The National Trust Takes on Rules, London’s Oldest Restaurant
Paintings, drawings and caricatures adorn the walls at Rules Restaurant
(National Trust Images/Megan Taylor)
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Rules, a Covent Garden institution since 1798, becomes the first restaurant safeguarded by the National Trust, though the Trust is already responsible for 39 pubs. From the press release (14 October 2026) . . .
The home of a beloved London institution once frequented by Charles Dickens and Charlie Chaplin has been secured for the future as its owner, J-P Mayhew, has donated the building and its collection to the National Trust. 34-35 Maiden Lane houses Rules, London’s oldest restaurant that has stood at the heart of British cultural life since 1798. The remarkable gift will protect the building and its historic collection and ensure its stories can be shared with new generations. The ongoing charitable income that is part of the gift will go into vital conservation work each year.
Rules began as an oyster house when it was first opened by Thomas Rule and quickly grew to become the gathering place of 19th and 20th-century luminaries. In its 228 years, it has seen the reign of 10 monarchs and the service of over 40 prime ministers. Now the Covent Garden building will be cared for on behalf of the nation, after the generous gift to the National Trust by its owner of 40 years, J-P Mayhew.
Hilary McGrady, Director-General of the National Trust, said: “This place is an outstanding piece of living history, with its corners where kings dined and writers and politicians plotted, and the traditions it kept alive through wars and upheaval. It has defied the odds to be standing here today, doors still open and treacle sponge still on the menu.
“Mr Mayhew’s extraordinary generosity, and the care he has poured into Rules over many decades, mean this beloved place has a future measured not in years but generations. His gift ensures that one of London’s great living institutions will remain part of the city’s cultural life, with all its stories, traditions, and character intact.”
The building at 34-35 Maiden Lane is a rare example of living heritage where both the historic structure and its original use remain intact. The interior is exceptionally well preserved and has seen more than two centuries of continuous restaurant operation. Rules is also the last survivor of a group of renowned London restaurants, which included the Trocadero Restaurant, the Mirabelle, and Le Gavroche.
Rules’ list of famous diners is extensive—from King Edward VII who would rendezvous with his mistress at the restaurant, to writers, artists and thinkers including Laurence Olivier, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin, Ava Gardner, Dame Vera Lynn, and Liza Minnelli. In more recent years, Harrison Ford, Madonna and David Bowie have dined there.
There are rooms named after John Betjeman, who gave an impassioned speech in defence of the restaurant when Maiden Lane was at risk of redevelopment, and Graham Greene, who ate there every year on his birthday and featured it in his novel The End of the Affair. The plate that inspired the line “Is it possible to fall in love over a dish of onions?” was on the menu for many years.
Today, the restaurant business is owned by Ricky McMenemy, who has worked at the restaurant for 35 years, and will now become a commercial tenant of the National Trust. The annual rent will provide income for the charity and will be used to support its vital work.
J-P Mayhew, who has donated the building to the Trust, said: “There are few restaurants in the world that have endured the test of time like Rules. With many years of hard work, and some extraordinary strokes of luck, it has survived everything from redevelopment plans and changing tastes to the Blitz. When John Betjeman defended Rules from the GLC’s plans to turn the Strand into a dual carriageway in 1971, he spoke not only of the paintings, sculptures, stained glass, and red plush seats, but of its ‘invisible atmosphere’.
“My gift to the National Trust is in answer to that appeal. The Trust will protect this place in a way that no-one else could, safeguarding its bricks and mortar, its famous interior and its invisible atmosphere too. I am grateful to them for believing in this idea and for protecting this building and two centuries worth of stories for people to enjoy forever.”
The gift also includes historic collection items that tell the rich cultural history of Rules. These include visitor books, menus, caricatures, photographs, stained glass, and signs that reflect the personalities, conversations, and traditions that have shaped the restaurant over time.
Since the 19th century Rules has maintained the tradition of English ‘country house’ cuisine—surviving the privations of World War II and rationing, when much of it was lost in Britain. Its culinary customs have been maintained by head chefs, many of whom have developed prominent careers and been influential in the promotion of English cuisine.
The Trust cares for 39 historic pubs, which continue to operate today, including the George Inn in Southwark and the Crown Bar in Belfast. 34-35 Maiden Lane will be the first building in the Trust’s care to house an historic restaurant that is still in operation.
Ricky McMenemy, Proprietor of Rules Restaurant, said: “We are delighted the National Trust has taken ownership of 34-35 Maiden Lane, home to Rules Restaurant for over two centuries. As an independent business, it gives us both the security and peace of mind that our home will be in very good hands and be protected and secure going forward. Having already established a very amicable working relationship with the Trust, we look forward to another two centuries in this, our home.”
The move comes at a time when many iconic central London buildings are at risk from redevelopment pressures and economic challenges.
Conference | James Cahill’s Legacy and Global Art History
From ArtHist.net:
James Cahill’s Legacy and Global Art History
China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, 17–18 October 2026
James Cahill (1926–2014) was born on 13 August 1926, in Fort Bragg, California. Now, at the centennial of his birth, tensions between globalization and anti-globalization, as well as the shifting landscape of cross-cultural studies and writings in art history, provide a very different academic context from that which Cahill experienced. And yet, telling the story of Chinese visual art to the world, promoting the studies of Chinese art in a globalizing age, just as Cahill had done with deep belief in the universal value of traditional Chinese culture, even in his sufferings from severe illness in his later years, would be meaningful both intellectually and practically, that is why his memory still deserves our remembrance on this occasion at China Academy of Art Hangzhou where he regarded as his hometown in China.
The full event announcement can be found here»
s a t u r d a y , 1 7 o c t o b e r
8.30 Opening Ceremony
Moderated by Dong Jie (China Academy of Art)
9.15 Panel 1
Moderated by Fan Baiding (China Academy of Art)
• Hong Zaixin (University of Puget Sound) — James Cahill at One Hundred
• Richard Vinograd (Stanford University) — James Cahill and the Landmarks of Chinese Painting History
• Ding Ning (Peking University) — The Depth of Gaze: James Cahill’s Legacy in Art History and Visual Rectification in the Social Media Era
• Julia White (University of California, Berkeley) — The James Cahill Legacy: Paintings from the Ching Yuan Chai Collection
10.35 Coffee Break
10.55 Panel 2
Moderated by Sheng Tianye
• Yin Jinan (Central Academy of Fine Arts) — The International Context, Linguistic Medium, and Visual Medium of Writing the History of Twentieth-Century Chinese Art
• Zhang Jie (China Academy of Art) — Stones from Other Hills: James Cahill and the Cross-Cultural Dialogue of Chinese Painting Studies
• Zhang Jian (China Academy of Art) — Cross-Fertilization and Confluence: James Cahill’s Vision of Global History of Visual Art
• Julia Andrews (Ohio State University) — James Cahill’s Pedagogical Strategies of the Mid-Late 1970s: Art History or Sinology?
12.15 Lunch Break
13.30 Panel 3
Moderated by Kong Lingwei (China Academy of Art)
• Sarah Fraser (Heidelberg University) — Beyond Forgery: Copying, Archaeology, and Canon Formation in Zhang Daqian’s Dunhuang Project
• Yu Hui (the Palace Museum) — James Cahill and An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings: Tang Sung Yuan
• Pang Huiping (Hangzhou Normal University) — In Cahill’s Eye: The Hu Gui Hunting Albums Reattributed
• Jane DeBevoise (Asia Art Archive in America) — Making History: From Shadows of Mt. Huang to China 5000 Years and Beyond
14.50 Coffee Break
15.15 Panel 4
Moderated by Lan Youli (China Academy of China)
• Chen Fong Fong (Hong Kong Baptist University) — The Luofu Dream Reimagined: Pictorial Interpretations by Gao Jianfu and His Sino-Japanese Contemporaries
• Mei Yutian (China Academy of Art) — ‘Bi-Mo’ (Brush-and-Ink) as a Cognitive Structure: A Reconsideration of James Cahill’s ‘Style as Idea’
• Huang Xiao (Beijing Forestry University), Shanshan Liu (Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture) — From Garden Paintings to Garden Heritage: The Heritage Value of James Cahill’s Studies of Chinese Garden Painting
• Zhang Fanying (China Academy of Art) — After ‘Ice-Breaking Trip’: American Art and Archaeology Delegation Visiting China in 1973 and the Turning-point of the Scholarship of Chinese Art History Overseas
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9.00 Opening of James Cahill and China Academy of Art: An Exhibition of Donated Books and Documents
Moderated by Lan Youli (China Academy of Art)
9.20 Guided Tour and Exhibition Viewing
9.50 Book Launch of the Second Volume of James Cahill’s Lecture Series Gazing into the Past: Scenes from Later Chinese and Japanese Painting
Moderated by Zhao Wei (Peking University)
10.30 Premiere of the Documentary Gazing into the Past: The Unbounded Vision of James Cahill
Moderated by Kong Xiangwen (China Academy of Art)
10.50 Documentary Screening
11.40 Lunch
Exhibition | Tapestries of Guillaume Werniers and Catherine Ghuys
I’m sorry for not earlier noting this exhibition, which closed on Sunday (there was also a conference in April 2025). –CH
Wool and Silk Treasures: The Tapestries of
Guillaume Werniers and Catherine Ghuys in 18th-Century Lille
Musée de l’Hospice Comtesse, Lille, 29 April — 11 October 2026
Curated by François Bertrand and Hélène Lobir
L’exposition Trésors de laine et de soie. Les tapisseries de Guillaume Werniers et Catherine Ghuys à Lille au 18e siècle, fera découvrir pour la première fois un fonds de tapisseries exceptionnelles du musée de l’Hospice Comtesse et du Palais des Beaux-arts de Lille.
Le musée de l’Hospice Comtesse et le Palais des Beaux-arts ont la chance d’abriter des fonds uniques de tapisseries du 18e siècle. Ces tapisseries évoquent le grand passé textile de Lille, qui connaît à l’époque un fort essor économique. La Manufacture Werniers était l’une des plus importantes du Nord de l’Europe.
Monumentales, ces tapisseries nécessitaient des mois de fabrication. Arborant différents thèmes et motifs, dont de fameuses scènes champêtres, elles constituaient des objets de luxe et d’apparat, prisés par les aristocrates, la nouvelle bourgeoisie, ou encore, les communautés religieuses. Leur présentation promet donc d’être spectaculaire. Grandes, fragiles, complexes à exposer en raison de leur poids et de leur sensibilité à la lumière, ces tapisseries ont fait l’objet d’une importante restauration, subventionnée par la DRAC des Hauts-de-France, de 2023 à 2026. Cette exposition permettra de les dévoiler dans tout leur éclat originel, mais aussi de partager l’actualité de la recherche sur ces textiles rares.
Guillaume Werniers (avant 1688–1738), d’origine bruxelloise, reprend en 1701 la manufacture de tapisseries que son beau-père Jean De Melter (actif à Bruxelles depuis 1675-1701) avait fondée à Lille une douzaine d’années plus tôt. Employant jusqu’à cinquante ouvriers textiles, Werniers répond à des commandes locales (États de Flandre, églises et couvents) et se spécialise dans la production de tapisseries représentant des scènes de la vie quotidienne dans le goût du peintre flamand David Teniers II (1610–1690), appelées des « Ténières » et destinées à une riche clientèle internationale.
À sa mort en 1738, sa veuve Catherine Ghuys (1701–1778) prend la direction de l’entreprise jusqu’en 1778. Associée durant une courte période à Pierre Pannemaker ou Pennemaker (vers 1703-après 1738) qui avait été formé par Werniers pour lui succéder, Catherine Ghuys a assuré seule la prospérité de la manufacture pendant une quarantaine d’années. Dans l’histoire de la tapisserie, elle compte parmi les rares femmes à avoir dirigé une fabrique pendant une aussi longue période. Aussi la notion de matrimoine lillois sera-t-elle pleinement explorée à cette occasion, au regard de son parcours.
Imaginé autour de six grandes sections, le parcours de l’exposition présente un ensemble inédit regroupant une trentaine d’oeuvres, en faisant dialoguer les tapisseries avec des oeuvres et documents de mise en contexte : livre de compte, métier à tisser, peintures et céramiques, pour remettre en contexte la Manufacture Werniers, et donner à comprendre le processus de production de ces tapisseries. Le travail exceptionnel de restauration de ces tapisseries sera mis en lumière tout au long du parcours d’exposition.
Cette exposition a été portée par un partenariat entre le musée de l’Hospice Comtesse et l’École nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Lille (ENSAPL). Les étudiants encadrés par Hélène Marcoz, artiste-maîtresse de conférences, ont ainsi assuré la conception du parcours muséographique, en lien avec les équipes du musée.
Trésors de laine & de soie: Les tapisseries de Guillaume Werniers et Catherine Ghuys à Lille au XVIIIe siècle (Lille: Éditions Invenit, 2026), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-2376801603, €25.
Conference | ‘Civilizing’ the World
From ArtHist.net and the conference website:
‘Civilizing’ the World: Classicism, Neo-Classical Sculpture, and Plaster Casts in
the Service of Imperial Powers and Post-Colonial Elites, 1780–1945
Online and in-person, Warburg Institute, University of London, 16 and 21–23 October 2026
Organized by Eckart Marchand, Katherine Harloe, and Amy Smith
This conference explores the uses of Greco-Roman and neo-classical sculpture and architecture by European colonial powers to express and consolidate their power, at home and abroad, and the continuation and adaptation of these strategies in elite nation-building in many former colonies, post-independence. Speakers from across the world will discuss the roles classical and neo-classical art fulfilled globally, addressing the deployment of classical visual culture in the service of self-presentation and as a means to dominate indigenous, subaltern and settler populations. Taking in the history of five continents, the conference is designed to bring out historical differences as well as continuities, putting existing, geographically focused approaches and global frameworks of postcolonial analysis to the test.
‘Civilizing’ the World is organized by Dr Eckart Marchand (Warburg Institute), Professor Katherine Harloe (Institute of Classical Studies, University of London), and Professor Amy Smith (Department of Classics, University of Reading). The conference is generously supported by the Henry Moore Foundation, Institute of Classical Studies, John Coffin Memorial Trust, University of Reading Department of Classics and School of Humanities, University of Reading and British Museum Partnership Joint Development Fund, Dino and Raffaello Tomasso, UK, Classics Beyond Borders (University of Cambridge) and the Leventis Foundation, University College London
Booking information is available here»
f r i d a y , 1 6 o c t o b e r
Online
10.50 Welcome by Flora Dennis (Deputy Director of the Warburg Institute) and the conference organizers
11.00 Session 1 | The Representation of Imperial Power and its Discontents
Chair: Katherine Harloe
• Polina Malova (4th-year undergraduate, National Research University, Moscow) — Classical Faces of Empire: Rochette and Catherine II’s Southern Program
• Logan Douglas (PhD student, St Andrews) — The Beit Bequest and the Artifice Underpinning Settler Colonialism
12.00 Break
12.10 Session 2 | Classicism in the Philippines and Japan
Chair: Amy Smith
• Geronimo Cristobal (PhD cand, Cornell University) — The Small Museum of Empire: Plaster Casts and Artistic Formation in Colonial Manila
• Shinya Araki (Lecturer, Tama Art University, Japan) — The Uneven Acceptance of Western Art in Different Regions of Japan
13.10 Break
14.00 Session 3 | Representing State and Nation in the Post-Colonial Americas
Chair: Amara Thornton
• Mauricio Oviedo (Ass. Prof., Universidad de Costa Rica and Leonardo Santamaria Montero, PhD cand., Cornell University) — Allegories of America: Indigenous Representation, Transatlantic Artistic Networks, and Nation-Building Narratives in 19th-Century Central America
• Victoria Jiménez (PhD cand., University of Barcelona) — Civilizing through Copies: Classical Replicas, ‘Mamarrachos,’ and the Visual Politics of Nation-Building in 19th-Century Chile
15.00 Break
15.15 Session 4 | Shaping the Citizen and the Other
Chair: Maria Golovteeva
• Joseph Albanese (Ass. Prof., DePauw University, Indiana) — The Seductive Lie of Classical Pagan Sculptures in Colonial Peru
• Katie Margerison (MA, Tulane University) — Moral Bodies, Secular Virtues: Educación Física and the Idealized Citizen in Post-Revolutionary Mexico
16.15 Final Discussion
w e d n e s d a y , 2 1 o c t o b e r
Online and in-person, University of London, Senate House
18.00 Welcome — Flora Dennis and Katherine Harloe
18.15 Evening Session | Curatorial Perspectives on Colonial Casts and Mould Taking
Chair: David Saunders
• Eder Ignacio Arreola Ponce (Curator of the Sculpture Collection, Faculty of Art and Design, Academia de San Carlos, UNAM, Mexico City) — Neoclassicism in America: The Sculpture Collection of the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico. History, Provenance, and Tracing of a Dispersed Collection
• Iffat Azeem (Senior Research Officer, Lahore Museum) — An Empirical Curatorial Insight into the Ethnographical Heads of Schlagintweits, 1854–1858
• Veronika Tocha (Curator, Gipsformerei, SMK, Berlin) — Plaster Casting and/as Cultural Appropriation: The Politics of Reproduction
t h u r s d a y , 2 2 o c t o b e r
Online and in-person, University of London
9.40 Welcome and introduction — Bill Sherman (Director of the Warburg Institute) and Eckart Marchand (Warburg Institute)
10.00 Session 1 | Mexico
Chair: Claudia Zehrt
• Daniel Sobrino Ralston (CEEH Associate Curator of Spanish Paintings, National Gallery, London) — ‘Estatua digna del griego afamado’: The Plaster Cast Collection of Mexico City’s Academia de San Carlos, 1783–1803
• Elizabeth Fuentes Rojas (Prof., UNAM, Mexico) — The Continuing Influence of Neoclassicism in Mexican Altarpieces: A Symbiosis of Sculptors and Architects
• Delia Cosentino (Prof., DePaul University Chicago) — ‘Por no ser traidor a su patria’: Tlahuicole and the Making of a Mexican Spartacus
11.15 Coffee
11.45 Session 2 | Central and South Americas
Chair: Rebecca Levitan
• Maite Álvarez (Project Specialist, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles) — Classical Ideals in the Amazon: The Drawing Academy and Artistic Civilization in the Late 18th Century
• Joseph Hartman (Ass. Prof., University of Missouri-Kansas City) — Queen, Poet, Republic: The Classical and Colonial Formations of Cuban National Identity
• Edgar Ulloa (Ass. Prof., Universidad de Costa Rica) — Rethinking Post-Colonial Assumptions: The Plaster Cast Collection of the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Costa Rica, 1897–1940
13.00 Lunch break
With poster session:
• Mauricio Oviedo (Ass. Prof., Universidad de Costa Rica) and Leonardo Santamaria Montero (PhD cand., Cornell University) — Allegories of America: Indigenous Representation, Transatlantic Artistic Networks, and Nation-Building Narratives in 19th-Century Central America
14.30 Session 2 | Central and South Americas
Chair: Vicky Donnellan
• Paul Niell (Prof., Florida State University) — A Rhetoric of Permanence: Neoclassical Urbanism and the Suppression of Ephemeral Architecture in the Spanish Caribbean, 1830–1898
• Fabio D’Almeida Lima Maciel (Prof., UniCamp, São Paulo) — Neo-Classical Sculpture and the Racial Politics of ‘Civilization’ in Ferdinand Pettrich’s The Dying Tecumseh
15.25 Tea and coffee
16.00 Session 3 | Representing the Colonial Power
Chair: John Tresch
• Ciarán Rua O’Neill (Research Fellow, University College Dublin) — Hibernia Improved: Architectural Sculpture, Neoclassicism, and Imperial Authority in Dublin, c. 1780–1810
• Michael Adam Smith (PhD stud., York University) — A ‘Union of Conciliation and Firmness’: John Flaxman’s Monument to Major-General Sir Barry Close
18.00 Visit and Reception, UCL Flaxman Gallery
f r i d a y , 2 3 o c t o b e r
Online and in-person, University of London
9.30 Introduction — Amy Smith
9.40 Session 4 | Imperialism in Europe
Chair: Marianna Leszczyk
• Agnieszka Skrodzka (Ass. Prof., Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University, Warsaw) — The Clash of Neo-Classicisms: The Sculpture in Warsaw against the Signs of Russian Domination in the Art of the 19th Century
• Jonatan Pérez Mostazo (Prof., University of the Basque Country (EHU) — Civilizing the Inner Barbarians: Classicism, Progress, and Basque Culture in Bilbao, 1875–1931
10.35 Coffee
11.15 Session 5 | Neoclassicism and Anthropology
Chair: Charles Burdett
• Elisabeth Décultot (Prof., Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg) — Winckelmann’s Beauty Ideal and the Making of Ethnological Difference around 1800
• Aris Sarafianos (Prof., University of Ioannina) — ‘Neptune’s Breast’ and the ‘Chest’ of Wilson, the Black: Extreme Simulations, Vitality and Race in the Imperial Spectrum – Elgin Casts in Russia, 1818
• Laetitia Lai (PhD stud., Open University of the Netherlands) — Between Art and Anthropological Authenticity: The Visual Languages of Colonial Science
• Nam Huh (PhD stud., University of Loughborough) — From Colonial Life-Casting to Archival Ecology: Technologies of Visibility and Robert Zhao Renhui’s Counter-Archives
13.00 Lunch break
14.15 Session 6 | Colonialism in the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa
Chair: Sam Agbamu
• Gaia De Luca (PostDoc., Lille University) — Conquering through Construction: The Fascist Cultural and Architectural Italianisation in the Dodecanese, 1912–1943
• Khalifa Bashbash (Independent Scholar, Libya) — Archaeology as Imperial Propaganda: The Impact of Italian Colonial and Fascist Ideology on Libyan Antiquities
• Carmen Belmonte (Assistant Professor, University of Padua) — Classicism and Fascist Imperial Power in the Sculpture of Romano Romanelli
• Susan Slyomovics (Distinguished Prof. UCLA) — François-Léon Sicard and ‘Great Men’ Sculptures of French Algeria
16.40 Final Lecture
Chair: Eckart Marchand
• Lorenz Winkler-Horacek (Prof. and Curator of the Plaster Cast Collection, Freie Universität Berlin) — From Prussia to China: On the Appropriation, Rejection, and Re-Appropriation of Classical Antiquity through Plaster Casts
New Book | Feminist Friendships, Collaborations, and Networks
From Brepols:
Jennifer Griffiths and Andrea Pearson, eds., Feminist Friendships, Collaborations, and Networks in the Visual Arts: Essays in Honor of Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2026), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1915487315, €100.
Since the late twentieth century, a mounting body of studies has demonstrated that women contributed notably to the visual arts of nearly every culture, despite the ubiquity of patriarchal structures. The present volume looks to collaboration as a key factor in women’s ability to overcome those systemic obstacles in order to play decisive roles in the visual arts, whether as artists, patrons, art critics, gallerists, or interpreters in the public sphere. Until only recently, collaborations and other collective endeavors have largely been ignored by both the panoptic histories of art and the art markets, both of which are predicated on notions of individual agency and their implied prototype of idealized masculine autonomy. By means of seventeen case studies spanning from the Renaissance to the 1990s and covering several continents, the essays in this volume chronicle an enduring pattern of women artists, critics, and intellectuals pursuing their goals together. In elucidating the importance of the collaborative dynamic model, especially in its feminist iteration, these essays promote a fuller understanding of the visual arts across the globe and throughout the centuries.
This book is dedicated to the prominent feminist art historians Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, in admiration for their inspiring and influential collaborative publications on feminism and women in the visual arts.
Jennifer Griffiths is an art historian and editor who currently works at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome.
Andrea Pearson is a professor emerita of Art History at American University in Washington, D.C.
c o n t e n t s
Foreword — Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard
Introduction: On Feminist Alliances in the Visual Arts — Jennifer S. Griffiths and Andrea Pearson
1 Sisters in Art: Female Sodality in Early Modern Bologna — Babette Bohn
2 Female Networks and Collaboration: Spiritual Philanthropy, Convents, and Art Patronage in Seventeenth-Century Rome — Marilyn Dunn
3 A Female Maecenas: Vittoria della Rovere, Feminist Friendship, Collaboration, and the Arts in Baroque Florence — Adelina Modesti
4 The Banana Garden Poetry Club and Women’s Artistic Exchanges: Writing about Paintings and Friendships in Seventeenth-Century China — Lara C. W. Blanchard
5 Illustrating Nature in the Dutch Seventeenth Century: The Collective Power of a Female Community — Catherine Powell-Warren
6 Representations of Female Friendship: Vigée Le Brun’s Portrait of Mrs. Chinnery (1803) — Mary D. Sheriff
7 Brought into Friendship: Women, Social Networks, and Amitié in Some Portraits by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard and Gabrielle Capet — Melissa Hyde
8 ‘My Life Has Been Devoted to Friendship’: The Danish Painter Bertha Wegmann and the Feminist Reinvention of the Friendship Image — Carina Rech
9 Mary Cassatt and Louisine Havemeyer’s Friendship: A Personal, Professional, and Political Alliance — Ruth E. Iskin
10 An American Dantista and Her Friends — Jacqueline Marie Musacchio
11 ringl + pit, from Their House to Bauhaus: Collaborative Partnership, Modernist Photography, and Queer Visual Forms — Elizabeth Otto
12 Lesbian Collaboration as Subterfuge in the Works of Marcel Moore and Claude Cahun — Julie Cole
13 The Force of Futurist Friendship: Růžena Zátková, Natalia Goncharova, and Benedetta — Jennifer S. Griffiths
14 We Shall Overcome: Women, Art, and Anti-Fascist Networks in Buenos Aires — Georgina G. Gluzman
15 A Friendship Written in the Stars: The Artistic Constellation of Alma Thomas and Delilah Pierce — Elizabeth Carmel Hamilton
16 Black Feminist Art: Negotiating Networks and Identities — Lisa Farrington
17 Heresies’ Heresies: Collaboration and Dispute in a Feminist Publication on Art and Politics — Amy Tobin
List of Illustrations
Call for Papers | 10th Feminist Art History Conference
From the Call for Papers:
10th Feminist Art History Conference
Online and in-person, American University, Washington, D.C., 24–25 September 2027
Proposals due by 15 December 2026
Keynote Speakers
• Sherry Farrell-Racette (Professor of Art History and Curation, University of Regina, Canada) — “The Labour of Learning: The Resurgence of Traditional Practices in Indigenous Women’s Art”
• Melissa Hyde (Professor and Associate School Director, School of Art + Art History, University of Florida) — “Cultivating ‘Créolité’: Louise Bouteiller’s Portrait of Baronne de Barante”
We invite established and emerging scholars of art history as well as advanced graduate students to submit proposals for the 10th Feminist Art History Conference at American University in Washington, D.C. All panels will be held online via Zoom, with select in-person activities for local participants.
In the spirit of feminist practice, this is an open call for papers that may address any time period (ancient to contemporary), region, and issue relevant to the ways in which gendered ideologies have shaped the visual arts and their study. We especially welcome submissions that are inclusive, intersectional, and/or interdisciplinary in topic or approach and are eager to see the keynote speakers’ subfields well represented.
Topics may include (but are not limited to) artists, movements, works of art and architecture; cultural institutions and critical discourses; practices of collecting, patronage, and display; the historiography of feminist art history; the gendering of objects, spaces, and media; the reception of images; and issues of power, agency, gender, and sexuality within visual and material cultures.
Proposals are due by 15 December 2026. To be considered for participation, submit your proposal here. You will be asked to provide select biographic information, your paper title and abstract (max. 250 words), three keywords, a short CV (max. 2 pages, .pdf), and one image (.jpg or .jpeg). Contact FAHC@american.edu with any questions. Consult the conference website. Invitations to participate will be sent in February 2025.
The Feminist Art History Conference was established in 2010 to celebrate and build on the feminist scholarship and pedagogy of Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, Professors Emeritae at American University. It is sponsored by the Art History Program in the Art Department, College of Arts and Sciences, at American University, with the generous support of Robin D’Alessandro and the late Dr. Jane Fortune.
New Book | The Portrait Miniature: A New History
From Thames & Hudson:
Damiët Schneeweisz, Rosalind McKever, and Adriana Concin, The Portrait Miniature: A New History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2026), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-0500481172, $50.
This richly illustrated study brings the fascinating stories behind this intimate art form to a broad audience and restores women to their place in the history of the portrait miniature.
The portrait miniature—a precious, hand-held painting, exchanged as a token of love or remembrance—has long been cherished for its ability to connect people. This book reveals the extraordinary stories, artistic achievement, and cultural and political impact behind these tiny artworks. This vibrant history of miniature painting, from its fifteenth-century origins to the early twentieth century, links art, fashion, and society in a captivating tale of identity and representation. The Portrait Miniature expands the story to explore the genre’s global reach and highlights the important role of women in its development. Illustrated with miniatures shown at or close to their actual size, as well as enlarged details that allow the reader to revel in the painters’ skill, this book celebrates some of the most sophisticated portraits ever accomplished.
Damiët Schneeweisz is assistant curator of paintings and drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a specialist in early modern European and American art and empire.
Rosalind McKever is curator of paintings and drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She specializes in modern European art, its reception in Britain and North and South America, and its relationship with fashion and design.
Adriana Concin is a research fellow and former assistant curator of paintings and drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She is a specialist in early modern portraiture and the history of collecting.
Exhibition | Gardens: The Art of Experiencing Nature in the 18th Century
Installation view of Giardini: L’arte di vivere la natura nel Settecento.
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Now on view in Turin at the Palazzo Madama:
Gardens: The Art of Experiencing Nature in the 18th Century
Palazzo Madama, Torino, 15 July 2026 — 6 January 2027
Curated by Clelia Arnaldi di Balme
The exhibition offers an evocative stroll through the gardens of the 18th century, when the relationship between humankind and nature gave rise to extraordinary landscape designs. Through a selection of drawings, botanical tables, and engravings, the exhibition traces the evolution of taste and social customs through the century.
It begins with the geometric rigour of the Italian garden, a model of power widespread throughout Europe—here evoked by the architectural design of the Savoy royal residences described by Antonio de Pienne—before exploring the symbolic dimension of green spaces in the 18th-century theatre, as documented by the exquisite set designs by Filippo Juvarra and the brothers Bernardino and Fabrizio Galliari for the court theatres of Turin.
The exhibition explores the complex hydraulic engineering and levelling works required to create these gardens, as in Juvarra’s monumental project for the Luigi Mansi’s villa a Segromigno. Engravings by Ignazio Sclopis depict social life in the open air, with concerts and games in the park at Stupinigi. The journey concludes with a shift towards the romantic sensibility of the English-style garden theorised by Francesco Bettini, the exotic fascination with the Chinese gardens of the Qing dynasty, and the scientific research documented by the exquisite botanical watercolours of Lorenzo Freylino.
Visitors will also be able to admire the refurbishment of the nearby Fabric Gallery with the exhibition Bianco al femminile, dedicated to fifty rare textile artefacts from the museum’s collections.
New Book | Prints from the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria in Naples
Enfilade readers may find this volume from Bibliopolis particularly interesting for its analysis of the creation of the print collection of Carlo Firmian in the 1770s, its discussion of the publishing history of Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte and antiquarian practices in eighteenth-century Naples, early Neapolitan experiments with aquatint in the 1760s, and of publication projects such as the so-called Vestiture del Regno (begun in 1784) and William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei, of 1776.
Paola D’Alconzo and Domenico Pino, eds., Le Stampe nel Castello: Studi sul Fondo Grafico della Società Napoletana di Storia Patria (Naples: Bibliopolis, 2026), 302 pages, ISBN: 978-8870887570, €40. Also available in digital format, with the option of purchasing either the entire volume or individual chapters.
This volume brings to the attention of the public the first results of a several-year-long work of reorganization, conditioning, and cataloguing of the works pertaining to the Fondo Grafico (Prints and Drawings Cabinet) of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, Naples. Created shortly after the foundation of the Società in 1876, and enriched throughout the years, the Cabinet contains today around 3.600 drawings and 7.000 prints, with works varying in quality, subject, and material conditions. Although it has always been accessible to scholars, the print collection is undoubtedly the lesser known part.
The recent reorganization work has allowed for a better understanding of this nucleus, unveiling its specificities and layered history: as a whole the collection appears valuable in that it presents the potential to complicate, and in certain instances also to rewrite, some passages of the historiography on the graphic arts and their fortune in Naples and beyond.
Even as the essays take important steps in that direction, they also look beyond the prints held by the Società, considering works from the collection in reference to other categories of objects (such as porcelain and terraglie, i.e. Neapolitan earthenware) as well as other collections of works on paper in the city. This approach has proven particularly successful in that it unveils articulate relationships between the material heritage held by the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria and wider discourses, according to a methodological model that has proven very useful for historical studies, but that had never before been applied to the Fondo Grafico.
Paola D’Alconzo is Associate Professor of Museology, Art Criticism, and Conservation Theory at the University of Naples Federico II, where she also coordinates the Master’s degree programme in ‘Cultural Heritage, Art History and Museum Studies’. Her research mainly concerns the history of art-historical heritage conservation and the history of collecting in the 18th and 19th centuries. She has focused in particular on the restoration and musealization of wall paintings found in excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii; the reception of Vesuvian antiquities and their influence on artistic production; the collecting and antiquarian interests of Ferdinando Galiani; the regulations promulgated in the Kingdom of Naples and Spain to safeguard the archaeological and art-historical heritage; and the conservation and exhibition of paintings of the Farnese and later Bourbon collections. She sits on the directing board of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, being the referent for the Fondo Grafico.
Domenico Pino takes care of the Fondo Grafico of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria since 2024, being in charge of cataloguing, reorganisation projects, and access to the collection. He obtained a PhD in History of Art from University College London in 2025 with a thesis on printmaking in Naples between 1734 and 1799. He has held fellowships from the British Museum (2020), the Centre for the History of Art and Architecture of Port Cities at the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte (2022–23), and the Pio Monte della Misericordia at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici (2023–25).
c o n t e n t s
Preface – Renata De Lorenzo
• Le Stampe nel Castello: Un patrimonio da riscoprire — Paola D’Alconzo and Domenico Pino
• MetaFAD e il Polo Digitale degli Istituti Culturali di Napoli: Un modello di catalogazione e fruizione integrata — Donatella Zampano
• La Storia del Fondo Grafico della Società Napoletana di Storia Patria — Costanza Marsico
• Diplomacy in Print: Carlo Firmian’s Collection at Capodimonte — Emma De Jong
• Un’inedita veduta della città: Iscrizioni manoscritte sulle incisioni napoletane — Domenico Pino
• Alla ricerca di un metodo per pubblicare le prime scoperte vesuviane: Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte tra tentativi falliti e ipotesi in corso d’opera — Paola D’Alconzo
• Esperimenti e innovazioni dell’industria editoriale napoletana del ‘700: Il San Gennaro di Giuseppe Aloja — Domenico Pino
• Creato sotto pressione: Il Vesuvio e gli scambi interculturali dell’Illuminismo europeo — Domenico Pino
• 1770–1800: Gli anni d’oro dell’Illuminismo ferdinandeo e la fortuna delle Vestiture del Regno — Angela Caròla Perrotti
• Declinazioni dall’antico: Dalle stampe alle terraglie — Alessandra Zaccagnini
Index of names
Index of places
Exhibition | Laughing Matters
George Cruikshank, A Scene in the New Farce of the Lady and the Devil, 1820, hand-colored etching, sheet: 25 × 35 cm
(Chapel Hill: Ackland Art Museum, 2025.33.38)
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Opening in December at Ackland Art Museum:
Laughing Matters: Social Satire from an Unruly Age
Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 11 December 2026 — 28 March 2027
Humor has long provided artists with a powerful means of exposing folly, challenging authority, and scrutinizing human behavior. Laughing Matters: Social Satire from an Unruly Age brings together British and French prints from the 1770s to the 1840s, to explore how artists responded to an era of profound social and political change through pointed visual commentary layered with meaning.
Drawn from a recent gift of over 300 prints to the Ackland from Robert and Jane Sylvester, the exhibition features 100 works, including hand-colored etchings and lithographs, by such artists as James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, George Cruikshank, and Honoré Daumier. Arranged thematically, the exhibition reveals how artists used exaggeration, visual puns, and the interplay of words and images to scrutinize a range of topics, from the arts, musical performance, and the weather to love and marriage, social status, and politics. Although the humor in these prints speak directly to the events and concerns of their time, their social critique and visual language remain just as relevant and impressive today.
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