Enfilade

Art as Cultural Diplomacy: (Re)Constructing Notions of Eastern and Western Europe
Berlin, 28–29 March 2014

Proposals due by 25 February 2014

Panel Organizer: Cassandra Sciortino, University of California, Santa Barbara

As part of the Third Euroacademia International Conference Re-Inventing Eastern Europe to be held in Berlin, the panel Art as Cultural Diplomacy seeks papers that explore the function of art (in its broadest definition) as an instrument of cultural diplomacy by the state and, especially, by nongovernmental actors. The main theme of the session is the question of art and diplomacy in Europe before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Papers are welcome that explore issues related to the role of art, diplomacy and the politicization of the European Union and its candidate countries, as are those which consider how the arts have pursued or resisted East-West dichotomies and other narratives of alterity in Europe and worldwide. The panel seeks to combine a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives to explore how art—its various practices, history, and theory—are an important area of inquiry in the expanding field of cultural diplomacy. Selected papers will be invited for publication in a book.

Some examples of topics include:
• How can art serve as a neutral platform for exchange to promote dialogue and understanding between states?
• How can art, including organized festivals (i.e. film, art, music), cultivate transnational identities that undermine dichotomies of East and West, and other narratives of alterity in Europe and beyond it?
• The implications for art as an instrument of diplomacy in a postmodern age where geopolitics and power are increasingly mobilized by image-based structures of persuasion
• How has/can art facilitate cohesion between European Union member states and candidate states that effectively responds to the EU’s efforts to create ‘unity in diversity’?
• The politics of mapping Europe: mental and cartographic
• Community-based art as a social practice to engage issues of European identity
• The difference between art as cultural diplomacy and propaganda
• The digital revolution and the emergence of social media as platforms for art to communicate across social, cultural, and national boundaries?
• Diplomacy in the history of art in Europe and Eastern Europe
• Artists as diplomats
• Art history as diplomacy—exhibitions, post-colonial criticism, global art history, and other revisions to the conventional boundaries of Europe and its history of art
• The international activity of cultural institutes

If interested in participating, please send an abstract (maximum of 300 words) together with the details of your affiliation until 25th of February 2014 to cassandra.sciortino@berkeley.edu and application@euroacademia.eu. More information is available here

Family Patronage in Early Modern Genoa, Rome, and Venice, 1500–1750
Bibliotheca Hertziana—Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome, 8 September 2014

Proposals due by 15 April 2014

Among the increasingly monarchic arena of Early Modern Europe, the powerful Italian cities of Genoa, Rome, and Venice are exceptional. Genoa and Venice, the largest remaining republics in Italy, predominated the financial, mercantile, and military spheres of the Mediterranean. Rome’s religious authority and historical cachet, along with its sizable territory, were the foundations of its leading position. All three of these cities stand out for their oligarchic
power structures; while Genoa and Venice were led by governments elected from a restricted book of families, Rome fostered an aristocracy both parallel to and participating in the electoral principle of the Papal court. Therefore, in the absence of hereditary lords, power and prestige was shared among the ruling families. As a result, in all of these cities, the families could remain powerful even as the government changed.

Central challenges for these cities’ aristocratic families were how to figure their relationships to local power structures and balancing their own interests against those of the communal state. The particular social-political contexts nurtured different forms and strategies of representation than those deployed in monarchic and ducal societies. The oligarchic aristocracy had to submit to an abstract concept shaped by values and virtues such as equality and liberty rather than to a dynastic authority. Each of these societies experienced turning points when their political structures shifted and opened to new families—be they from outside the city or from non-noble stock—and their ruling classes sought new methods of representation and patronage to assert their role in the changed social scene. The reforms of 1576 to Genoa’s oligarchic government, the rising status of papal families in seventeenth-century Rome, and the opening of the Libro d’Oro in the context of Venice’s wars against the Ottoman Turks in the late seventeenth century were all moments from which such changes arose.

Against this background, this study day seeks to compare the demands and strategies of art and architectural patronage among these non-dynastic aristocratic groups. Although Genoa and Venice have often been mentioned in chorus, they have never been directly and critically compared. Because of their diverse political alliances and statuses, the differences in their governmental structures, as well as their differing territorial dispositions, two distinct types of an early modern republic developed. Furthermore, the exemplary role of Rome for the non-monarchic sphere—its permeable system of social ascension—still asks for a more differentiated view. While scholarship often focuses on the Papacy of Rome and likens it to a monarchy, we seek to understand the strategies of the ruling class while not in power.

We invite abstracts from scholars in all stages of their careers addressing key aspects and questions such as the following:
– How did individual families present themselves vis-a-vis rival families or  the state?
– How and when did these representations take place?
– What were the spaces used for representation and how were they marked?
– How did these strategies change or shift through time or across political changes?
– Can we identify instances of collective patronage or patterns of patronage?
– Are there collective representations or patterns of representation?
– Did strategies differ between sacred and secular contexts? If so, how?
– How do we conceive of the dialectic of public / private in these societies?

Proposals for 25-minute papers should include the title of the paper, a 250– to 300-word abstract, the author’s institutional affiliation, a one-page CV, and full contact information. Papers may be submitted in English, French, German, and Italian. Proposals should be sent to both: Benjamin Eldredge (Bibliotheca Hertziana) eldredge@biblhertz.it and Bettina Morlang-Schardon (Bibliotheca Hertziana), morlangschardon@biblhertz.it.