Conference | The Impact of Empires on Collections and Museums
From Lorenzo de’ Medici:
Collecting and Empires: The Impact of the Creation and Dissolution
of Empires on Collections and Museums from Antiquity to the Present
San Jacopo in Campo Corbolini and Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Florence, 5–7 November 2015
The creation and dissolution of empires has been a constant feature of human history from ancient times through the present day, especially if one passes from a historical to a theoretical definition of empire as an open expanding global frontier. Establishing new identities and new power relationships to coincide with changing political boundaries and cultural reaches, empires also destroyed and/or irrevocably altered social structures and the material culture on which those social structures were partly based. The political activities of empires—both formal and informal to use Doyle’s definition—find their material reflection in the creation of new art forms and the reevaluation of old art forms which often involved the movement of objects from periphery to center (and vice versa) and promoted the formation of new collections. New mentalities and new social relationships were represented by those collections but they were (and are) also fostered through them.
In recent decades such issues surrounding objects and empire have become important components of our understanding of British colonialism, and to a lesser extent of anthropological approaches to colonial studies more broadly conceived. Concurrent with these developments, comparative studies of the political forms of empires have also appeared, though the baseline for such comparisons is invariably the Roman Empire, from whose imperium we derive our word, but which is ill-suited to describe post-WW-II hegemonies or even Asian historical examples. This conference seeks to cast a wider net temporally, spatially and conceptually by exploring the impact of the expansion and contraction of empires on collecting, collections, and collateral phenomena such as cultural exchange in a selection of the greatest empires the world has known from Han China to Hellenistic Greece to Aztec Mexico to the Third Reich without privileging particular political models and always with an eye to how these historical situations invite comparisons not only with each other but also with contemporary imperial tendencies.
While some scholars would argue that the term empire no longer applies to today’s global and transnational environment, others have redefined ‘empire’ in terms of contemporary capitalism and a developing post-modern global order. Exclusively based on political and economic concerns (including identity politics) and for the most part distressingly Eurocentric, these analyses of empire or its evolution into something else yet to be defined, also neglect the impact of material culture, even though material culture studies have made great strides in recent decades by addressing issues of the migration of objects and people for both political and non-political reasons. Therefore by investigating empires and imperialism in a comparative manner through the lens of collecting practices, museum archetypes and museums proper, it is hoped that this conference workshop will help shape our understanding of what is indeed imperial about our own approach to material culture.
While individual empires have been studied extensively, it is only in recent decades that they have been examined from comparative political, social and cultural perspectives. It is also only recently that scholarship in history of collecting and anthropology has begun to address the role imperial expansion on collecting and museums in reference to European and particularly British colonialism. Still there is very little written on the history of collecting from any perspective outside of the European tradition or from before the Renaissance. This conference would—for the first time—approach the subject of collecting and empires from a global and inclusive comparative perspective, from which it is hoped that significant conclusions may be drawn about the social, cultural and political impact of collecting and display across the centuries and down to present times.
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T H U R S D A Y , 5 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 5
8:30 Welcome and Opening Remarks – Rappresentanti degli enti coinvolti
Royal Collections in the Ancient World
Chair: Maia Wellington Gahtan
9.00 Zainab Bahrani (Columbia University, New York), The Biopolitics of Collecting: Empires of Mesopotamia
10:00 Alain Schnapp (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), The Idea of Collecting from Mesopotamia to the Classical World: Convergences and Divergences
11:30 Carrie Vout (University of Cambridge), Collecting like Caesar: The Pornography and Paideia of Amassing Artefacts in the Roman Empire
12:30 Michèle Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens (École pratique des Hautes Études, Paris), Princely Treasures and Imperial Expansion in Western Han China (Second to First Century BCE)
Collections and Questions of National Identity
Chair: Daniel J. Sherman
15:00 Enrique Florescano (Conaculta, México), The Mexica Empire: Memory, Identity, and Collectionism
16:00 Dominique Poulot (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) Empire and Museums: The Case of Napoleon I
17:30 Christoph Zuschlag (Universität Koblenz-Landau, Landau), Looted Art, Booty Art, Degenerate Art: Aspects of Art Collecting in the Third Reich
18:30 Katia Dianina (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), The Dispersal of the Russian Art Empire
F R I D A Y , 6 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 5
Expanding Empires, Morning Session
Chair: Eva Maria Troelenberg
9:00 Gerhard Wolf (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence), Material versus Visual Culture: Collecting, Dispersing and Display in Imperial Dynamics, 400–1600
10:00 Catarina Schmidt Arcangeli (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence), Collecting in Venice and Creating a Myth
11:30 Hannah Baader (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence), Title to be confirmed
12:30 Michael North (Ernst Moritz Arndt Universität Greifswald), Collecting European and Asian Art Objects in the Dutch Colonial Empire, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Expanding Empires, Afternoon Session
Chair: Francesca Baldry
15:00 Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann (Princeton University), Habsburg Imperial Collecting
16:00 Ebba Koch (Universität Wien, Vienna), The Mughal Emperors as Collectors: Jahangir (rul. 1605–27) and Shah Jahan (rul. 1628–58)
17:30 Tapati Guha-Thakurta (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta), The Object Flows of Empire: Cross-Cultural Collecting in Early Colonial India
18:30 Ruth B. Phillips (Carleton University, Ottawa), Imperfect Translations: Indigenous Gifts and Royal Collecting in Victorian Canada
21:00 Concert: Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini – Sala del Buonumore, Piazza delle Belle Arti 2, 50122 Florence; L’Ensemble Marâghî – Ottoman Classical Music, Music of the Habsburg Empire, directed by Maestra Daniela De Santis
S A T U R D A Y , 7 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 5
Late and Post-Empire, De-Colonization and Museums
Chair: Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann
9:00 Edhem Eldem (Bogaziçi University, Istanbul), Ottoman Imperial Collections in the Nineteenth Century: A Critical Reassessment
10:00 Eva Maria Troelenberg (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence), Collecting Big: Monumentality and the Berlin Museum Island as a ‘World Museum’ between the Imperial and Post-Imperial Age
11:30 Daniel J. Sherman (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), The (De) Colonized Object: Museums and the Other in France since 1960
12:30 Wendy Shaw (Freie Universität Berlin), Islam and the Legacies of Empire: Ownership of Islam in Twenty-First-Century Museums
15:00 Roundtable
Moderated by Krzysztof Pomian (Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika, Torun; Ecole des hautes Études)
For more information, contact Myra Stals, myra.stals@lorenzodemedici.it.
New Book | Visual Cultures of Death in Central Europe
From Brill:
Aleksandra Koutny-Jones, Visual Cultures of Death in Central Europe: Contemplation and Commemoration in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-9004305076, 110€ / $142.
In Visual Cultures of Death in Central Europe, Aleksandra Koutny-Jones explores the emergence of a remarkable cultural preoccupation with death in Poland-Lithuania (1569–1795). Examining why such interests resonated so strongly in the Baroque art of this Commonwealth, she argues that the printing revolution, the impact of the Counter-Reformation, and multiple afflictions suffered by Poland-Lithuania all contributed to a deep cultural concern with mortality.
Introducing readers to a range of art, architecture and material culture, this study considers various visual evocations of death including ‘Dance of Death’ imagery, funerary decorations, coffin portraiture, tomb chapels and religious landscapes. These, Koutny-Jones argues, engaged with wider European cultures of contemplation and commemoration, while also being critically adapted to the specific context of Poland-Lithuania.
Aleksandra Koutny-Jones, Ph.D. (2007), University of Cambridge, is an art historian of early modern Central Europe. She has published on artistic and cultural transmission within Europe, dealing especially with macabre art, orientalising portraiture, and the impact of the printed image.
Call for Papers | Sculpture and Parisian Decorative Arts in Europe, Part II
From H-ArtHist:
The Role of Sculpture in the Design, Production, Collecting, and
Display of Parisian Decorative Arts in Europe, 1715–1815, Part II
Paris, 14–15 March 2016
Proposals due by 4 November 2015
International Conference Part II, following the first held on 29 August 2015 at Mons, European Capital of Culture.
Between 1715 and 1830 Paris gradually became the capital of Europe, “a city of power and pleasure, a magnet for people of all nationalities that exerted an influence far beyond the reaches of France,” as Philip Mansel wrote, or as Prince Metternich phrased it, “When Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold.” Within this historical framework and in a time of profound societal change, the consumption and appreciation of luxury goods reached a peak in Paris.
The focus of this one-day international conference will be to investigate the role of the sculptor in the design and production processes of Parisian decorative arts, from large-scale furniture and interior decoration projects to porcelain, silver, gilt bronzes and clocks. In the last few years a number of studies were carried out under the auspices of decorative arts museums and societies such as the Furniture History Society and the French Porcelain Society. It now seems appropriate to bring some of these together to encourage cross-disciplinary approaches on a European level and discussion between all those interested in the materiality and the three-dimensionality of their objects of study.
The relationships between, on the one hand, architects, ornemanistes and other designers, and on the other sculptors, menuisiers, ébénistes, goldsmiths, porcelain manufacturers, bronze casters and other producers, as well as the marchands merciers, will be at the heart of the studies about the design processes. A second layer of understanding of the importance of sculpture in the decorative arts will be shown in the collecting and display in European capitals in subsequent generations, particularly those immediately after the French Revolution, as epitomised by King George IV.
Overall, the intention of this conference is to attempt to shed light on the sculptural aspect of decorative arts produced in Paris in the long 18th century and collected and displayed in the capitals of Europe. Without pretending to be exhaustive, this study day—and its publication—hopes to bring together discussions about the histories and methodologies that could lead to furthering the study of hitherto all too often neglected aspects of the decorative arts.
Research questions may include (non-exhaustive list):
• What are the specificities of the Parisian approach to three-dimensional sculptural design that made it collectable, or was it only collectable in Europe due to its availability at vastly reduced prices when the art market was flooded by the revolutionary auctions?
• What relationships can be established between the ‘Frenchness’ of sculptural designs produced in Paris and the large number of ‘foreign’ designers and craftspeople there (coming in particular from the Low Countries and Germany)?
• What was the impact of public authorities (e.g. guilds and schools), intermediaries (marchands merciers, agents, etc.), private salons, societies and other networks, on the three-dimensional design aspect decorative arts produced in Paris?
• Taste leaders: the role of the monarch, the court, Paris vs. Versailles, and their interest in ‘sculptural’ decorative arts
• Taste disseminators: the role of prints and treatises regarding ‘sculptural’ decorative arts
• The collaborative efforts between architects, designers, sculptors, cabinet makers, ‘porcelainiers’, bronze casters, goldsmiths, engravers, etc. were they specific to luxury items produced in Paris? Were certain disciplines more appropriate for ‘sculptural design’?
• How do case studies inform us about the role of sculptors in the design and production processes for decorative arts?
• How is sculptural illusionism in painted decorative panels, such as those by Tournai-born Piat-Joseph Sauvage (1744–1818) or in the Casa del Labrador at the royal palace of Aranjuez, related to the design and perception of Parisian decorative arts?
• What was the impact of collectors of old/existing Parisian decorative arts on the design of spaces to display these in European capitals?
• Are centre-periphery theories applicable to the interpretation of decorative arts produced in Paris and its hinterland? Is the work of Abraham Roentgen and his bronze casters an appropriate case study for this?
Potential speakers are invited to submit proposals for conference papers. These should be limited to a maximum of 300 words, should be accompanied by a brief CV (no more than a few lines) and should be sent to the Low Countries Sculpture Society by Wednesday 4 November 2015. A scientific committee drawn from the Society and invited scholars will take a decision on selected speakers shortly after that date. For foreign participants one hotel night in Paris and modest travel expenses can be covered. Please note that this conference is planned shortly after the opening on 10 March 2016 of the TEFAF Fair at Maastricht to encourage American colleagues to attend.
Exhibition | Ceci n’est pas un portrait: Figures de fantaisie
Opening next month at the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse:
Ceci n’est pas un portrait: Figures de fantaisie de Murillo, Fragonard, Tiepolo…
Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, 21 November 2015 — 28 February 2016
Curated by Melissa Percival and Axel Hémery
Le Musée des Augustins, musée des beaux arts de Toulouse présentera, à partir du 21 novembre 2015, une exposition totalement inédite sur les figures de fantaisie en Europe du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle. Encore peu étudiées comme un sujet à part entière dans l’histoire de l’art, les figures de fantaisie regroupent des peintures illustrant la fascination qu’ont pu exercer la figure et le corps humains sur l’art européen pendant plus de deux siècles.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Cavalier assis près d’une fontaine, ca. 1769 (Barcelone, MNAC, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya de Bellas Artes)
Centrées sur les émotions et les passions humaines, elles offrent au regard une intimité au plus près du sujet et abordent des thèmes universels, toujours étonnement modernes, comme l’apparence des sentiments, l’ambivalence des êtres humains ou la question du genre. Loin de l’art du portrait contraint par la commande ou la mode, cette exposition est un véritable éloge à la liberté, à l’invention et à la virtuosité en peinture.
Quatre-vingt tableaux provenant de musées français et européens seront réunis au musée des Augustins pour évoquer cet art intemporel en marge des traditionnelles classifications et mouvements de l’histoire de l’art. Les plus grands comme les plus attachants des peintres y seront représentés comme Annibal Carrache, Van Dyck, Jordaens, Hals, Murillo, Fragonard, Greuze, Tiepolo, mais aussi Dosso Dossi, Sweerts, Schalcken, Giordano, Piazzetta, Grimou, Ceruti, Morland… Cette sélection d’œuvres exceptionnelles sera présentée sous un angle inhabituel mélangeant provenances, époques et écoles pour se concentrer sur des sections dynamiques.
Les thèmes développés par le parcours de l’exposition seront les suivants : Jeux de regards ; Musiciens ; Vies intérieures ; Dormeurs ; Rires et sarcasmes ; Le laboratoire du visage ; L’atelier du costume. Tous ces sujets permettront de mettre en valeur l’originalité profonde de cette peinture et la cohérence de ces œuvres à travers le temps et l’espace.
Commissariat de l’exposition
Melissa Percival : professeur d’histoire de l’art et de français à l’université d’Exeter, auteur de Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure (auteur pour le catalogue qui accompagnera cette exposition de l’essai principal et des notices sur le XVIIIème siècle)
Axel Hémery, Co-commissaire : Directeur du musée des Augustins de Toulouse, conservateur en chef du patrimoine spécialiste de peinture du XVIIème siècle (auteur pour le catalogue d’un avant-propos et des notices XVIème et XVIIème).
Pour plus d’information, téléchargez le communiqué de presse.
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The catalogue is published by Somogy:
Melissa Percival and Axel Hémery, ed., Figures de fantaisie du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, Somogy éditions d’Art, 2015), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-2757209981, 35€.
Figures de fantaisie du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle explore les recherches et inventions des artistes européens autour de la figure humaine, sur presque trois siècles. Le rapprochement d’œuvres jusque-là rattachées aux catégories usuelles de l’histoire de l’art (peinture d’histoire, portrait, scène de genre, etc.) éclaire de façon saisissante la récurrence de certains types de figures, dans différents pays et à différentes périodes de l’histoire : ici, les mendiants italiens se comparent aux vagabonds d’Espagne, les courtisanes de la Renaissance rencontrent les bergères du Nord du XVIIe siècle, les tronies nordiques renvoient aux figures caravagesques, les têtes d’expression de Tiepolo, aux figures de fantaisie de Fragonard, et Greuze répond aux fancy pictures anglaises. Il s’en dégage un ensemble d’une cohérence inattendue, véritable éloge de la liberté et de la virtuosité en peinture.
S O M M A I R E
Avant-propos
• Les figures de fantaisie. Un phénomène européen / Melissa Percival
• Sensualité des figures à mi-corps et théâtralité de la peinture / Bronwen Wilson
• Pathos et mystère : la figure de fantaisie endormie / Petra ten-Doesschate Chu
• La tête de vieillard dans l’art européen : sacrée et profane / Martin Postle
• Les fenêtres du possible : la figure de fantaisie et l’esprit d’entreprise au début du XVIIIe siècle / John Chu
Œuvres exposées
Jeux de regards, cat. 1–15
Musiciens, cat. 16–22
Vies intérieures, cat. 23–34
Dormeurs, cat. 35–41
Rires et sarcasmes, cat. 42–55
Le laboratoire du visage, cat. 56–69
L’atelier du costume, cat. 70–83
Annexes
Index des artistes exposés
Bibliographie
Study Days | Fancy‒Fantaisie‒Capriccio: Diversions and Distractions
From the conference programme (in conjunction with the exhibition Ceci n’est pas un portrait: Figures de fantaisie) . . .
Fancy‒Fantaisie‒Capriccio: Diversions and Distractions in the Eighteenth Century
Musée Paul-Dupuy, Toulouse, 3–4 December 2015
Organized by Muriel Adrien, Melissa Percival, and Axel Hémery
Associated with the imagination and not reason, fancy (fantaisie) in the eighteenth century was a sort of whimsical distraction from the everyday. For Voltaire it was ‘a singular desire, a passing whim’ (‘un désir singulier, un goût passager’), while for Samuel Johnson it was ‘something that pleases or entertains without real use or value’. Together with its near-synonym caprice (capriccio), fancy was part of a rich semantic network, connecting wit, pleasure, erotic desire, spontaneity, improvisation, surprise, deviation from norms, the trivial and inconsequential. Unpredictable and quirky, it offered many outlets for artistic creativity.
These study days will explore the expressive freedom of fancy (fantaisie, capriccio) in European culture during the eighteenth century—in figure and landscape painting, architecture, and garden design, philosophy and fiction, theatre and music.
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T H U R S D A Y , 3 D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 5
14:00 Welcome and introduction
14:15 Chair: Melissa Percival
• Keynote Speaker — Martin Postle, Modelling for the Fancy Picture: Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy
• Frédéric Ogée, Fancying Nature: The Posterity of Joseph Addison’s’ Pleasures’ in English Enlightenment Culture
15:30 Tea and coffee
16:00 Chair: Xavier Cervantes
• John Chu, ‘The Many Peopled Wall’: Fancy Pictures and Annual Exhibitions in Eighteenth-Century London
• Isabelle Baudino, Picturing the Past: The Fancy Picture and the Historical Imagination in Britain
• Hélène Ibata, British Capricci: From the Picturesque to the Sublime
18:30 Viewing of the exhibition Fantasy Figures at the Musée des Augustins
20:30 Dinner
F R I D A Y , 4 D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 5
9:15 Chair: Muriel Adrien
• Keynote Speaker — Guillaume Faroult
• Emmanuel Faure-Carricabururu, Figures de fantaisie de Jean-Baptiste Santerre et limites des cadres génériques d’interprétation
10:30 Tea and coffee
11:00 Chair: Frédéric Ogée
• Christophe Guillouet, La production gravée parisienne au cœur de L’invention d’un genre? Les «fantaisies» de Poilly et Courtin (1710–1728)
• Bénédicte Miyamoto, ‘As Whimsical and Chimearical as their Forms Are’: Ornamental and Fanciful Motives in English Drawing Books
• Pierre-Henri Biger, De la fantaisie des éventails aux éventails de fantaisie
12:30 Lunch
14:00 Chair: Isabelle Baudino
• Vanessa Alayrac, ‘A Butterfly Supporting an Elephant’: Chinoiserie in Eighteenth-Century England, or ‘the Luxuriance of Fancy
• Xavier Cervantes, Réminiscences vénitiennes et hybridité culturelle dans les vues et capricci anglais de Canaletto
• Adrián Fernández Almoguera, Du cabinet privé à la villa suburbaine: caprices et fantaisies artistiques dans la capitale des Lumières espagnoles
15:30 Tea and coffee
16:00 Chair: Hélène Dachez
• Laurent Châtel, Fancy a Garden? The Hortulean Pleasures of Imagination and Virtuality
• Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud, Cappricioso, Or a New ‘Grammar in Motion’ in Music and Ballet
• Alice Labourg, ‘Fancy Paints with Hues Unreal’: Pictorial Fantasy and Literary Creation in Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic Novel
Peggy Fogelman Named Director of the Gardner Museum
From the Gardner:
Peggy Fogelman Named Next Director of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum announced today that Peggy Fogelman is the next Norma Jean Calderwood Director, succeeding Anne Hawley as the fifth director in the Museum’s history. Hawley will step down after 26 years at the end of the year, and Fogelman will assume the directorship in January 2016.
“I am overjoyed to be entrusted with leading the Gardner, a unique and treasured museum where visitors feel so closely connected to the collection,” Fogelman said. “Being located in this creative and intellectual hub makes the potential enormously exciting as we continue to reach the next generation of museum-goers. It is truly a privilege to apply all my experience to a place that is beloved by so many.”
Since 2013, Peggy has been Director of Collections at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, overseeing eight curatorial departments, conservation, registration, and 16 to 20 exhibitions per year. Earlier this year, Peggy served for 12 months as Acting Director while the Morgan searched for a new Director. She previously worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as Chairman of Education, the Peabody Essex Museum as Director of Education and Interpretation, and the J. Paul Getty Museum as Associate Curator of European Sculpture and later Assistant Director and Head of Education and Interpretive Programs.
“Peggy is the perfect fit for the Gardner with her impressive background ranging from work in large prestigious institutions to small, intimate museums,” said Steve Kidder, the Gardner Museum’s Board President. “She brings us the best intersection of creativity, vision, and successful execution. We look forward to seeing what she dreams up for this very special Museum.”
Longtime Gardner Museum Trustee and former Board President, Barbara Hostetter chaired the committee that conducted an international search to find Hawley’s successor. “We are overjoyed that the Museum has found a new director with the vision and expertise to take it to new heights,” she said “Peggy comes to us with a seasoned perspective, honed by working at some of the nation’s finest museums, and with a freshness of spirit that makes being part of the Gardner leadership so rewarding.”
The Morgan began much like the Gardner Museum as a private collection that evolved into a vibrant cultural institution offering exhibitions, musical concerts, public lectures and special events. Fogelman has been instrumental in building a larger audience, developing the exhibition program, and forging meaningful collaborations with other institutions, foundations, and private collectors.
From 2009 to 2013, Fogelman was the Met’s Frederick P. and Sandra P. Rose Chairman of Education where she oversaw education, concert, and lecture programs. She took on the challenge of restructuring the education department to advance visitor engagement and to create more collaboration in the large institution. She spearheaded first time artist-based residencies and commissioned performances, fellowships in education and public practice, studio classes, gallery talks, artists’ study days, and digital art-making activities.
Before being recruited to the Met, Fogelman was Director of Education and Interpretation at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. She began her career at the J. Paul Getty Museum with a curatorial focus, and over the next 13 years, rose to Associate Curator in the Department of Sculpture and Works of Art. She was then appointed Senior Project Specialist to the Director, and transitioned to become Assistant Director and Head of Education and Interpretative Programs, achieving a major restructuring of the museum education program at the Getty. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Arts from Brown University. Her work has been published widely for both general and specialized audiences.
As Anne Hawley prepares for her next chapter, she said she is delighted that the Museum will be in such capable hands. “I trust the magic and uniqueness of the Gardner Museum will continue to soar under Peggy’s leadership,” she said.
Symposium | Beyond Chinoiserie, c. 1795–1911
From the symposium website:
Beyond Chinoiserie: A Workshop-symposium on Artistic Exchanges
between China and the West during the Late Qing Dynasty, c. 1795–1911
Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey, 30–31 October 2015
The mid 1790s witnessed the abdication of the Qianlong Emperor, who had ruled China for more than sixty years (1735–1796), as well as the last Western Embassy that traveled to China, organized by the Dutch East-India Company in 1794–95. Moreover, the decade saw the rapid rise of the opium trade, leading to an edict forbidding its use by the Jiaqing Emperor in 1799. The year 1911 marked the end of the Qing dynasty. By addressing the ‘long’ nineteenth century, the workshop is intended to explore a subject that has received comparatively less attention than East-West artistic relations during the eighteenth century, when most exchanges took place between the Beijing and European courts.
The workshop is aimed at investigating what happened when political relations between China and the West soured and when artistic contacts were no longer situated at the courts but largely took place in the context of international commerce and middle-class culture. By choosing a format that is less formal than a conference or symposium, we hope to attract to the Seton Hall workshop more speakers on a topic that has in the last few years emerged as one that is crucial for our understanding of East-West relations, and of international relations generally.
Held under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies, with funding from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, the workshop is co-sponsored by the University of Sydney and Seton Hall University. Its steering committee is comprised of Petra Chu (Seton Hall University), Yachen Ma (National Tsing Hua University), and Jennifer Milam (University of Sydney).
Attendance to the workshop is free, but registration is required. A simple registration form is found on the symposium website. Alternatively, call 973-761-7966.
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F R I D A Y , 30 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 5
8:30 Coffee
9:30 Opening of Proceedings
Welcome: Deirdre Yates, Dean, College of Communication and the Arts, SHU
Aims of the Workshop: Petra Chu (SHU) and Jennifer Milam (U of Sydney)
10:00 Keynote Address
Introduction of Keynote speaker: Dietrich Tschanz (Rutgers University)
Keynote: Elizabeth Chang (University of Missouri), Cultivating Chinoiserie: Organic Life and Exotic Design
11:15 Coffee Break
11:30 Panel Discussion
Cross-Disciplinary and Cross-Cultural Approaches: The Question of Exchange from the Chinese and Western Perspectives with Jennifer Milam (University of Sydney); Elizabeth Chang (University of Missouri); Stacey Sloboda (Southern Illinois University)
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Session 1: Chaired by Juergen Heinrichs, Seton Hall University
• Patricia Johnston (College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA), The China Trade and Emerging Imperial Aesthetics in Federal America
• Kristel Smentek (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Etienne Délécluze: Chinese Painting and Nineteenth-Century French Art
• Joyce Lindorff (Temple University), The Role of Music in George Macartney’s Embassy to China
Questions and Discussion (with coffee break)
3:30 Session 2: Chaired by Martha Easton, Seton Hall University
• Meredith Martin (New York University), Staging China and Siam in 1860s Paris
• Elizabeth Emery (Montclair State University), Appraising French Women ‘Collectors’ of Chinese Art in Fin-de-siècle France: Methods and Challenges
Questions and Discussion
5:00 Reception
S A T U R D A Y , 3 1 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 5
8:30 Coffee
9:30 Session 3: Chaired by Charlotte Nichols, Seton Hall University
• Maggie Cao (Columbia University), Copying in Reverse: China Trade Painting
• Sarah Cheang (Royal College of Art, London), Fashion and Chinoiserie: Material Translations between China, Japan, and Britain
• Tara Zanardi (Hunter College), Fabricating the ;Manton de Manila’ as National Dress
Questions and Discussion (with coffee break)
11:30 Panel Discussion
Introduction (Katherine Paul), Some Ching Enameled Vases in the Newark Museum
The Centrality of the Object in Artistic Relations between China and the West, with Petra Chu, (Seton Hall University); Katherine Paul (Newark Museum); Kristel Smentek (M.I.T.); Mei Rado (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Session 4: Chaired by Dong Dong Chen, Seton Hall University
• Roberta Wue (University of California, Irvine), Xugu Abstracts
• William Ma (University of California, Berkeley), Carving between Cultures: The Woodcarving Workshop at the Shanghai Jesuit Orphanage
Questions and Discussion
3:30 Visit Newark Museum Asian collections with Dr. Katherine Paul, Curator of Asian Art, Newark Museum (transportation on your own).
Call for Papers | European Portrait Miniatures
From H-ArtHist:
European Portrait Miniatures: Artists, Functions and Collections
The Tansey Miniatures Foundation, Celle, 11–13 November 2016
Proposals due by 31 March 2016
In January 2013 the Tansey Miniatures Foundation held its first conference on European portrait miniatures. At the time a conscious decision was made to cover a broad spectrum. It is precisely the consideration of miniature painting from various viewpoints that opens up an in-depth understanding of this special form of portraiture. The 2016 conference will therefore once again cover a wide range of aspects:
• Individual miniaturists, specific workshop contexts, and places of production
• Use of both court and private types and their protagonists
• Iconographic aspects in the context of representation or intimacy
• Evolution of techniques and materials
• Less well-known collections in museums
The symposium will be held on the occasion of the planned opening of the sixth exhibit of the Tansey Miniatures Foundation and the publication of the accompanying catalogue, Miniatures from the Baroque Period in the Tansey Collection. The conference will be in English. Lectures should not exceed 25 minutes and are to be published separately following the conference (information on the publication of the 2013 lectures is available here). The Tansey Miniatures Foundation will assume travelling expenses, accommodations, and meals. Exposés should be in English and no longer than 1500 characters. They should be submitted by March 31, 2016, including name, address, and, if applicable, institution, and be sent to bernd.pappe@miniaturen-tansey.de.
Organisation
Bernd Pappe, Berne (Art Historian and Restorer)
Juliane Schmieglitz-Otten, Celle (Head of the Residence Museum at Celle Castle)
Exhibition | Tromelin: The Island of the Forgotten Slaves
Now on view at Château des Ducs de Bretagne:
Tromelin: L’île des esclaves oubliés / The Island of the Forgotten Slaves
Château des Ducs de Bretagne, Nantes, 17 October 2015 — 30 April 2016
After leaving Bayonne on November 17, 1760, the Utile, a ship belonging to the French East India Company washed up on the Île de Sable (today: Tromelin Island—a 1-square-kilometer desert isle off the coast of Madagascar) on July 31, 1761. The ship was transporting 160 Malagasy slaves who were smuggled out of the country, intended to be sold to Île de France (now Mauritius). The crew returned to Madagascar on a raft, leaving 80 slaves on the island, with the promise to return and rescue them. Only fifteen years later, on November 29, 1776, did the ensign and future knight, Tromelin, return at the helm of the corvette La Dauphine. He rescued the eight surviving slaves: seven women and one eight-month child.
The goal of this exhibition is to recall an important period of maritime history along with the question of slavery and slave-trading in the Indian Ocean, illustrated by this shipwreck and the Malagasy survivors who tried to survive for nearly fifteen years on this tiny, inhospitable island.
The exhibition was developed in collaboration with the GRAN (Group Recherche en Archéologie Navale) and the INRAP (Institut National de Recherche Archéologique Préventive) for the excavations they performed on the island and underwater. Research on this shipwreck and the life of those who were ultimately rescued has been the focus of a multidisciplinary study with the aim of shedding light on the circumstances behind the tragic event. It also documents the living conditions of those who survived the best they could.
New Book | From the Shadows: Nicholas Hawksmoor
Published by Reaktion and distributed by The University of Chicago Press:
Owen Hopkins, From the Shadows: The Architecture and Afterlife of Nicholas Hawksmoor (London: Reaktion Books, 2015), 304 pages, ISBN: 9781780235158, £25 / $40.
Nicholas Hawksmoor (1662–1736) is considered one of Britain’s greatest architects. He was involved in the grandest architectural projects of his age and today is best known for his London churches: six idiosyncratic edifices of white Portland stone that remain standing today, proud and tall in the otherwise radically changed cityscape. Until comparatively recently, however, Hawksmoor was thought to be, at best, a second-rate talent—merely Sir Christopher Wren’s slightly odd apprentice, or the practically minded assistant to Sir John Vanbrugh. This book brings to life the dramatic story of Hawksmoor’s resurrection from the margins of history.
Charting Hawksmoor’s career and the decline of his reputation, Owen Hopkins offers fresh interpretations of many of his famous works—notably his three East End churches—and shows how over their history Hawksmoor’s buildings have been ignored, abused, altered, recovered and celebrated. Hopkins also charts how, as Hawksmoor returned to prominence during the twentieth century, his work caught the eye of observers as diverse as T. S. Eliot, James Stirling, Robert Venturi and, most famously, Peter Ackroyd, whose novel Hawksmoor (1985) popularized the mythical association of his work with the occult. Meanwhile, passionate campaigns were mounted to save and restore Hawksmoor’s churches, reflecting the strange hold his architecture can have over observers. There is surely no other body of work in British architectural history with the same capacity to intrigue and inspire, perplex and provoke as Hawksmoor’s has done for nearly three centuries.
Owen Hopkins is a writer, historian and Architecture Programme Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts. He is the author of Reading Architecture: A Visual Lexicon (2012) and Architectural Styles: A Visual Guide (2014) and regularly leads a variety of walking tours of London architecture.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
C O N T E N T S
Introduction: The Man and the Myth
1 Emergence
2 Achievement
3 Falling into Shadow
4 Neglect and Rehabilitation
5 Into the Light
6 Rebirth
7 Hawksmoor Today
References
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index
Enfilade 
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