Enfilade

From the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art:

Art in the British Country House: Collecting and Display
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 7 October 2016

Proposals due by 8 July 2016

The Paul Mellon Centre’s research project Art in the British Country House: Collecting and Display investigates the collection and display of works of art in the country house in Britain from the sixteenth century to the present day. Focusing on specific case studies, the project addresses two closely related issues:
• The formation, character and function of country-house art collections
• The conventions, development and dynamics of pictorial and sculptural display within the country house

The crucial importance of the country house to understanding the history of art-collection and display in Britain is indisputable and of long-standing interest to historians of British art. This project, in turning a fresh eye on the collections of art associated with the country house, builds on exciting new developments within this area of scholarship, which shed new light on the wide range of motivations and circumstances that have shaped such collections. The project extends to the country house a growing scholarly interest in modes of pictorial display, which has hitherto tended to focus on the display of paintings, sculpture, and prints within more urban and public environments, and on the exhibition space in particular.

The project will concentrate attention on the ways in which country house art collections were formed and on the reasons why they took the form they did. It will address the impact upon collecting practices of such factors as the growth of continental travel, the development of a sophisticated art market, fluctuations in taste, and dynastic ambitions and familial alliances. It will also address the conditions, facilities, and habits of display in the country house, investigating such issues as the shifting modes of the picture hang, the introduction of dedicated gallery spaces within the country house, the relationship between the country house and the town house as sites of collection and display, the development of cataloguing, and the growth of professional curatorship.

As an integral part of this project, the Centre is organizing the first of a series of conferences designed to showcase new research in this area. We invite proposals for 30-minute papers which discuss some aspect of the collecting and/ or display of art in a single country house from any point over the past five hundred years. We welcome proposals from academics, museum curators, independent scholars, those working in the heritage sector, and those actively involved in postgraduate studies. While the Call for Papers has a purposefully broad and open brief, it is essential that submissions offer fresh, methodologically ambitious perspectives on the topic.

Possible themes for exploration might include, but are not limited to:
• The impact of commerce and travel on collecting
• The creation and presentation of spaces for display
• The commissioning and display of portraiture in the country house
• The collecting and display of historic and/or contemporary art
• The relationship between country- and town-house modes of collection and display
• The interaction of works of art within the country-house interior
• The relationship between the fine and decorative arts in country-house display
• Patterns of display across the different rooms of a single country house

Proposals, of no more than 250 words, together with a short CV, for 30-minute papers, should be submitted to Ella Fleming at efleming@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk by 8th July 2016.

From the conference website:

Romanticism and the Peripheries
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, 5–7 December 2016

Proposals due by 30 July 2016

“The Romantic phenomenon seems to defy analysis, not only because its exuberant diversity resists any attempt to reduce it to a common denominator but also and especially because of its fabulously contradictory character” (Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre, Romanticism against the Tide of Modernity, trans. by Catherine Porter, Durham: Duke University Press, 2001). In an attempt to accommodate both its diversity and contradictory character, Löwy and Sayre defined Romanticism as “a worldview constituted as a specific form of criticism of ‘modernity’” and expanded the term beyond artistic and literary phenomena to encompass a wide range of fields such as religion, political theory, philosophy, etc. Even though Löwy and Sayre may offer a guiding principle outside the interpretative confusion often generated by the term, their analysis is still mostly, if not exclusively, concerned with the definition of the phenomenon as it manifested in the principal centers of Europe (namely England, France, and Germany).

This three-day conference, organized on the occasion of the bicentenary of Fernando II’s birth, the Portuguese king responsible for the edification of what is widely considered the hallmark of Romantic Portuguese architecture, seeks to focus on Romanticism in the peripheries, both European and non-European, and explore the validity of the concept for the analysis of artistic and cultural forms that, for the most part, originated outside the centers of bourgeois industrial civilization. Taking as its starting point the definition proposed by Lowy and Sayre, the conference invites participation on a number of issues including, but not limited to:
1  When Was Romanticism? Attempts at Periodization and Definition
2  Sublime matters: Romanticism and Material Culture
3  Transfers and Cross-Sections: Literature, Theater and the Visual Arts
4  The Romantic Traveler: Drawings, Prints and Souvenirs
5  Artistic Education. Academy versus Nature?
6  Romantic Landscape, Gardens and Architecture
7  Romantic Nationalism – Romantic Imperialism? The Politics of Style

Abstracts (of no more than 300 words), accompanied by a short bio (approximately two paragraphs) should be sent to the members of the organizing committee, at iha.romanticism2016@gmail.com by July 30, 2016. Participants will be notified by the end of August, and the conference program will be published in mid-September. The languages of the conference are English and Portuguese.

A selection of papers from the conference will be published as a special number of the Revista de História da Arte, an annual peer-reviewed journal, and a second publication, in the form of a book, is also being contemplated by the organizers. For all questions regarding administration and practical matters, as well as the payment of the conference inscription, please contact Mariana Gonçalves and Inês Cristóvão (iha.romanticism2016@gmail.com). Conference inscription rates: speakers 50€, participants 40€, students 20€.