Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

Making a Case for Cases: The Furniture of Display
The Bowes Museum, County Durham, 10–11 January 2020

Proposals due by 22 November 2019

This conference aims to explore the furniture used by collectors, museums and institutions for displaying artefacts. Spanning diverse functions and definitions, objects known as display cases, showcases, china cabinets, vitrines, specimen tables, or even trophy cabinets, are ubiquitous in the home and museum. However, there remains a lack of scholarly engagement with cases in the writing on and about museums, demoting them as merely utilitarian or secondary to the objects they contain. This conference aims to shift the focus from the contained to the container.

From the earliest wunderkammer, treasure houses, and royal palaces, collectors and institutions have purchased, or commissioned craftsmen to make furniture to hold possessions or artefacts. With the rise and development of public art museums and large-scale international exhibitions in the nineteenth century, display cases became increasingly central to the aesthetics and practicalities of exhibiting art. As more people jostled to see or touch objects, cabinets were redesigned to fit with new techniques of preservation and display. We might consider the boom in the luxury furniture trade that offered private collectors from a range of social backgrounds the opportunity to decorate their homes and show off their prize pieces. How did public and private display cases mould forms of class and gender identity? How did they balance the need for access with the claims of distinction?

The display case was an invitation to close-looking and even scientific investigation. Types of visual scrutiny were inherently bound up with technological advances and this was mediated through shifts in case design. What were the power dynamics at work when something was placed inside a case, particularly in the imperial context of the nineteenth century, as foreign cultures were subject to study and objects were displaced from their original locations. Which histories do display cases speak to? This event will open a discussion around the topic between historians of any discipline who examine display cases and their role in presenting art and material culture.

The organisers invite abstracts for 20-minute papers and also shorter, in-focus presentations of around 5–8 minutes in length. We welcome papers on topics engaging with, but certainly not limited to:
• Cases in domestic or historic interiors, c.1750–1950
• The different taxonomy of cases: for porcelain, jewellery, taxidermy, documents, coins and medals, natural history and botanical specimens.
• Uniformity and difference in display cases
• Case design and architecture
• The impact of curators, collectors, artists or dealers on display case design.
• The criteria of cases; for study, classification or aesthetics?
• Display cases and preservation/conservation
• Display cases and Empire
• Display cases in commercial spaces.

Please direct all submissions to casesconference2020@gmail.com by noon on Friday 22 November 2019. The organisers will be in touch with the outcome of applications the following week.

The conference will take place in The Bowes Museum on Friday, 10 January and the morning of Saturday 11 January, allowing time for speakers and delegates to arrive via Darlington train station on Friday morning and to leave on Saturday after lunch. With its important collection of furniture used for display purposes, The Bowes Museum offers the ideal venue for this conference. We warmly invite all participants to join us on the afternoon of Saturday, 11 January at the museum for extra discussion and activities. Information on arrangements for accommodation will be available in due course.

This conference is generously supported by the Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Consortium and The Bowes Museum.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts. With thanks from the organisers:
Charlotte Johnson (The University of Birmingham and Kedleston Hall, National Trust),
Lindsay Macnaughton (Durham University and The Bowes Museum),
Simon Spier (The University of Leeds and The Bowes Museum)

From ArtHist.net:

Animaterialities: The Material Culture of Animals (including Humans)
Sixteenth Material Culture Symposium for Emerging Scholars
University of Delaware, 24–25 April 2010

Proposals due by 5 December 2019

The Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware invites submissions for graduate student papers that examine the relationship between material culture and animal studies for its biennial Emerging Scholars Symposium (April 24–25, 2020). This symposium merges the interdisciplinary study of animals—and the related critical conversations surrounding animality, species, agency, objectivity, and subjectivity—with material culture studies.

Five years after the Audubon Society’s startling Birds and Climate Change Report, we continue to hear about the prices non-human animals pay for human choices: extinction, loss of habitat, and poisoned food sources. The present moment begs, more than ever, critical questions about the intersections between the material world and the (fellow) animals with whom we share it. We thus propose the theme ‘animaterialities’, a term which acknowledges the constant presence of other-than-human animals as physical bodies entangled in various anthropocentric systems, whether political, economic or cultural. Animaterialities encourages participants to consider animals not as passive forms of matter for human use, but as active beings capable of resilience in the face of humans’ material domination and exploitation. Finally, it recognizes the necessary turn material culture studies must take when applied to other-than-human animals, as opposed to artificial, vegetal, or mineral subjects/materials.

Generative questions might include:
• How do material objects define or challenge the boundaries between humans, animals, and objects?
• How are animals transformed into material forms?
• How are animals made visible or invisible in the built environment, text, image, material goods, the archive, and the museum?
• How do animal materialities cut across, complicate, and generate global, hemispheric, and imperial worlds?
• How can we re-conceptualize materialities and animalities as active agents in their worlds, rather than passive participants?

Contributions to this theme may take, but are not limited to, the following forms:
• The production and conservation of animal materials
• Materials that imitate animals
• Animals as objects, the “thingness” of animals, and defying objective treatment
• The materialities of animal labor
• Experimentation with animals and animal materials
• Animal classification, collecting, and display
• Material culture of living history farms, zoos and zoological gardens, and preserves
• Visual culture and representation of animal materials
• The social life of animals
• The material aspects of animal abuse

Submissions: Proposals by current graduate students and recent graduates (May 2019 or later) should be no more than 250 words. Up to two relevant images are welcome. Send your proposal and a current c.v. (two pages or fewer) to emergingscholars2020@udel.edu.

Deadline: Proposals must be received by December 5th, 2019. Speakers will be notified of the committee’s decision by the end of January 2020. Confirmed speakers will be asked to provide digital images for use in publicity and are required to submit their final papers and presentations/slide decks ahead of the conference. Travel grants will be available for participants.

From the conference website:

‘Dark Enlightenments’: David Nichol Smith Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies XVII
Adelaide, Australia, 2–4 December 2020

Early proposals due by 1 November 2019; regular proposals due by 1 March 2020

The Australian and New Zealand Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ANZSECS), Flinders University, and the University of Adelaide invite you to the 17th David Nichol Smith (DNS) Seminar for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Inaugurated in 1966 by the National Library of Australia, the DNS is the leading forum for eighteenth-century studies in Australasia. It brings together scholars from across the region and internationally who work on the long eighteenth century in a range of disciplines, including history, literature, art and architectural history, philosophy, theology, the history of science, musicology, anthropology, archaeology, and studies of material culture.

The theme for this conference is ‘Dark Enlightenments.’ We ask delegates to consider the dark, shadowy aspects of enlightenment processes of the eighteenth century. When broadly conceived, the theme is open to numerous up-to-the-minute, interdisciplinary possibilities, including (for example):
• the dark side of the public sphere, such as expressed in satire and polemic
• Empire and enlightenment
• critiques of empathy and humanitarianism
• negative emotions
• crime, conflict and violence
• the use and abuse of the past
• progress and ethics (political, social, scientific)
• war
• romanticising death
• the Gothic
• the numinous eighteenth century
• the transformation of night-time
• developments in notions of privacy, secrecy and the hidden self
• the ‘shady’ moralities of libertinism
• the aesthetics of darkness and light

This, we believe, is a particularly timely theme, partly owing to the nationalist turn in global politics, and the recent controversy stirred in Australia by the proposed Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. It offers both sides of the political spectrum the opportunity to interrogate and fully understand the costs, benefits, and legacies of eighteenth-century ‘progress’. It is also a theme designed to emphasise the Enlightenment in its moral complexity and richness, and the wide range of domains (from the everyday to philosophical thought) that contributed to its production.

We also welcome papers for subjects that fall outside the main conference theme. Proposals for 20-minute papers should consist of a title, 250-word abstract, and short bio sent via email as a pdf attachment to DNS2020@flinders.edu.au. We also accept proposal for panels of three papers, which should include all the above for each presenter, a panel title, and if possible, the name and short bio of the panel chair.

Deadlines for submissions
For early deliberation: 1 November 2019. A first round of acceptances will be made shortly after this date to facilitate international attendance.
Final deadline: 1 March 2020

Keynotes
Associate Professor Kate Fullager (Macquarie)
Professor Sasha Handley (Manchester)
Associate Professor Eugenia Zuroski (McMaster)

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Attention Early Career Researchers!

Aspiring to deliver a keynote lecture at a major international conference? Here’s your chance! We’d like to invite early career researchers to propose a keynote lecture addressing the conference theme. This scheme is open to all topics and areas of expertise in literary/humanities studies broadly defined, and to researchers who are in regular university employment as well as those who are not. Applicants must:
• have an outstanding research track record relative to opportunity;
• be within 5 years after award of the PhD (extended to 7 if not in stable university employment or with a significant career interruption).

To apply, please submit a proposed title, 300–400 word abstract, a bio, and a CV (3 pages max) to DNS2020@flinders.edu.au.

In making a selection diversity and the presence of under-represented groups will be recognised, as well as the spectrum of existing keynotes at the conference. We also reserve the right to seek third-party testimony as to the researcher’s capacity to speak and deliver scholarly presentations. The winner will deliver the proposed keynote lecture, with flights, accommodation, and registration covered. The deadline for early career researcher keynote proposals is 1 November 2019.

From ArtHist.net:

Sensory Experience in 18th-Century Art Exhibitions / L’expérience sensorielle dans les expositions d’art au XVIIIe siècle
Musée du Louvre, Paris, Autumn 2020; Louvre-Lens Museum, Spring 2021

Proposals due by 15 December 2019

Throughout the 18th century, the exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Painting in Paris—by setting the horizon of expectation—have created a habitus among European visitors and especially Parisians. Moreover, they have aroused the curiosity and the desire of the French public and of other nations who where inspired by the Salon. During this period, the Salon du Louvre became a highly popular event, where crowds gathered to see, be seen and to learn. Hence, the Salon embodied without any doubt the image of the Parisian social theatre and thus also indirectly that of the pleasure of the senses for educated European audiences. In other words, visiting the Salon or any other art exhibition in the 18th century, where the desire to be entertained and to learn was intertwined, presented itself as an experience in which the various senses were invoked and stimulated. The notion of a ‘sensory body’ becomes relevant: not only sight, but also the senses of hearing, taste, touch, and smell were interpolated in a varied and complex manner at various moments during the visit.

The conference will focus on the sensations that visitors felt during their experience of art exhibitions. The latter are to be understood in their broadest sense during the long 18th century (1665–1815). The starting point is the moment when the Salon du Louvre became the role model for a growing number of temporary exhibitions, in Paris and in French provinces, at the Royal Academy in London, and, more broadly in Europe. All other spaces of sociability where works of art were subjected to the critical gaze of the public must be taken into account: galleries and private art collections, royal collections, temporary exhibitions, auction rooms, museums… In the context of research about the history of sensibilities and senses, this conference thus aims at defining the new perceptions that flourish in the Age of Enlightenment by questioning the sensory experience and the constitution of the sensory body in the specific context of exhibition spaces.

The understanding of this sensory body in its entirety implicates numerous elements that play an essential role in its constitution. Given the richness of the topic related to the sensory experience in 18th-century art exhibitions, the conference will be divided into two sessions that will take place a few months apart, and in two different locations.

Session 1
The Experience of the Visit: From Spectator to Critic

This first session focuses on the sensory experience of the public when visiting an exhibition – whether it is a collection, a museum, or a temporary presentation of works of art. While 18th century art exhibitions in Europe contributed to urban identity, they also helped to define the identity of the larger public, as well as the single spectator, and the critic. It will be a question of capturing these actors, their visits to exhibitions, their sensory impressions, and the emergence of feelings as they developed along an exhibition tour, likewise further encounters with other visitors, with the spatial context and display of art. In order to encourage comparative research, we call for proposals on various exhibition spaces in various European cities, relating to the following two axes:

• The public, an individual or a group of individuals visiting the exhibition, engaged in the activity and experiences emotional, sensory and physical effects during the whole visit of the exhibition. The presence of other visitors, this more or less colourful crowd that implied a perpetual body interaction, as well as the view of the exhibition played a central role on the senses, the sensitivity and the body of each visitor. Within this audience, the writers that appear at the time of the exhibitions related these experiences to their readers, qualifying and theorizing them. Art criticism is thus no longer simply a primary source for art history, the history of the senses, and questions of reception, but becomes also a research subject by itself. How, in other words, did the sensations, emotions and feelings experienced by critics stimulate and transform art criticism itself? The reality and the sensory experience of the visitor are not necessarily the same in Paris as elsewhere in Europe: Hence, we would like to discover and understand these differences and similarities.

• The space and the exhibition, meaning the immediate environment, the exhibition design, but also the geographical territory with which the individual and its senses are engaged, play a central role in the experience of the spectator’s sensory body. By providing stimuli, they cause sensations and an intense and specific cognitive activity. What kind of effects did the dimensions of the room(s), the movements of the body in the space, the encounter with the art and the exhibition design, the lighting as well as the symbolic aspects of the space have on visitors’ sensory experiences, both in their expectation and during the visit of the exhibition? We will therefore focus on the different affects and effects that this experience catalyzed for each of the senses, sensations, and emotions that inhabited the spectator during and beyond the visit. An experience that is constituting an important part of the horizon of expectation for exhibitions. We can ask ourselves about the different approaches to installation and hanging, but also about the extent to which these approaches had an impact on visitors’ sensations, their perceptions, and their feelings, whatever nature they are, and on the evolution and constitution of their sensibility, of their sensitive body. What role do the symbolic and physical aspects of space play in this experience? How are these effects translated through the written word?

Session 2
The Experience of the Work of Art: From Emotion to Sensation

The second session is intended to invite reflection on the representation of emotions and human sensorium as well as on the reception of these elements when works of art were exhibited publicly in 18th-century Europe. The objective is to study how artists express their perception of the sensitive and the sensory, and how the spectator’s senses react while looking at the works. We will take into account all aspects of the Fine Arts (painting, sculpture, drawing, engraving) and consider also different genres (history, portrait, genre scene, landscape, still life). For this session, we call for proposals around two axes:

• The works, these modes of representation of feelings and the sensory, evoke the sensitivity of the artist as well as that of the human being in general. According to what theoretical and practical criteria did artists translate the spectrum of emotions, but also that of sensory perceptions through the represented body, its gestures, its personality traits or its staging? We are obviously thinking of the rules governing the representation of passions such as those of the ‘ut pictura poesis’, but especially of the attempts to renew them during the 18th century. It is not only a question of revisiting the interactions between theatrical staging and pictorial composition, but also of exploring all the components of mimesis, that is common to the Fine Arts and the performing arts, in order to reinforce the sensory and sensitive delight of art: expression, gestures, costume, decor, colour.

• The senses, (inter)linked with the organs of perception (sight, taste, hearing, smell and touch), are defined by and react to the contact with context, the exhibition as a whole, other individuals, and specific works of art. We would like to understand how the spectator’s senses apprehend, perceive—or even feel—the encounter with a particular work or with the ensemble of works. According to which criteria does sensory perception stop at the level of analysis and reasoning? When and how does this experience lead to a true reaction, whether it is sensitive, sensory or physical? We know that in the 18th century, the research on perception and cognition led to numerous publications on sensualist philosophy, physiology and physiognomy. How did artists consider these new contributions to the history of medicine, science and technology, and how did they translate them within their works? This axis will explore the boundaries between the experience of each of the senses and the relationships that emerge between them in order to get an overall picture of all the sensations and feelings provoked by specific works, particularly by those representing feelings, emotions and allusions to the senses. In this axis, priority will be given to proposals based on sources from various fields (history, literature, philosophy, but also science and medicine) in order to renew the reflection on the phenomenon of exhibitions.

Schedule
Proposals for original contributions in English or French (title and abstract of up to 300 words and short CV of up to 250 words) should be sent by 15 December 2019 to corps.sensoriel@gmail.com
Response from the Scientific Committee: January 2020
Conference dates: Autumn 2020 and Spring 2021
Selected papers will be published after the conference.

Scientific Committee
Markus A. Castor (German Center for Art History, Paris)
Guillaume Faroult (Louvre Museum, Painting Department)
Dorit Kluge (hwtk, Berlin)
Gaëtane Maës (Université de Lille, IRHiS)
Françoise Mardrus (Louvre Museum, Dominique-Vivant Denon Center, Research and Collection Director)
Isabelle Pichet (UQTR, Québec)
Luc Piralla (Louvre-Lens Museum)