Conference | The Properly Dressed Window
From Winterthur:
The Properly Dressed Window: Curtain Design Over Time
Winterthur, Wilmington, Delaware, 15–16 May 2018
Join Winterthur staff, visiting scholars, designers, and fellow ‘textilians’ for a two-day program of lectures and hands-on workshops. For information and registration, please call 800.448.3883. Registration opens on February 6, 2018. Read The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles article on curtains at Winterthur.
Sandy Brown, with an introduction by Linda Eaton and a foreword by Thomas Jayne, The Well-Dressed Window: Curtains at Winterthur (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2017), 208 pages, ISBN: 9781580934589, $50.
Today Henry Francis du Pont, the force behind the transformation of Winterthur from a family house to the premier museum of American decorative arts, is recognized, along with Henry Davis Sleeper and Elsie de Wolfe, as one of the early leaders of interior design in this country.
Working with architects, curators, and antiques dealers, du Pont created some 175 room settings within the house. He assembled his rooms using architectural elements from historic houses along the East Coast and filled them with an extraordinary collection of American furniture and decorative arts. Du Pont’s unique talent was his ability to arrange historically related objects in a beautiful way, in settings that enhanced their shape and form through the choice of color, textiles, and style.
Du Pont paid particular attention to the design of the curtains, and The Well-Dressed Window surveys his achievement, explaining how the fabrics were selected as well as their relationship to the architecture and other decorative elements in the rooms. Forty rooms are presented, each specially photographed to show the overall space in addition to details of fabric and trim. A series of stereoviews taken in the 1930s as well as other period photographs reveal the evolution of the window treatments and upholstery over nearly sixty years. Of particular interest is du Pont’s seasonal changing of the curtains, which were rotated throughout the year as the lighting and colors in the surrounding garden shifted.
Call for Papers | Portraiture
From H-ArtHist:
Portraiture: an Interdisciplinary Conference
Centre for Visual Arts and Culture, Durham University, 13–15 July 2018
Proposals due by 1 March 2018
The study of portraiture is beginning to come into its own now that old assumptions about the low status of the genre have been challenged and contextualised. The ubiquity and diversity of portraits means that they can be used as evidence to address a wide range of questions, while the very idea ‘portrait’ is immensely rich. The conference is designed to open up fresh perspectives on a potent form of visual culture that is of continuing importance yet unevenly distributed in time and place.
Proposals may deal with any period and location. Papers are especially welcome that explore the interdisciplinary potential of studying portraiture and that address the following themes:
• The ways portraits create, sustain and comment on occupational identity
• Portraits and/in institutions
• ‘Portrait’ as an idea and its metaphorical dimensions
• Portraits where the face is not present
• Portraiture in the North East of the UK
• Comparative approaches to portraiture, which might focus on place, time, occupation, race, social status, and/or gender, for example.
We invite contributions of short papers for the conference. Please send an abstract—maximum 250 words—together with a one page CV by 1 March 2018 to cvac@durham.ac.uk and include ‘portraiture conference’ in the subject line. Please note presenters of short papers will need to cover their own costs, which will be kept as low as possible. There will be no conference fee for speakers. This conference follows the summer school Visual Intersections 3 (11–13 July). Early career researchers are especially welcome at both events.
Keynote Speakers: Professor Elizabeth Cowling and Professor Viccy Coltman
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