) and Donne nella Napoli spagnola: Un altro Seicento (Naples, Le Gallerie d’Italia, 20/11/ 2025 – 22/3/2026), this conference seeks to foster critical reflections on methodologies for the study of women artists. More than fifty years after Linda Nochlin’s seminal question, “Why have there been no great women artists?”, we aim to reassess and critically examine the current state of scholarship on women and gender in the arts.
We invite scholars to present papers addressing any aspect of women artists and their participation in cultural discourses from the early modern to the modern period. The goal is to reconsider and reframe methodological approaches within the discipline. While the field has made significant advances, it has also perpetuated certain narratives and myths that have shaped—at times uncritically—the rhetoric of feminist art history. This conference aims to interrogate these assumptions and to reassess the historiographical and philological foundations of the field.
The year 1607 marks a significant turning point: the Accademia di San Luca in Rome opened its doors to women for the first time, contributing to the professionalization of women artists. In the decades that followed, other Italian cities adopted similar practices. Alongside academies, artistic training was also provided through workshops, which functioned as de facto private academies. Although only a limited number of women were admitted to official institutions—such as the Accademia di San Luca, where women were documented as members from 1607, albeit excluded from life drawing and governance—many women accessed professional training through alternative structures. These included art schools founded by women artists themselves, such as Elisabetta Sirani’s school in Bologna and Virginia da Vezzo’s in Paris. Artemisia Gentileschi likewise maintained a workshop in Naples, where she trained her daughter Prudentia as well as several male artists.
Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
• Methodological approaches to the study of women artists (past, present, and future)
• Revisiting canonical narratives and persistent myths in feminist art history
• Archival, philological, and historiographical challenges in reconstructing women’s artistic production
• Women artists and artistic training: academies, workshops, and alternative pedagogies
• Professional networks, patronage, and mobility (local, national, and transnational)
• Women artists as teachers, workshop leaders, and agents of artistic transmission
• The role of institutions (academies, courts, convents) in shaping women’s artistic careers
• Gendered access to artistic genres (portraiture, history painting, still life, etc.)
• Women artists and the art market
• Self-representation, authorship, and artistic identity
• Women artists in relation to family workshops and dynastic practices
• Cross-cultural exchanges and the presence of Italian women artists abroad or expatriate women artists in Italy.
• The reception and historiography of women artists from the 17th to the 19th century
• Rethinking periodization: from early modern to modern frameworks
• Digital humanities and new tools for researching women artists
Selected conference papers will be published in the AIWAC Acta Colloquia post-print series, in collaboration with Brepols Publishers, following a peer-review process.
To submit a proposal, please ensure the following requirements are met:
• Abstract: Submit an abstract in English (Word format), with a maximum length of 500 words (excluding author name(s) and contact details).
• Short Biography: Include a brief biographical note of no more than 150 words.
• File Format and Naming: Save the proposal as a .doc file (PDF files will not be considered), using the following naming convention: AIWAC6_Surname.doc
• Curriculum Vitae: Include a short CV.
• Submission Method: Send all materials via email to clollobr@uark.edu and amodesti@unimelb.edu.au.
Submission Deadline: 30 April 2026
Notification of Acceptance: 18 July 2026
Presentation Format: Accepted papers will be allocated a maximum of 20 minutes for presentation.
Funding: Please note that the organizers are unable to provide financial support for travel and/or accommodation expenses for speakers or attendees.
Participation Fee: A conference participation fee will be required. Details regarding the fee will be communicated upon acceptance of proposals.
Notification Policy: Due to the high volume of submissions, only successful applicants will be notified.
Conference Venue and Format: The conference will take place at the University of Arkansas Rome Center and will feature a combination of selected paper presentations and keynote lectures.
Final Program: The complete conference program will be circulated by the end of September 2026.
AHRC Studentship | Sarah Sophia Banks (1744–1818)
From UCL:
Rediscovering a Woman Collector at the British Library:
New Sources and Perspectives on Sarah Sophia Banks
Supervised by Lucy Brownson, Elizabeth Shepherd, Felicity Myrone, Maddy Smith, and Alice Marples
Applications due by 14 April 2026
Angelica Kauffman, Portrait of Sarah Sophia Banks, oil on canvas, 49 × 40 inches.
It is intended that interviews will take place in person on Thursday 30 April 2026 at the British Library or UCL, but we will also offer online interviews for those unable to attend in person.
University College London (UCL) and the British Library are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative Doctoral Studentship from 1 October 2026 under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme. This research will examine the collecting, knowledge production, and documentary practices of Sarah Sophia Banks (1744-1818), one of the most important antiquarian collectors of her time. It will interrogate Banks’s holdings at the British Library and elsewhere from a critical archival perspective, exploring these dispersed collections—and the taxonomies she devised for them—as maps of the social, intellectual, and imperial networks she inhabited.
This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Lucy Brownson and Prof Elizabeth Shepherd at UCL Department of Information Studies (UCL:DIS), and Felicity Myrone, Maddy Smith and Dr Alice Marples at the British Library. The student will spend time with both UCL:DIS and the British Library and will become part of the wider cohort of AHRC CDP funded PhD students across the UK.
UCL and the British Library are keen to encourage applications from a diverse range of people, from different backgrounds and career stages, and particularly welcome those currently underrepresented in doctoral student cohorts.
The Research Project
Extensive materials collected by the antiquarian collector Sarah Sophia Banks (1744–1818) were divided at her death and are held across the British Library, Royal Mint, and Prints & Drawings and Coins & Medals departments at the British Museum. Varying institutional interests and practicalities have impacted their visibility, and the focus of scholarship to date has been on the holdings at the Museum and her prints and ephemera in nine albums in the Library (L.R.301.h.3-11). This studentship will explore the significant holdings that are yet to be explored at the British Library, revealing Banks’s own cross-format interdisciplinary knowledge taxonomy in detail for the first time.
Banks wrote catalogues of her own collections and kept notes regarding provenance, many of which have been overlooked to date. This project will use these sources to rediscover the full extent and original arrangement, purpose and source of Banks’s prints, drawings, ephemera, books and manuscripts, focusing on those at the British Library. The student will explore Banks’s networks of knowledge, methods of collecting, network of contacts, and her strategies and systems for categorising her visual and textual materials. The project asks larger questions around the role of women collectors, knowledge practices, collecting history and scholarship, the emergence of (male) expertise, disciplinary norms and museological frameworks in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the relative status of visual and textual knowledge. While her brother Joseph Banks’s collections as a whole and Sarah Sophia Banks’s collections beyond the Library have had sustained academic attention, her holdings at the Library remain largely underexplored. This project matches the recent full cataloguing of her collections at the Royal Mint and British Museum, facilitating cross-institutional research, and impacting practically upon reader access to and understanding of these materials and their provenance.
This project calls for an interdisciplinary approach encompassing critical archival studies, museum studies, and feminist historiography to interrogate the research questions outlined below. The successful candidate will be embedded as an archivist and researcher—or, to paraphrase Lynée Lewis Gaillet (2012), archivist-as-researcher—working to catalogue and research Banks’s holdings at the Library. This research-by-doing will enable the student to familiarise themselves with the collection and identify foci for this study, by selecting specific areas of Banks’s collections and reading them as local windows onto global histories of British colonial expansion (Evans, 2021). The student will be encouraged to explore creative ways of tracing and mapping Banks’s dispersed holdings across institutions, their multiple and parallel provenances, and what they can reveal about the social and political worlds through which Banks and her contemporaries moved. Case studies will contextualise and deepen analysis of Banks’s gendered collecting and will bring insights into the longer histories of the curatorial and archival practices that shape dominant paradigms of knowledge organisation today. Ultimately, the student will be encouraged and empowered to devise their own methodological framing and draw out original insights on how Banks and her collections intersect with gender, class, and empire.
Possible Research Questions
• How and when did Sarah Sophia Banks acquire her collections? What do her annotations reveal about her network and collecting practices in the 18th century? How do these names connect with the Banks collections beyond the Library?
• What do Banks’s collections reveal about the imperial, social, cultural and gendered dimensions of her life and the worlds through which she moved?
• What knowledge systems and material ordering practices did she employ? How did she order and construct her unique assemblages? What does this tell us about gendered ways of structuring collections?
• How did her collecting constitute a form of ‘worldmaking’, particularly given her and her family’s social and global networks and perspectives?
• What is the evidence for Banks’s knowledge of other collections (in Britain or abroad)? How did this impact on her own practices?
• How did the nascent professionalism of male collecting and museology in her lifetime affect her collecting?
• Is she quoting from her own (or her brother’s) copies of works in her notes and cross-references? Can we reconstruct her library as a whole? How much survives?
• Can we reconstruct how the collection was physically placed at home, and what does this reveal about its history, value, visibility and use? How might dispersed and mixed-media collections be represented and made visible intra-institutionally?
• What might a history of Banks’s collections reveal about the broader ontologies and taxonomies of knowledge that shape many of our cultural institutions today?
Benefits and Opportunities
The successful candidate will be registered with the Department of Information Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at UCL. UCL is London’s leading multidisciplinary university, ranked 9th in the 2026 QS World University Rankings and rated 2nd in the UK for research power in the Research Excellence Framework 2021. UCL:DIS is an international centre for research and teaching in the fields of archival studies, librarianship, publishing and digital humanities and is host to the Centre for Critical Archives and Records Management Studies (CCARM). The Department, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and the UCL Doctoral School all offer complementary programmes for research training and personal development for doctoral students. All doctoral students in UCL:DIS are enrolled on compulsory research methods and training classes in their first year to support their research plan development, writing skills, research ethics and appropriate research methods. These classes and other departmental activities support the research student cohort and individual research development.
At the British Library, the student will become part of a vibrant cohort of collaborative doctoral researchers and benefit from staff-level access to the Library’s collections, resources and in-house training and development opportunities. CDP students also benefit from a dedicated programme of CDP Consortium events delivered in tandem with the other museums, galleries and heritage organisations affiliated with the AHRC CDP scheme, designed to provide CDP researchers with the knowledge, networks and skills to thrive in their future careers.
This collaborative PhD studentship offers the opportunity to combine academic training with practice-based experience and research behind the scenes of a major cultural institution. The project offers a combination of sustained and systematic analysis of a dispersed collection with visual analysis, giving the student a broad knowledge of print history and artists, as well as a wider understanding of recordkeeping practices and systems such as scrapbooking, extra-illustration and commonplace books.
Given staff-level access to relevant holdings, the student will receive training in and gain hands on experience of handling, identifying, researching and cataloguing books, manuscripts, archives, and prints. They will catalogue using specially designed spreadsheets to create records which will then be ingested to the British Library’s main and archives and manuscripts catalogues. We will encourage the student to engage in supervised social media activity reflecting their discoveries. In contributing to blog posts, they will receive support and feedback regarding the use of social media tools and the development of writing skills, in accordance with Library guidelines and practice. They will also be encouraged to work with and potentially shadow colleagues in Conservation, Metadata, Digitisation, Western Heritage and Culture and Learning at the Library, gaining broad understanding of the history of the collections, and how they are being made more accessible through research, cataloguing, digitisation and display projects.
Details of Award
The PhD studentship can be undertaken on a full-time or part-time basis from 1 October 2026.
AHRC CDP doctoral training grants fund studentships for 4 years full-time or part-time equivalent (up to 7 years). AHRC CDP doctoral training grants also make provision of funding for student development activities to help the student extend their wider skills portfolio and improve their career prospects.
The award pays tuition fees up to the value of the full-time home UKRI rate for PhD degrees and UCL has agreed to waive the difference between the UK and overseas fees rate. International candidates will be required to reside in the UK until completion of the PhD. The indicative fee level for Research Council studentships for 2026/27 is £5,151. The award also pays full maintenance for all students, both home and international students. This stipend is tax free, increases slightly each year, and is the equivalent of an annual salary, enabling the student to pay living costs. The indicative UKRI Minimum Doctoral Stipend for 2026/27 is £21,383. An additional London Weighting allowance of £2000/year will be applied for this studentship. In addition, the successful candidate will receive a CDP maintenance payment of £600/year. Further details on UKRI funding for doctoral training can be found on the UKRI website.
In addition, the successful student will be eligible for an additional research allowance courtesy of the British Library, up to £1,000 per financial year or part-time equivalent, for the duration of the project.
Additional information is available here»
Lecture | Anne Lafont on Africaneries
From The Institute of Fine Arts:
Anne Lafont | Africaneries, or, Stylistic Dismemberment
Online and in-person, The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 22 April 2026, 6pm
Scroll of a viola da gamba, late 18th century, Italy (Paris: Musée de la musique, D.AD.23470).
The European Enlightenment invented a new exoticism from within the Rococo tradition. Informed by the craftsmanship, lines, and colors of the Far East, European artisans appropriated motifs, imitated them, and revived them in contexts of refined metropolitan luxury. A geography of taste thus emerged—one might even speak of a qualitative hierarchy of stylistic skills operating at the peripheries of European empires, which served as major suppliers of materials and decorative schemes for the applied arts in eighteenth-century Delft, Meissen, London, and Paris. At the heart of this cultural economy of sophisticated objects, one motif stands out: miniaturized and, in most cases, objectified Black figures. These are what I propose to call Africaneries—artworks whose cultural roots and formal qualities dissolved in the wake of the transatlantic slave trade, which accelerated the social and cultural death of Africans. My central question is this: how was the thread severed that once connected so-called African fetishes to the material culture of Black people in the Americas and, ultimately, to the decorative objects known as au Nègre in imperial Europe? In this experimental study, I attempt to restore the connections between these various objects of the early modern Black Atlantic.
Part of the Conversations in Modern European Art series.
Anne Lafont is an art historian and professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris (EHESS). She is interested in material culture and aesthetics of the Black Atlantic and researches notion of African art in historiography. In 2019, she published a book entitled L’art et la Race: L’Africain (tout) contre l’œil des Lumières (to be published in English by the Getty Institute in 2027: Art and Race: The African (up) against the Enlightenment’s Eye) and participated in the exhibition Le modèle noir de Géricault à Matisse (Musée d’Orsay). During the 2021–22 academic year, she was Clark Professor in Williamstown and was awarded the Iris Foundation Award by the Bard Graduate Center for outstanding mid-career scholar. With François-Xavier Fauvelle, she co-edited the book L’Afrique et le monde: Histoires renouées de la préhistoire au XXIe siècle (La découverte, 2022). Her latest book is a collection of articles published in Brazil: A Arte dos mundos negros: historia, teoria, critica (Bazar do Tempo, 2023). She is now researching circulations of African objects in early modern Europe at the time of slavery as their presence and reception gave grounding to the conceptualization of fetishism in Western humanities (to be published in 2027). Another book in the making addresses how the Black Lives Matter movement specifically impacted the politics of French Heritage.
New Book | Performance Costume in 18th-Century
From Bloomsbury:
Petra Zeller Dotlacilová, Performance Costume in 18th-Century France: Louis-René Boquet between Tradition and Reform (London: Bloomsbury, 2026), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1350531000, $120.
Petra Zeller Dotlacilová’s study examines the development of theatrical costumes in France during the long 18th century, including the abandonment of long-established traditions, the need to negotiate with the dictates of fashion, and the translation of new ideas into material practice. Using Louis-René Boquet (1717–1814)—the leading costume designer of the French court and the Paris Opera—as its lens, the book traces the development of costume reform from an aesthetics of propriety, defined by strict conventions, to an aesthetics of truthfulness, more open to ideas and inspiration from the visual arts and from real life. Full of rich primary source material in the form of newspaper articles, letters, plays, librettos, drawings and images of garments, and illustrated in full colour throughout, the author shows how playwrights, theatre managers, designers, tailors and performers all contributed to the changes in the design and conception of costume during the 18th century.
Petra Dotlacilová holds a PhD in Dance Studies from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Czech Republic, as well as a PhD in Theatre Studies from Stockholm University, Sweden. In her research, she specializes on European dance history and theatrical costume of 16th to 18th century. In particular, she explores aesthetic and material properties of costumes, international transfers in design and relations between garments and movement practices.
c o n t e n t s
Acknowledgements
Note on Translation
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Studying historical costume in performance
Boquet: between tradition and reform
Chapter 1 | Making of Costume for Performing Arts
Design Process at the French Court and the Opéra
Costumes at Comédie-Française, Comédie-Italienne and Opéra Comique
Self-fashioning at the Opéra: Designer vs the Soloists
Shaping Costumes According to Performing Arts and Gender
Chapter 2 | The Tradition, or the Aesthetics of Propriety
To Dress Properly: Social Norms of Clothing
‘Something rich and yet true to nature’: verisimilitude and the merveilleux
The Artistic Genres: Rules and Principles
Dressing the genres: French costumes for opera and ballet before Boquet
Breaking point: Expanding genres and fashions
The freedom of the fairground theatre and the Comédie-Italienne
Chapter 3 | The First Wave of Reform, or Towards the Aesthetics of Truthfulness
What is a ‘truthful costume’?
Les philosophes on costume and dress
The Reform in Practice: The problem of genre
Chapter 4 | Reform at the Opéra and the Court
Between the court and the fairground theatre: shepherds, peasants and Le Devin du village
Le Devin du village: a play with the appearances
First Greeks ‘correctly costumed in ancient style’ at the Opéra
Old Alceste in new clothes
‘Costumes of all ages and countries’
Chapter 5 | How to Dress Dance?
Development and diversity of dance techniques
Habit sérieux
Habit demi-caractère
Habit comique
Chapter 6 | Towards the Second Wave of the Reform, and Beyond
New fashions, new costumes: the triumph of simplicity
Boquet and Neoclassicism
Stage costume between nature and art
Glossary
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
Burlington Magazine Scholarship | French 18th-Century Art
The application period closes next Tuesday, from The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine Scholarship | French 18th-Century Fine and Decorative Art
Applications due by 31 March 2026
The Burlington Magazine is pleased to announce its ninth annual scholarship to provide funding over a 12-month period to those engaged in the study of French 18th-century fine and decorative art, enabling them to develop new ideas and research that will contribute to this field of art historical study.
Eligibility
Applicants must be studying, or intending to study, for an MA, PhD, post-doctoral or independent research in the field of French 18th-century fine and decorative arts within the 12-month period the funding is given (i.e. September 2026 – August 2027). The funding is open to UK and international applicants.
Research funded by this scholarship may lead to the submission of articles for publication in the Magazine: as such, the panel are looking for object related research, of the kind that the Burlington publishes.
Support and Duration
£12,000 is awarded to one recipient per year and applies to a 12-month period. Payments are made in Pound Sterling. Payments of £3,000 are normally made on a quarterly basis, with the first payment being disbursed within one month of the recipient being formally notified that they have been awarded the scholarship. Some flexibility in the payment schedule can be made, with prior approval, depending on the recipient’s circumstances. Before payment can be made, the recipient must have formally accepted the grant. Any unspent funds at the end of the grant period must be returned to The Burlington.
Eligible costs
• Travel and subsistence costs
• Book costs related to the research
• Image costs related to the research
• Facility/museum/archive access costs or related fees, such as photocopying
Cost NOT allowed
• Travel or registration costs for conference/meeting/workshop/training attendance, collaborative visits, or any training.
• Computer costs, unless it is a dedicated cost that is essential to the proposal and the importance has been clearly justified within the application.
• Any staff costs, whether personal payments (including salary) to the applicant or to other individuals including overseas collaborators, postgraduate, doctoral students and for other members of staff.
• Membership costs to any association(s)/organisation(s)
• General journal subscription costs
Key Dates
The start date of successful applications should be at the beginning of the academic year (generally September). Earlier start dates will be considered for independent scholars or post-doctoral research. The closing date is Tuesday, 31 March 2026. The successful applicant will be notified by 29 May 2026.
Application Procedure
Applicants must provide
• CV
• Description of project/research (no longer than 2 pages of A4)
• Budget
• Proof of Institution you are attending/will attend – if applicable
Applications can only be submitted via email. All application documents must be submitted in PDF or Word document (.docx) format and emailed to scholarship@burlington.org.uk. Shortlisted candidates will be contacted and asked to provide two references for further review by the Selection Panel. All correspondence should be conducted in English.
Monitoring the Award
Grant recipient(s) will provide two reports:
• The first, to be submitted six (6) months after receiving notification of the grant, is an interim written report to the panel on the status and progress of their research. It should be no less than 2-pages of A4 paper, in English.
• The second is a final report to submitted no later than two months after the grant comes to an end. The written report will consist of no less than 2-pages of A4 paper, in English, summarising the results of the research, as well as the spending allocation of the funds received. The recipient will also provide a copy of the thesis or independent research document or publication when it is completed.
Award Acknowledgement and Logo
We ask all award-holders to acknowledge our support in any publicity, conference or workshop talks, promotional material or publications associated with the research funded by The Burlington Magazine. Logos can be provided upon request.
Enquiries
If you have any enquiries about the submission of your application, please contact us at scholarship@burlington.org.uk.
Previous Recipients
2025 Ane Cornelia Pade (University of Cambridge)
2024 Pierre Marty (University of Toronto)
2023 Geoffrey Ripert (Bard Graduate Center)
2022 Alexander Dencher (Leiden University)
2021 Raha Shahidi (University of Sydney)
2020 Axel Moulinier (École du Louvre / University of Bourgogne)
2019 Aurora Laurenti (University of Turin)
2018 Konrad Niemira (University of Warsaw)
Haughton Seminar | Courtly Magnificence
Imperial Wine Cups: Gold Cups of Eternal Stability 金甌永固杯, 1740–41 (Qing dynasty, Qianlong period), gold, kingfisher feathers, pearls, sapphires, spinels, tourmalines, carnelian, quartz, chrysoberyl, lapis, turquoise, ivory, mother of pearl and wood; 18 cm high, including stand (London: Wallace Collection, W112 / W113).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
This year’s Haughton International Seminar:
Courtly Magnificence: Gender, Dynasty, and Politics
The British Academy, 11 Carlton House Terrace, London, 24–25 June 2026
Addressing topics ranging from the royal courts of the Middle Ages to those of the 20th century, this seminar will look at how some of the world’s greatest art collections were formed. It will explore how political intrigue and power were involved in their accumulation and how the personalities of these royal collectors—women as much as men—were reflected in their collections.
Two-day seminar: £140
Two-day seminar including a champagne reception and dinner at The Athenaeum on Wednesday, 24th: £230
Student tickets for two-day seminar (on production of ID): £60
p r e s e n t a t i o n s
• Silvia Davoli — Thinking outside the Court: Horace Walpole, Prince of Strawberry Hill
• Lisa Skogh de Zoete — A Family Network of Collectors: Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, Christina of Sweden, and Hedwig Eleonora of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp
• Mia Jackson — Madame de Pompadour: Love, Friendship, and the Arts
• Rose Kerr — Collections of the Forbidden City
• Tim Knox — China Queens: 20th-Century Royal Collectors of Porcelain
• Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth — Our Ceramic Chasse’: The Exceptional Legacy of Lady Charlotte Schreiber
• Lara Virginie Pitteloud — An Imperial ‘Gluttony’: Art Collecting and the Self-Fashioning of Catherine II’s Court
• Ivan Day and Timothy Schroder — Service a la Francaise
• Christopher (Kit) Maxwell — Staging the Past: The Thorne Miniature Rooms and the Theatre of Historic Interiors
• Timothy Wilson — The Earliest Royal Maiolica Commission: The Service for Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and His Wife Beatrice of Aragon
• Catriona Seth— Virtuous Circulations? Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette’s Family Portraits
• Claudia Wagner — Collecting Intaglios: Princes as Scholars
Call for Papers | Art as Luxury, Luxury as Art
From TIAMSA:
Art as Luxury, Luxury as Art: Markets and the Making of Value
The International Art Market Studies Association Conference
Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York, 22–24 October 2026
Proposals due by 29 May 2026
Luxury has long been an important context for art. In sixteenth-century Antwerp, art was a key part of the city’s thriving luxury trade; Our Lady’s Pand—the first permanent art market in Europe—was one of several panden that served these new industries. In eighteenth-century Paris, marchands-merciers such as Edme-François Gersaint sold paintings, drawings, and engravings alongside porcelain, lacquer, jewelry, and shells. At the turn of the twentieth century, the dealer Joseph Duveen not only cultivated in his American industrialist clients a taste for Old Master painting but also promoted European furniture, tapestries, and objets d’art, staging these works in lavish period rooms in his New York gallery to underscore their sumptuousness.
Art has likewise provided a crucial context for luxury. In Belle Époque Paris, Paul Poiret—the designer who arguably created fashion’s first modern lifestyle brand—used art to elevate his enterprise, enlisting artists to create textile designs and sponsoring an avant-garde art gallery. “The designer is, by definition, an artist in luxury,” he wrote. Today’s luxury fashion houses follow Poiret’s model, integrating artworks into their retail spaces, establishing their own art foundations, and developing products in collaboration with artists. Eschewing the labels ‘luxury’ and ‘fashion’, they recast themselves as ‘cultural brands’. At the same time, art businesses situate themselves ever-more explicitly within the luxury sphere. In 2019, Sotheby’s auction house reorganized into two divisions—fine art and luxury—and in 2021, Christie’s revised its website to identify itself as “a world-leading art and luxury business.”
The tenth annual TIAMSA conference focuses on the relationship between the art and luxury markets, both historically and in the contemporary moment, examining their points of intersection, their reciprocal influences, and the ways in which each has shaped—and defined itself in relation to—the other.
Proposals may consider (but are not limited to) the following themes:
• The evolving definitions of ‘art’ and ‘luxury’ over time, and the shifting status of the applied and decorative arts.
• The relative value of art vis-à-vis luxury and the influence of industrialization.
• Historical figures and businesses associated with the art market who also dealt in luxury objects.
• Historical figures and businesses in luxury fields—such as fashion and jewelry—who aligned themselves with fine art.
• Modes of display and sale across art and luxury, historically and today.
• Contemporary art businesses that increasingly rely on the sale of luxury objects, or that adopt sales and marketing tactics from the luxury sector.
• The conditions that historically led auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s to specialize in fine art—and that more recently have driven their expansion into luxury categories.
• The ‘artification’ of luxury as a business strategy, from artist-brand collaborations to art-filled retail spaces.
• The phenomenon of luxury brands establishing their own art museums, staging pop-up art exhibitions, and transforming their flagship stores into museum-like spaces.
• Art museum exhibitions focused on luxury brands, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1983 Yves Saint Laurent exhibition, the Guggenheim’s 2000 Armani show, and the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Alexander McQueen, Dior, and Cartier exhibitions.
• Luxury’s role in expanding the definition of art, including collaborations with artists on NFTs.
• How the values of luxury are shaping art and vice-versa.
We welcome proposals from scholars at all career stages and from a variety of disciplines, including art market studies, luxury studies, art history, economic history, fashion studies, museum studies, cultural sociology, business history, and other related fields.
Please submit an abstract (no more than 300 words) and a short bio by Friday, 1 May 2026, using this form: https://forms.office.com/r/Husr007JDz
Successful papers will be notified by 29 May 2026. For inquiries, please contact tiamsaconference@sia.edu.
New Book | Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s
From The University of Chicago Press:
Marc Stein, Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2026), 416 pages, ISBN: 978-0226847412, $30.
As the United States marks its semiquincentennial in 2026, renowned historian Marc Stein looks back at the politics of another landmark celebration during a time of striking similarities and surprising differences: the US bicentennial in 1976. In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, the bicentennial sparked an extraordinary national conversation about the country’s past, present, and future. As patriots, planners, profiteers, and protesters argued about how to commemorate the national birthday, they collectively reimagined the promises and perils of democracy during a transformational decade.
From award-winning historian Marc Stein, Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s is an original, illuminating, and insightful study of that era. While focusing on festivities and fights in Philadelphia, the nation’s birthplace, the book also explores the many proposed and abandoned celebrations that percolated up around the country. It tells a broadly democratic story of both the ‘official’ bicentennial and counter-bicentennial activism, offering revolutionary perspectives on national politics, social movements, and popular culture. From the queer courtship of President Richard Nixon and Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo to parades and protests with millions of participants, and from a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease at Philadelphia’s most prestigious hotel to the establishment of groundbreaking African American, ethnic, and Jewish museums, the bicentennial reveals a kaleidoscope of American peculiarities, problems, and possibilities. The lasting influence of 1976 on one of the nation’s great urban centers and the United States as a whole is undeniable. As the nation—once again enmeshed in political and social upheaval—marks its two-hundred-fiftieth birthday in 2026, there is no better time to look back at its two-hundredth and marvel at what has changed, and what has not.
Marc Stein is the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Professor of US History and Constitutional Law at San Francisco State University. He is the 2026–27 president of the Organization of American Historians and director of the OutHistory website. His previous books include City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, Sexual Injustice, Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement, The Stonewall Riots, and Queer Public History.
c o n t e n t s
Introduction
1 The Queer Courtship of Richard Nixon and Frank Rizzo
2 The Rise and Fall of Five Bicentennial Plans
3 The ‘Do-It-Yourself’ Bicentennial
4 Ford to Bicentennial City: Drop Dead
5 ‘We Are the Bicentennial’
6 ‘Freedom’s Way—U.S.A.’
7 Philadelphia Renaissance
8 Happy Birthday, USA
9 Let Freedom Ring
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Exhibition | Unrelenting: Cherokee People and the American Revolution
From the press release for the exhibition:
Unrelenting: Cherokee People and the American Revolution
Museum of the Cherokee People, Cherokee, North Carolina, 17 March — 30 December 2026
Curated by Dakota Brown, Brandon Dillard, and Evan Mathis
On 17 March 2026, the Museum of the Cherokee People (MotCP) opened Unrelenting: Cherokee People and the American Revolution, a first-of-its-kind exhibition centering Native voices, perspectives, and creativity in response to the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. The exhibition features historic objects in conversation with works by Cherokee artists, merging cultural heritage, military history, and contemporary art for a nuanced examination of a pivotal moment in Cherokee and American history.
“As a sovereign nation and the tribal museum of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, we are so pleased we can present this self-funded, independent exhibition from a Cherokee perspective,” says Executive Director Shana Bushyhead Condill (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians).
With research beginning in 2022, the exhibition’s curators—MotCP Director of Education Dakota Brown (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians), MotCP Director of Collections and Exhibitions Evan Mathis, and guest curator Brandon Dillard (Cherokee Nation), Director of Historic Interpretation and Audience Engagement at Monticello—sought Cherokee accounts of the American Revolution (1775–1783) and the Cherokee American War (1776–1794), highlighting the complexities of memory and commemoration.
“For those of us from the South, memory is inscribed on the landscape in countless ways that are so naturalized that they feel omnipresent,” says Dillard. “Most people drive by roadside markers commemorating long-forgotten battles every day. We pass statues in public squares, learn and work in buildings named after complicated and often fraught people, and we partake in rituals commemorating historical events. But how often do most people sit around and actually talk about those events?”
In addition to showcasing historic objects, including weapons, adornments, and archival materials, MotCP invited Cherokee artists to create new works in response to historic treaties and documents from the Revolutionary era. Ranging in medium from spoken word songs to paintings to beadwork, these contemporary creative expressions “make it impossible for the viewer to put us, as Cherokee people, in the past,” says Condill.
As the nation commemorates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Unrelenting’s curators aspire to spark conversation about American identity and sovereignty among visitors of all walks of life, sharing new research in the first exhibit about Cherokees in the American Revolution by Cherokee scholars.
“Because American nationalist mythology pretends like Native people belong in the past, our contemporary existence contradicts the dominant memory and commemorative landscape of the United States,” says Dillard. “With Unrelenting, we just wanted to invite people to think about some of those things and recognize how complicated it all is…and most importantly, to welcome complexity when thinking about the past.”
Curators
Dakota Brown (EBCI), Brandon Dillard (Cherokee Nation), and Evan Mathis
Featured Artists
Joshua Adams (EBCI), Beth Anderson (Cherokee Nation), Karen Berry (Cherokee Nation), Martha Berry (Cherokee Nation), Anagali Shace Duncan (Cherokee Nation), Keli Gonzales (Cherokee Nation), Aaron Lambert (EBCI), Robert Lewis (Cherokee Nation, Navajo Nation, Apache), Louwana Jo “ᏍᎩᎵᎡᏆ” Montelongo (EBCI), Paula “Qualla” Nelson (EBCI), Isabella Saunooke (EBCI), Laura Walkingstick (EBCI), Tara White (Cherokee Nation), Alica Murphy Wildcatt (EBCI)
Enfilade 
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