Call for Papers | Digital Humanities for Academic and Curatorial Practice
Call for Papers from the Rome Art History Network (RAHN). . .
Digital Humanities for Academic and Curatorial Practice / per la pratica accademica e curatoriale
Biblioteca Angelica di Roma and the American Academy in Rome, 23–24 May 2018
Proposals due by 1 March 2018
The digital humanities have challenged all disciplines of art history to engage with new interdisciplinary methodologies, learn new tools, and re-evaluate their role within academia. In consequence, art historians occupy a new position in relation to the object of study. Museums have been equally transformed. The possibilities of creating virtual realities for lost/inaccessible monuments poses a new relationship between viewer and object in gallery spaces. Digital humanities interventions in museums even allow us to preserve the memory of endangered global heritage sites which cease to exist or are inaccessible (celebrated examples including the lost Great Arch of Palmyra reconstructed with a 3D printer). Curatorial practices are now trending towards a sensorial and experiential approach.
Is the role of digital humanities—in academic as well in museum settings—to ‘reveal’ the object itself, through empirical display of extant material, or to ‘reconstruct’ something of the original experience of the object to engage spectators? Can we propose a reconciliation between these two ‘poles’?
The Sixth International Day of Doctoral Studies promoted by RAHN aims to investigate the role of digital humanities by promoting a dialogue between the protection of cultural heritage sites, museology, the history of art, and the digitalization of ‘big data’. We are accepting papers that engage with particular dimensions of the dichotomy between ‘Revealing’ and ‘Reconstructing.’ Possible topics include
• How can the Digital Humanities preserve our global heritage?
• Do Digital Humanities interventions make historical material more accessible to non- specialists?
• What are the moral obligations of the Digital Humanities within the museum context?
• How is Digital Humanities changing the practice of Art History? Do they provide a more empirical alternative to connoisseur/style-based approaches? The call for papers is open to art and architectural history graduate students and those working in the field of Digital Humanities.
We invite candidates to submit 15-minute reports that, by means of study cases or theoretical observations, point to the centre of this methodological practice. The conference will take place in Italian and English, and papers will be accepted in both languages. Proposals must be submitted in abstract form (up to 400 words) together with a short CV (max. one page) by the 1st of March to romearthistorynetwork@gmail.com. The conference will take place on the 23rd and 24th of May 2018 at the Biblioteca Angelica di Roma and American Academy in Rome.
Curated by Angelica Federici (Rome Art History Network / University of Cambridge) and Joseph Williams (American Academy in Rome / Duke University)
Coordinated by Matteo Piccioni (Rome Art History Network/ Sapienza Università di Roma )
Previous Editions
• In situ / Ex situ: L’arte di esporre l’arte: relazioni nel contesto spaziale tra arte e architettura (27–28 April 2017)
• Now or (n)ever: I tempi dell’opera: temi, teorie e metodi nella storia dell’arte (28–29 April 2016)
• Tra assenza e presenza: Opere perdute e frammentarie (19–20 March 2015)
• Sopravvalutata, sacrosanta, scandalosa? La figura dell’artista nella storia dell’arte oggi (3–4 April 2014)
• La storia dell’arte tra scienza e dilettantismo: Metodi e percorsi (24 April 2012)
Peter Kerber on Blasphemy, Irenicism, and Collecting
From the Mellon Centre:
Peter Björn Kerber | Blasphemy, Irenicism, and Collecting: The Improbable Friendship of Francis Dashwood and Antonio Niccolini
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 21 February 2018
Pier Leone Ghezzi, Antonio Niccolini, ca. 1725, pen and ink over graphite on laid paper, 306 × 218 mm (Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Joseph F. McCrindle Collection, 2009.70.126).
In February 1740, the cardinals convened in Rome to elect a successor to Pope Clement XII. In an open mockery of the ritual, Sir Francis Dashwood (1708–1781) and a group of fellow Grand Tourists staged a parody of the conclave. The irreverent young Englishman impersonated Pietro Ottoboni, Dean of the College of Cardinals and one of the greatest art collectors of his day. At the same time and in spite of the public scandal erupting over his blasphemous behaviour, Dashwood struck up a friendship with Antonio Niccolini (1701–1769), a Florentine nobleman closely connected to the family of the recently deceased pontiff and friend of the soon-to-be-elected Benedict XIV.
The two men were multifaceted characters: Dashwood was a notorious rake fond of satirising religious ceremonies, yet he compiled (together with Benjamin Franklin) and privately printed a simplified version of the Book of Common Prayer. Niccolini, a lawyer and theologian charged with a secret irenic mission to reconcile the Church of Utrecht with the Holy See, was an important behind-the-scenes contributor to the monumental Museum Florentinum, Anton Francesco Gori’s catalogue of Florentine antiquities and paintings. While spending almost two years in London in 1746–48, Niccolini frequented major collectors such as Henry Howard, 4th Earl of Carlisle, and Sir Hans Sloane in addition to Dashwood. This paper will retrace the intellectual, religious and artistic dimensions of the ill-matched pair’s twenty-year friendship and consider how Niccolini’s influence is reflected in the art collection Dashwood assembled at West Wycombe Park.
Wednesday, 21 February 2018, 18:00–20:00, at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Bedford Square, London. Book here.
Peter Björn Kerber is a curator at Dulwich Picture Gallery and author of Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth-Century Europe. As a member of the Paul Mellon Centre’s research project Collecting and Display: The British Country House, his focus is the art collection at West Wycombe Park.
Christopher Ridgway on Picture Displays at Castle Howard
From the Mellon Centre:
Christopher Ridgway | The Lives and After-lives of Picture Displays at Castle Howard
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 28 February 2018
Whilst tracing the whereabouts of paintings in the Castle Howard collection at a given moment is a relatively straightforward matter, comprehending the changing relationships between individual pictures (and artists), and their neighbours on the walls gives rise to more complicated enquiries. Collections and their hangs are always in flux, but just what are the motives for, and consequences of, moving pictures?
Wednesday, 28 February 2018, 18:00–20:00, at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Bedford Square, London. Book here.
Christopher Ridgway is curator at Castle Howard and has lectured and published on its architecture, collections, landscapes, and archives. He is Chair of the Yorkshire Country House Partnership, and Adjunct Professor at Maynooth University. His most recent publication, co-edited with Terence Dooley and Maeve O’Riordan, is Women and the Country House in Ireland and Britain (Four Courts Press, 2018).
Martin Postle on Portraits by Reynolds and Northcote
From the Mellon Centre:
Martin Postle | Patrons and Painters: Portraits by Joshua Reynolds and James Northcote at Trewithen, Cornwall
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 7 March 2018
James Watson, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, The Rev. Mr. Zachariah Mudge, Prebend of Exeter &c., mezzotint (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection).
Among the pictures in the collection at Trewithen, Cornwall are two portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds and four by his pupil James Northcote. The portraits feature for the most part members of the Mudge family and were painted in Plymouth—the home of the Mudges and the birthplace of both Reynolds and Northcote. The group comprises a portrait of the cleric Zachariah Mudge and his wife Kitty, by Joshua Reynolds; portraits by Northcote of the philosopher William Ferguson and Thomas Mudge; as well as Northcote’s self portrait and his copy of Reynolds’s portrait of John Mudge. These portraits remain virtually unknown beyond the confines of Trewithen and those acquainted with the house and its collection. Nor have they been subjected to any significant research in the modern period. The intention in this talk is to explain the context for their creation and the light they shed on an important source of local patronage, which had a profound impact on the careers of Reynolds and his pupil James Northcote.
Wednesday, 7 March 2018, 18:00–20:00, at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Bedford Square, London. Book here.
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