Enfilade

From the conference flyer:

Early Modern Collections in Use
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, 15–16 September 2017

Ferrante Imperato, Dell ’Historia Naturale, 1599, detail from a double plate (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute).

From cabinets of curiosities, auction houses, and libraries to stables, menageries, and laboratories, early modern collections played a key role in the creation and transmission of knowledge. But how were these collections used in their own time? Speakers will explore the relationships between space and knowledge through the discussion of a range of themes in the history of collecting: from management to performance, from visitation to dissemination. Cumulatively, the papers will offer a new basis for thinking not only about the origins and content, but also about the functions and dynamics of early modern collections.

Conference registration and optional lunches by reservation only. The registration fee is $25 (students free), with buffet lunches for $20 each day. Please visit The Huntington website for more information. Funding provided by The Huntington’s William French Smith Endowment and The USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.

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8:30  Registration and coffee

9:30  Welcome by Steve Hindle (The Huntington) and remarks by Elizabeth Eger and Anne Goldgar (King’s College London)

10:00  Session 1 | Conceptualizing
Moderator: Anne Goldgar
• Paula Findlen (Stanford University), Why Put a Museum in a Book? Ferrante Imperato and Natural History in Sixteenth-Century Naples
• Peter Mancall (University of Southern California and The USC-Huntington, Early Modern Studies Institute), Birds of (Early) America

12:00  Lunch

1:00  Session 2 | Displaying
Moderator: Elizabeth Eger
• Vera Keller (University of Oregon), Johann Daniel Major (1634–1693) and the Experimental Museum
• Mark Meadow (University of California, Santa Barbara), Quiccheberg, Prudence, and the Display of Techne in the Brueghel/Rubens Allegories of the Senses

2:45  Break

3:00  Session 3 | Performing
Moderator: Arnold Hunt (University of Cambridge)
• Dániel Margócsy (University of Cambridge), Stables as Collections for Breeding: The Production of Knowledge and the Reproduction of Horses
• Anne Goldgar (King’s College London), How to Seem a Connoisseur: Learning to Perform in Early Modern Art Collections

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9:00  Registration and coffee

9:30  Session 4 | Hiding
Moderator: Peter Mancall
• Jessica Keating (Carleton College), Hidden in Plain Sight: The Kunstkammer of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II
• Victoria Pickering (The British Museum), Sealed and Concealed: The Visible and Not-so-Visible Uses of a Botanical Collection

11:30 Lunch and time to view exhibition, Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin (led by exhibition curator Daniela Bleichmar)

1:00  Session 5 | Visiting
Moderator: Kim Sloan (The British Museum)
• Elizabeth Eger, Collecting People
• Felicity Roberts (King’s College London), Sir Hans Sloane’s Museum and Animal Encounters

2:45 Break

3:00  Session 6 | Disseminating
Moderator: Miles Ogborn (Queen Mary University of London)
• Alice Marples (The John Rylands Research Institute, University of Manchester), ‘Raised to High Eminence By the Excitement’: Collections and the Creation of ‘Provincial’ Medical Education
• Daniela Bleichmar (University of Southern California), The Interpretation of Mexican Indigenous Objects in Collections in Early Modern Europe and New Spain

4:45  Concluding Roundtable
Arnold Hunt (University of Cambridge), Miles Ogborn (Queen Mary University of London), Kim Sloan (The British Museum), and Mary Terrall (University of California, Los Angeles)

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