Enfilade

From the program for the Collecting Nature conference:

Collecting Nature
Kloster Irsee, Swabia, Germany, 24-27 May 2013

Organized by Sylvia Heudecker and Andrea Gáldy

Research in the history of collecting has often focused on collections of works of art and artefacts, even though the mediaeval and early modern kunst- and wunderkammern harboured both artificialia and naturalia from their very inception. In fact, some of the keenest collectors of art and antiquities, such as Cosimo I de’ Medici or the Saxon electors, were particularly renowned for their interest in the natural sciences, including geography, botany, and zoology. What started as a mass of curiosities – e.g. prepared animals, skeletons, minerals, and metal ore – soon was transformed into an insatiable quest for knowledge that was furthermore fanned by the age of exploration and the exploitation of far-away countries. Papers in this conference will focus on the intersection between the history of collecting and the history of science, while not forgetting the monastic or courtly context of provenance and display.

Irsee is a particularly interesting venue for in the eighteenth century Pater Eugen Dobler had set up a much admired bird cabinet. Although no trace of this cabinet remains, the room itself still exists and will be used for the conference’s academic sessions. International scholars will be presenting, the conference language is English.

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F R I D A Y ,  2 4  M A Y  2 0 1 3

6.00  Evening reception plus short introduction to the conference

Susanne Formanek (Institut für Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, Vienna), Collecting and Displaying Nature in Early Modern Japan

7.30  Dinner

S A T U R D A Y  2 5  M A Y  2 0 1 3

9.00  Andrea Gáldy and Sylvia Heudecker, Welcome

‘Naturalia’ and ‘Sculpture’ after Nature

9.15
• Rachel King (Pinakothek und Nationalmuseum, Munich), Collecting Nature within Nature: Animal Inclusions in Amber in Early Modern Collections
• Lisa Skogh (Stockholms Universitet), Bergwerke and Handsteine in the Royal Swedish Collections, 1654–1720
• Discussion

10.30  Coffee / Tea

11.00
• Angelica Groom (The Open University, Milton Keynes), Animal Collecting at the Medici Court in Florence: Real, Stuffed and Painted Beasts as Evidence of Shifting Values in the Display and Conceptualisation of the Zoological ‘Other’
• Virginie Spenlé (Kunstkammer Georg Laue, Munich), Casting from Nature: Wenzel Jamnitzer’s Metal Works for
Kunst- and Wunderkammern
• Discussion

12.30  Lunch

Nature and Naturalia Indoors

2.00
• Marcell Sebők (Central European University, Budapest), Wonders on the Walls: Visual Presentations and Displaying Nature and Knowledge in Early Modern Private Collections
• Giada Damen (Princeton University), Collecting and Cataloguing Art and Nature in a Venetian Palazzo
• Discussion

3.30  Coffee / Tea

4.00
• Ivo Raband (Universität Bern), An Archducal Collection in Brussels: Archduke Ernest of Austria and His Collecting Ambitions
• Shep Krech III (Brown University, Providence), Catesby’s Birds
• Discussion

7.00  Dinner

S U N D A Y ,  2 6  M A Y  2 0 1 3

9.00  Optional tour of Kloster Irsee

10.15  Optional Roman Catholic Mass

The Display of Naturalia: Libraries and Wunderkammern

11.15
• Barbara Tramelli (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte), Nature and Grotesques: Pirro Visconti Borromeo and the Collection in His Villa of Lainate
• Inga Elmqvist Söderlund (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford University), Scientific Instruments in the Ideal Early Modern Library
• Discussion

12.30  Lunch

2.00
• Miriam H. Kirch (University of North Alabama, Florence), A Princely Plant Collector in Renaissance Germany
• Joy Kearney (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen), Ornithology in the Dutch Golden Age: Captured Specimens and the Collecting of Exotica
• Discussion

3.30  Break

4.00
• Iordan Avramov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia), The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg and Circulation of Objects at the Early Royal Society of London, 1660–1677
• Anne Harbers (University of Sydney), Carl Linnaeus and the Natural History Collections of Lovisa Ulrika of Sweden at Drottningholm Palace
• Discussion

5.00  Coffee / Tea

5.30  Keynote Speech — Dornith Doherty (University of North Texas, Denton), Archiving Eden

7.00  Dinner

M O N D A Y ,  2 7  M A Y  2 0 1 3

Visit to the Südsee Museum, Obergünzburg and Kloster St Ottilien (Missions Museum) with lunch at the St Ottilien Biergarten

T U E S D A Y ,  2 8  M A Y  2 0 1 3

Tour of the Museum of the Abbey Ottobeuren in the morning