The British Library Launches ‘Picturing Places’
J. Mérigot after Louis Bélanger, View of the Bridge across the Rio Cobre near Spanish Town, Jamaica; etching, aquatint, hand colouring; published in London, 20 April 1800 (London: British Library, Maps K.Top.123.55.b). This sublime aquatint of the River Cobre in Jamaica is after a design by Louis Bélanger. It is part of a series of six. There is no record of Bélanger ever visiting Jamaica. It appears that he adapted his designs for this work and another view in the series from George Robertson’s paintings of the island, available in print from the 1770s (see BL Maps K.Top.123.54.f.). The image is included in Miles Ogborn’s article for Picturing Places: “Slavery, Freedom and the Jamaican Landscape.”
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Felicity Myrone of the British Library shares this exciting news:
The British Library is delighted to announce the launch of Picturing Places, a new free online resource which explores the Library’s extensive holdings of landscape imagery. The British Library’s huge collection of historic prints and drawings is a treasure trove waiting to be discovered. Picturing Places showcases works of art by well-known artists such as Thomas Gainsborough and J.M.W. Turner alongside images by a multitude of lesser-known figures. Only a few have ever been seen or published before.
Historically, the British Library’s prints and drawings have been overlooked by scholars. This is the first time that a large and important body of such materials from the Library are being brought to light. While landscape images have often been treated as accurate records of place, this website reveals the many different stories involved—about travel and empire, science and exploration, the imagination, history, and observation.
As well as over 500 newly-digitised works of art from the collection, this growing site will feature over 100 articles by both emerging and established scholars from many disciplines. Part of the British Library’s ongoing Transforming Topography research project, films from the Library’s 2016 conference exploring the depiction of place are also accessible, providing revelatory insights about the history of landscape imagery.
Additional information is available here»
Symposium | Freemasonry and the Visual Arts
From the symposium programme:
Freemasonry and the Visual Arts
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, 26 May 2017
Co-chaired by Reva Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg
The Freemasonry and the Visual Arts symposium is a program of the second World Conference on Fraternalism, Freemasonry, and History.
It brings together a series of original case studies to reveal the wide variety, international scope, social complexity, and fundamental historical significance of the intersections of Masonry and the arts from the eighteenth century forward.
Registration is free through this link.
14:00 Part 1: Freemasonry and the Exploration of Architecture
• David Martín López (University of Granada), Freemasonry in Eighteenth-Century Portugal and the Architectural Projects of the Marquis de Pombal
• Alisa Luxenberg (University of Georgia, Athens), Building Codes: New Light on f … baron Taylor and Les Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France
• Talinn Grigor (University of California, Davis), Reveil de l’Iran: Freemasonry and Artistic Revivalism from Parsi Bombay to Qajar Tehran
15:15 Coffee break
15:30 Part 2: Art, Freemasonry, and Social and Political Upheaval
• Cordula Bischoff (independent scholar), Meissen Porcelain and the Order of the Pug
• Reva Wolf (State University of New York at New Paltz), Goya’s Art and Freemasonry in Spain
• Katherine Marie Smith (New York University), Masonic Imagery in Haitian Vodou
16:45 Part 3: Transformations in the Art of Freemasonry in the United States
• Nan Wolverton (American Antiquarian Society), ‘Within the Compass of Good Citizens’: The Visual Arts of Freemasonry as Practiced by Paul Revere
• William D. Moore (Boston University), ‘To Consummate the Plan’: Solomon’s Temple in Masonic Art, Architecture, and Popular Culture, 1865–1930
• Cheryl Finley (Cornell University) and Deborah Willis (New York University), ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’: Imaging Black Freemasons from Emancipation to the 1960s
Conference | Heritage and Revolution: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
From H-ArtHist, with more information available at the conference website:
Heritage and Revolution: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, 6 May 2017
From the French Revolution in the eighteenth century, to the communist revolutions in twentieth-century Russia and China, to the Arab Spring in the twenty-first century, heritage has been in the cross-hairs of aspirations to change and utopian constructions of possible futures. This research seminar will explore the unique and complex relationship between cultural heritage and revolutions, two concepts with seemingly opposed temporal connotations.
9:00 Introduction
Chair: Mathilde LeLoup
Dominique Poulot – The French Revolution and the Democratization of Heritage: Or the Parallel Inventions of Vandalism and Heritage
9:30 Session 1: Revolutionary Vanguards in Retrospect
Chair: Tom Crowley
• Astrid Swenson – Out with the Old? The Role of Revolution in the Rise of Heritage
• Julie Deschepper – Between Past and Future: The ‘Heritage Revolution’ in Russia
• Heonik Kwon – Shrine for Displaced Spirits: A Heritage of the Vietnamese Revolution
• Tom Stammers – The Homeless Heritage of the French Revolution
11:00 Coffee break
11:20 Session 2: Building and Destroying Socialist Pasts
Chair: Margaret Comer
• Francesco Iacono – Counter-Revolution or Why It Is Impossible to Have a Heritage of Communism and What Can We Do about It
• Myroslava Hartmond – Where The Bodies Are Buried: A Comparative Study of Lenin Disposal in Post-Communist States
• Laura Demeter – Regime Change and Cultural Heritage Protection, a Matter of State Security
12:30 Artist Talk
• Martha McGuinn – authentic.obj
1:00 Lunch
2:00 Session 3: Materiality and Immateriality of Revolution
Chair: Marie Louise Stig Sørensen
• Lila Janik – Materiality of Praxis and Substance: A Tangible Witnesses to the Russian Revolution and the Subsequent Oppression
• John Carman – Anarchist Ambiguity: The Past and Creating a Free Society
• Michael Falser – From Maoist Revolution to the Mimicking of UNESCO’s Cold War Diplomacy: The Khmer Rouge and the (Un)Making of Angkor/Cambodia as Cultural Heritage, 1975–90
3:00 Session 4: Exhibition Revolution
Chair: Johanna Zetterstrom-Sharp
• Jennifer E. Altehenger – Industrial Chinoiserie: China’s Pavilion at the Leipzig Trade Fairs in the 1950s
• Flaminia Bartolini – Entertaining Italy with Propaganda: The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution in Rome
4:15 Session 5: The Arab Spring: Reconciling Competing Visions
Chair: Dacia Viejo Rose
• Shadia Mahmoud – Museums and Cultural Heritage in Post-Revolution Egypt: Transformation and Transmission
• Dena Qaddumi – Confronting the Past for the sake of the Future: Cultural Heritage in Tunis
5:00 Discussion
5:30 Wine reception
7:00 Dinner
Call for Papers | The Histories of Loans
From H-ArtHist:
The Histories of Loans: Memories and Challenges of Museum Loans
Histoires de prêts, mémoire et enjeux des prêts dans les musées
École du Louvre, Paris, 28-29 September 2017
Proposals due by 5 June 2017
Since the end of the 19th century, the expansion of temporary exhibitions has determined the emergence of an international system for museums, based on the circulation of artworks and objects. For museums, sharing pieces from their collection has become crucial to ensure that they in turn get the loans they need to organise their own exhibitions. Lending artworks to prestigious institutions, particularly foreign ones, also enables curators to guarantee a heightened visibility to their own collections. Where to exhibit, how often, and which pieces can be obtained from which partners: nowadays, these are the fundamental criteria of a museum’s positioning within the international hierarchy of cultural heritage prestige. But loan policy does simply affect an institution’s image: it acts directly on the definition of the objects. The acceptation or refusal of a loan is the result of complex transactions, formulated or not, during which the value of an artwork is negotiated and reviewed. It also reflects the importance and rank of institutions, sometimes even of towns and nations. This international symposium intends to question the policy for loaning works of art, both from the angle of the mobility of museum artworks and objects, and that of the reconfigurations of their status. The aim of this colloquium will be to explore the ways in which, historically, loan procedure has defined itself to the point of becoming a crucial challenge for museums.
The economic, political and legal dimensions are also at the heart of this discussion. The suggested themes, which are not meant as limitations but as possible avenues for reflection, include the following:
• The History of loans
• The memory of loans
• The museographical constraints of loans
• Loans and restorations
• Loans as tools for art history
• The geopolitics of loans
• The temporality of loans
• The economy of loans
• The principle of free admission in museums and its exceptions
• Loans and their legal framework
• Notions of public and private in museum loans
The field of study for this symposium also covers the pre-history of loans (such as the translation of relics in the Middle Ages). Alongside artworks and objects, all artefacts are liable to be retained, as long as they shed more light on the theme. The very contemporary period acts as the opposite time limit for the symposium, and can be addressed from a historical viewpoint or as an anthropology of scholarly practices. While it is often difficult to distinguish both notions, the symposium will focus on the question of loans, excluding the question of long-term deposits, which has been studied specifically in the past few years.
Researchers who wish to take part in the symposium must send their paper proposals as well as a CV (one page) to the organisers (colloques@ecoledulouvre.fr) before Monday 5 June 2017. Proposals must be no longer than 2000 characters or 300 words and can be written in French, English, German, or Italian. The organisers will establish the definitive programme along with the members of the scientific committee. The final selection of participants will be announced on 15 June 2017.
Scientific Direction
François-René Martin, ENSBA et Ecole du Louvre
Michela Passini, CNRS (IHMC-ENS) et Ecole du Louvre
Neville Rowley, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Scientific Committee
Claire Barbillon, Université de Poitiers, Ecole du Louvre
Françoise Blanc, Ecole du Louvre
Cécilia Griener-Hurley, Ecole du Louvre et Université de Neuchâtel
Violaine Jeammet, Musée du Louvre et Ecole du Louvre
François-René Martin, ENSBA et Ecole du Louvre
Sophie Mouquin, Université Charles-de-Gaulle, Lille
Michela Passini, CNRS (IHMC-ENS) et Ecole du Louvre
Natacha Pernac, Ecole du Louvre et Université Paris-Nanterre
Neville Rowley, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Enfilade 
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