Lecture | James Legard on Blenheim Palace
This afternoon at the Paul Mellon Centre:
James Legard, Ambitious Architecture: Rethinking the Meanings of Blenheim Palace
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 20 May 2016
This paper seeks to recover the meanings that Blenheim Palace was originally intended to embody. It will show how Blenheim’s purposes were repeatedly reconceived in lockstep with the ever-growing social, political and dynastic ambitions of its patron, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, Queen Anne’s most favoured courtier and foremost military commander. Initially conceived as a private gift from the Queen, the building was transformed first into a ‘public monument’ to a great battle; then into a palace that was, quite literally, fit for a prince; before finally becoming a dangerous liability as Marlborough’s dizzying ascent turned to disgrace. By tracing how the duke’s architects, Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor, reconfigured Blenheim’s formal structure and symbolic programme in response to their patron’s evolving status and aspirations, this analysis aims to bring new clarity to our understanding of Britain’s most spectacular Baroque country house.
All are welcome! However, places are limited, so if you would like to attend please book a place in advance. Friday, 20 May 2016, 12:30–2:00 pm, Seminar Room, Paul Mellon Centre.
James Legard completed a PhD in the history of architecture at the University of York in 2014, where the subject of his thesis was Vanbrugh, Blenheim Palace and the Meanings of Baroque Architecture. He is currently working for the National Gallery on a collaborative project with the Getty Research Institute to digitise early British art sales catalogues. When this project ends later this year, he will take up a recently awarded Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Paul Mellon Centre in order to prepare his thesis for publication.
Exhibition | Unbounded: The Eighteenth Century Mirrored by the Present
Now on view in Sweden at the Gothenburg Museum of Art:
Unbounded: The Eighteenth Century Mirrored by the Present / Gränslöst: 1700-tal speglat i nuet
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Gothenburg, 4 May — 13 November 2016
The major exhibition of the spring is based on unexpected encounters. Here, art from the eighteenth century is shown alongside crafts, fashion, design, and popular culture, in order to let visual expressions from different periods of time clash against each other, creating friction and new perspectives. The exhibition highlights the boundless and boundary transcending, with a focus on conceptions of gender, man’s relation to nature and the West’s image of China. These themes all touch on areas where norms and values are in a process of renegotiation. The exhibition is a collaboration between the Gothenburg Museum of Art, the Röhsska Museum, and the University of Gothenburg.
Kristoffer Arvidsson, ed., Gränslöst. 1700-tal speglat i nuet / Unbounded: The Eighteenth Century Mirrored by the Present (Gothenburg: Göteborgs Konstmuseums Skriftserie, 2016), 376 pages, ISBN: 978-9187968969.
Call for Papers and Posters | Synagogue and Museum
From H-ArtHist:
Synagogue and Museum: 3rd International Congress on Jewish Architecture
Technische Universität Braunschweig, 21–23 November 2016
Paper proposals due by 29 July 2016; poster proposals due by 30 September 2016
Since antiquity and especially since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70 CE, synagogues have become the central places of gathering of Jewish communities. They are complex, highly significant and polyvalent objects of for religious, social, economic, architectural, and artistic developments in Jewish culture. At the same time, they reflect the interdependencies with the surrounding cultures. Since the holocaust, historic synagogues also gained high importance as focal points of remembrance and education.
However, scholars were interested in the material culture(s) of Jews all over the world well before the holocaust and turned synagogues and their furnishings into a focus of their research. The documentation of synagogues as objects of cultural and historical significance started alongside with the establishment of Jewish ethnography (jüdische Volkskunde) as an academic discipline at the end of the 19th century. They became items of collecting, which were set up in exhibitions and museums. Objects from the religious and cultural practice got ‘musealised’, as well as entire synagogue furnishings and sometimes even architectural elements. After 1945, the interest in synagogues as objects of cultural history continued. Besides ritual objects and furnishings, the ’empty’ buildings of the annihilated communities became objects of interest. Historic synagogue buildings were regarded as museums, their material substance was and is restored and interpreted in different ways. The virtual and haptic reconstruction of destroyed synagogues generated another group of ‘immaterial’ exhibits.
The congress will examine the subject in a wide range of perspectives of theoretical and historical reflections. Historic and actual examples of documenting, collecting, and researching synagogues and their furnishing will shed light on the history, the presence, and the future of synagogues in and as museums. Thus, the organisers encourage scholars in the fields of art and architectural history, cultural sciences, Jewish studies, restoration and museology as well as experts in museums, collections, preservation authorities, and education programs to take part in the congress.
This call asks for papers for talks and for posters for a posters-section. It is open for young researchers as well as museums, collections and initiatives who want to present their institutions and their ongoing or future projects. The members of the international and interdisciplinary academic board and the organisers will decide on the acceptance of the papers and the posters. The publication of selected papers and posters in the book series of the Bet Tfila – Research Unit for Jewish Architecture is scheduled for 2017. The conference language is English. Provisions to refund travel expenses will depend on the approval of running applications.
To propose a paper, please send an abstract of up to 1500 characters for a lecture of 15 minutes and a short-CV of up to 500 characters in English by July 29th, 2016. To propose a poster, please send a poster (PDF-file, 5 MB max.) for the poster presentation in English by September 30th, 2016. The email address is u.knufinke@gmx.de.
The congress is organised by the Bet Tfila – Research Unit for Jewish Architecture (Braunschweig/ Jerusalem) and the Lehrstuhl für Kunstgeschichte at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien, Heidelberg in cooperation with the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, Braunschweig, and the Israel Jacobson Netzwerk für jüdische Kultur und Geschichte e.V.
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