Exhibition | Colonists, Citizens, Constitutions
From the New-York Historical Society:
Colonists, Citizens, Constitutions: Creating the American Republic
New-York Historical Society, 28 February — 31 May 2020
Curated by James Hrdlicka with Michael Ryan and Sue Ann Weinberg
First printing of the U. S. Constitution (Philadelphia: Dunlap & Claypoole, 1787)
America has been singular among nations in fostering a vibrant culture of engagement with constitutional matters and the fundamental principles of government. Featuring 40 books and documents from collector and philanthropist Dorothy Tapper Goldman’s collection—including constitutions from the federal and state levels—Colonists, Citizens, Constitutions: Creating the American Republic depicts the story of America’s unique constitutionalism from the founding era through the turn of the 20th century. The exhibition, which sketches the often troubled history of the country as it expanded across the continent, serves as a timely reminder of our country’s democratic foundations and its relentless quest for improvement. Curated by James F. Hrdlicka of Arizona State University with Michael Ryan, vice president and Sue Ann Weinberg director of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library.
2020 Mount Vernon Symposium
In May at Mount Vernon (it’s already sold out, but there is a wait list) . . .
‘Under my Vine & Fig Tree’: Gardens and Landscapes in the Age of Washington and Now
Mount Vernon, 29–31 May 2020
Join leading gardeners, historians, horticulturists, archaeologists, and preservationists as they reconsider the importance of gardening, landscapes, and design in early America. Learn how Washington and his contemporaries shaped the natural world to achieve beauty through gardening, profited through agriculture, and conveyed civic values through landscape design—and how these historic methods remain relevant in today’s world. Revisit long-lost gardens, explore contemporary creations inspired by the past, and come face-to-face with the most authentic 18th-century plantation landscape in the United States.
The Mount Vernon Symposium is endowed by the generous support of The Robert H. Smith Family Foundation, Lucy S. Rhame, and David Maxfield.
Exhibition | In Sparkling Company: Glass and Social Life
Pair of covered green vases, ca. 1765 and a pair of vases, 1750–75, probably from the workshop of James Giles, London, gilded copper-green lead glass (Corning, New York: Corning Museum of Glass, 2003.2.4 A-B, 54.2.4 A-B).
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Press release (30 October 2019) for the exhibition:
In Sparkling Company: Glass and the Costs of Social Life in Britain during the 1700s
Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York, 9 May 2020 — 3 January 2021; new dates: 22 May 2021 — 2 January 2022
Curated by Christopher Maxwell
The Museum’s spring exhibition, In Sparkling Company: Glass and Social Life in Britain during the 1700s, will open May 9, 2020. With exhibition design by Selldorf Architects, In Sparkling Company will present the glittering costume and jewelry, elaborate tableware, polished mirrors, and dazzling lighting devices that delighted the British elite, and helped define social rituals and cultural values of the period. Through a lens of glass, this exhibition will show visitors what it meant to be ‘modern’ in the 1700s, and what it cost.
The exhibition will also include a specially created virtual reality reconstruction of the remarkable and innovative spangled-glass drawing room completed in 1775 for Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland (1714–1786), and designed by Robert Adam (1728–1792), one of the leading architects and designers in Britain at the time. An original section of the room (which was dismantled in the 1870s), on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, will be on view in North America for the first time as part of the exhibition. It will be accompanied by Adam’s original colored design drawings for the interior, on loan from the Sir John Soane’s Museum, London.
“One medium that is often overlooked in scholarly discussions of 18th-century art, design, and material culture is glass,” said Christopher L. Maxwell, Curator of European Glass at CMoG, who has organized the exhibition. “In Britain, developments in glass formulas and manufacturing techniques resulted in new and better types of glass, from windowpanes and mirrors to heavy, clear ‘crystal’ tableware, perfectly suited to the tastes and needs of Britain’s growing urban elite whose wealth derived from new enterprises in finance, manufacture, international trade and colonial expansion. In Sparkling Company will demonstrate the many functions and meanings of glass in the exuberant social life of the 1700s.”
The smooth, ‘polished’ and reflective properties of glass perfectly embodied 18th-century ideals of sociability, in what is considered by many as the ‘age of politeness.’ As urban centers grew in size and prosperity, sociability became ever more sophisticated. The terms ‘polite’ and ‘polished’ were often used interchangeably in the numerous etiquette manuals eagerly read by those wishing to take their place in the polite world. Examples of such literature will be displayed alongside fashionable glass of the period, including embroidered costume, mirrors, a chandelier, cut glass lighting and tableware, and paste jewelry that accessorized and defined the lives of the ‘polished’ elite.
In the 1700s Britain was a prosperous and commercial nation. Its growing cities were hubs of industry, scientific advancement, trade and finance, and its colonies were expanding. British merchants navigated the globe carrying a multitude of cargoes: consumable, material, and human. Underpinning Britain’s prosperity was a far-reaching economy of enslavement, the profits of which funded the pleasures and innovations of the fashionable world, among them luxury glass. Alongside the beauty and innovation of glass during this period, the exhibition will consider the role of the material as a witness to colonization and slavery. Using artifacts and documents relating to the slave trade, it will reveal a connection that permeated all levels of British society.
From glittering costume and elaborately presented confectionery, to polished mirrors and dazzling chandeliers, glass helped define the social rituals and cultural values of the period. While it delighted the eyes of the wealthy, glass also bore witness to the horrors of slavery. Glass beads were traded for human lives while elegant glass dishes, baskets and bowls held sweet delicacies made with sugar produced by enslaved labor.
In Sparkling Company: Glass and Social Life in Britain during the 1700s will include important examples of 18th-century British glass, including:
• Glass embroidered costume: a spectacular men’s coat intricately decorated with glass ‘jewels’ made around 1780; a pair of women’s shoes covered in glass beads; shoe buckles set with glass paste jewels; jewelry and other accessories.
• Cut glass lighting and tableware, all made possible through the perfection of British lead ‘crystal’ in the late 1600s and exported throughout Europe and the British colonies in America and beyond.
• A number of large mirrors, which became the tell-tale sign of a fashionable interior, and reverse-painted glass meticulously decorated in China for the British luxury market.
• Opulent glass dressing room accessories, including a magnificent gilded silver dressing table set, with a looking glass as its centerpiece, made in about 1700 for the 1st Countess of Portland; perfume bottles, patch boxes, a dazzling cut glass washing basin and pitcher and an exquisite blue glass casket richly mounted in gilded metal, used in the ‘toilette’ a semi-public ritual of dressing which was adopted from France for men and women alike and became a feature of British aristocratic life in the 18th century.
Robert Adam, Design for the end wall of the drawing room at Northumberland House, 1770–73, pen, pencil, and colored washes, including pink, verdigris, and Indian yellow on laid paper, 52 × 102 cm (London: Sir John Soane’s Museum, SM Adam, volume 39/7; photo by Ardon Bar Hama).
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Glass Drawing Room for the Duke of Northumberland
Over the course of the 18th century, domestic interiors were transformed by the increasing presence of clear and smooth plate glass. A remarkable example is the lavish drawing room designed by the celebrated British architect Robert Adam for Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland (1714–1786) and his wife, the Duchess Elizabeth Percy (1716–1776), and completed in 1775. This unique room, measuring 36 by 22 feet, was paneled between dado rail and architrave with red glass panels sprinkled on the reverse with flakes of metal foil, like large-scale glitter. Similarly spangled green glass pilasters, large French looking glasses, and intricate neo-classical ornament in gilded lead completed the dazzling scheme. The room was altered in the 1820s and finally dismantled in the 1870s, when Northumberland House was demolished. Many of the panels were acquired by the V&A Museum in the 1950s, but their poor condition meant that they could only be partially displayed. The panels on display at The Corning Museum of Glass incorporate newly-conserved elements from the V&A’s stores.
In Sparkling Company will feature a virtual reality reconstruction of the drawing room, created by Irish production house Noho. Visitors to the exhibition will be transported into the interior, experiencing the original design scheme—last seen almost 200 years ago. This will be the first virtual-reality experience ever offered at CMoG. Visitors will also be able to see Robert Adam’s design drawings, on loan from the Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, and a section of the original Northumberland House Glass Drawing Room on loan from the V&A Museum, which has never been on view in North America.
In Sparkling Company: Glass and Social Life in Britain during the 1700s will include loans from the Victoria and Albert Museum; Sir John Soane’s Museum; the Museum of London; the Fashion Museum, Bath; Royal Museums Greenwich; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Penn State University Library; Cleveland Museum of Art; and The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, In Sparkling Company: Reflections on Glass in the 18th-Century British World (The Corning Museum of Glass, 2020). Publication contributors include Marvin Bolt, Kimberly Chrisman Campbell, Jennifer Chuong, Melanie Doderer Winkler, Christopher Maxwell, Anna Moran, Marcia Pointon, and Kerry Sinanan.
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Note (added 2 May 2021) — The posting was updated with revised dates for the exhibition.
Note (added 16 September 2021) — The posting has been updated to include the revised title; the original title was In Sparkling Company: Glass and Social Life in Britain during the 1700s.
Conference | Reconsidering Chinese Reverse Glass Painting
This weekend in Switzerland at the Vitromusée Romont (via ArtHist.net), in conjunction with the exhibition Reflets de Chine: Three Centuries of Chinese Glass Painting:
China and the West: Reconsidering Chinese Reverse Glass Painting
Vitromusée Romont, 14–16 February 2020
Organized by Francine Giese, Hans Bjarne Thomsen, and Elisa Ambrosio
F R I D A Y , 1 4 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 0
9.30 Welcome
9.45 Danielle Elisseeff (EHESS, Paris), Quelques remarques sur le concept d’hybridité
10.00 Transfer and Transmateriality
Chair: Francine Giese (Vitrocentre Romont)
• Jessica Lee Patterson (University of San Diego), Varieties of Replication in Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings
• Patrick Conner (London), Figures of Westerners in Early Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings
• Alina Martimyanova (University of Zurich), From Wooden Blocks to Glass: Regarding the Transfer of Vernacular Motives and Other Common Features of the Chinese New Year Prints and Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings
• Kee II Choi Jr. (University of Leiden), Originality among les arts du feu: Illusionistic Painting on Glass, Porcelain, and Copper in Early Modern Canton
12.30 Lunch break
14.00 Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings in European Collections
Chair: Hans Bjarne Thomsen (University of Zurich)
• Rosalien van der Poel (University of Leiden), 18th-Century Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings in a Dutch Collection: Art and Commodity
• Patricia Ferguson (London), Reflecting Asia: The Reception of Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings in Britain in the 18th Century
• Michaela Pejčochová (National Gallery Prague), ‘In all of Beijing, there are no more than four paintings on glass that would fall within our consideration’: European Collecting of Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings in the Inter-war Period and Its Contexts
15.30 Coffee break
16.00 Guided tour of the exhibition Reflets de Chine: Three Centuries of Chinese Glass Painting
17.30 Keynote Lecture
Chair: Danielle Elisseeff (EHESS, Paris)
• Thierry Audric (Vitrocentre Romont), Brève histoire de la peinture sous verre chinoise
18.30 Reception
S A T U R D A Y , 1 5 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 0
9.00 Beyond China
Chair: Elisa Ambrosio (Vitrocentre Romont)
• Hans Bjarne Thomsen (University of Zurich), Japanese Reverse Glass Painting: The Other East Asian Tradition
• William Hsingyo Ma (College of Art, Louisiana State University), Guangzhou-made Reverse Glass Paintings in Nguyen Dynasty Vietnam
• Karina Corrigan (Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts), From Oudh to Guangzhou: Tilly Kettle’s Portrait of Shuja-ud-Daula in Cantonese Reverse Glass Painting
• Catherine Raymond (Northern Illinois University), Reverse Glass Paintings in Mainland Southeast Asia and the Key Role of the Chinese Diaspora
• Jérôme Samuel (Inalco-Case, Paris), China and Its South: Chinese Ladies on Glass in 19th- and 20th-Century Java
12.00 Lunch break
13.30 Workshops and Techniques
Chair: Sophie Wolf (Vitrocentre Romont)
• Charlotte Pageot (ERIMIT- Université Rennes 2), Jean-Denis Attiret’s Reverse Glass Paintings at Qianlong Court Workshop
• Jan van Campen (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Glass Paintings in the Collection of Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest (1739–1801)
• Rupprecht Mayer (Germany), Painting Styles in 19th- and 20th-Century Chinese Glass Pictures: A First Approach
• Simon Steger (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM), Berlin), Spectroscopic Analysis of Colourants and Binders of Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings: Tracing a Cultural Dialogue
15.30 Coffee break
16.00 Translucidity
Chair: Alina Martimyanova (University of Zurich)
• Lihong Liu (University of Rochester), From Virtuosity to Vernacularism: Reversals of Glass Paintings
• Christopher Maxwell (Corning Museum of Glass), People in Glass Houses: Plate Glass and Politeness in 18th-Century Britain
17.00 Hans Bjarne Thomsen (University of Zurich), Closing Remarks
S U N D A Y , 1 6 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 0
Optional morning with tours of the Vitromusée Romont and local historical sites of the town of Romont: Collégiale and Fille-Dieu.
CAA 2020, Chicago
Photo by Daniel Schwen, 18 April 2009
(Wikimedia Commons)
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108th Annual Conference of the College Art Association
Hilton Chicago, 12–15 February 2020
The 2020 College Art Association conference takes place at the Hilton, Chicago (720 S. Michigan Ave), February 12–15. Of particular note is the ASECS session chaired by Kristin O’Rourke and the HECAA session chaired by Danielle Rebecca Ezor and Michael Feinberg. Both take place on Saturday. Other sessions that may be of interest for dixhuitièmistes are also listed. A full schedule of panels is available here»
A S E C S / H E C A A S E S S I O N S
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Rulers, Consorts, and Mothers: Queens in the Long Eighteenth Century
Saturday, 15 February, 8:30–10:00am, 3rd Floor – Joliet Room
Chair: Kristin M. O’Rourke, Dartmouth College
• The Colonial Adventures of a Queen Anne Miniature, Janine Yorimoto Boldt, American Philosophical Society
• Eighteenth-Century Saxon Consorts and Their Personal Relationships with Porcelain Manufactories in Europe, Heidi C. Nickisher, Rochester Institute of Technology
• ‘Femmes illustres’: The Defense of Queenship and the Public Woman in Revolutionary France, Sarah Elisabeth Lund, Harvard University
• Pose: Royal Bodies and Gendered Accoutrements in Eighteenth-Century Portraiture, Jodi Lynn McCoy, Missouri State University
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Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture
Race Beyond the Human Body in the Long Eighteenth Century
Saturday, 15 February, 2:00–3:30, 3rd Floor – Joliet Room
Chairs: Danielle Rebecca Ezor, Southern Methodist University and Michael Feinberg, University of Wisconsin Madison
• ‘Color is only Skin Deep’: Black Pigs and the Rendering of Race in the Early American Republic, Stephen Mandravelis, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
• The Whiteness Aesthetic and Caste Implications of Ivory Art of South India, Deepthi Murali, University of Illinois at Chicago
• White, Pink, and Pompadour, Oliver Wunsch, Boston College
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O T H E R S E S S I O N S R E L A T E D T O T H E 1 8 T H C E N T U R Y
Society for Paragone Studies
Session in Honor of Sarah Jordan Lippert (1975–2019), Founder of the Society for Paragone Studies
Wednesday, 12 February, 10:30–12:00, 3rd Floor – Waldorf Room
Chair: Liana De Girolami Cheney, Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History
• The Remarkable Tomb of Abbot Meli, Ellen Longsworth, Merrimack College
• Rival Ideologies in Eighteenth Century Exotic Costume, Linda Johnson
• Voice of Authority: Native American Art and Cultural Hegemony in the Art Museum, Mary Kelly
• Image/Text/Sound: The Role of Intermediality and Poeticity in Claes Oldenburg, Nadja Rottner
• Dematerializing Formalism: Lucy Lippard and John Chandler’s Conceptual Challenge to Clement Greenber, Owen Duffy
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Community College Professors of Art and Art History
Taking a New Look: Creating Change in the Studio and Art History Classrooms
Wednesday, 12 February, 2:00–3:30, Lobby Level – Continental B
Chairs: Susan Altman, Middlesex County College, and Monica Anke Hahn, Community College of Philadelphia
• Engaging Students through Narrative Painting, Richard J. Moninski, University of Wisconsin-Platteville
• Recruitment, Retention, and Relocation: The College Arts Fair, Tyrus Clutter, College for Central Florida
• Creative Collaboration for Art History and Studio Art Courses, Rachael Bower, Northwest Vista College
• Changing the Conversation: The Relevancy of Arts Thinking for 21st-Century Students, Ross McClain
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Barriers, Borders, and Boundaries in the Early Modern World
Thursday, 13 February, 8:30–10:00am, 3rd Floor – Wilford C
Chairs: Luis J. Gordo-Pelaez, California State University Fresno and Charles C. Barteet, University of Western Ontario
Discussant: Michael J. Schreffler, University of Notre Dame
• Bordering on Chaos: Order in the Inka Empire and the Virtues of Volatility, Gaby Greenlee, UCSC
• Columbus Unbound: Walls, or their Absence, in the Age/Imaginary of Exploration, Roger J. Crum, University of Dayton
• Picturing Havana: The Early Modern City in Plans and Maps, Guadalupe Garcia, Tulane University
• Ornament and Order in the Spanish Colonial Philippines, Lalaine Bangilan Little, Misericordia University
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Japan Art History Forum
Taking up the Mantle: Lineages and Genealogies in Japanese Art History
Thursday, 13 February, 8:30–10:00am, 4th Floor – 4K
Chairs: Sonia Coman, Smithsonian Institution and Harrison Schley, University of Pennsylvania
Discussant: Julie Davis, University of Pennsylvania
• The Cross-temporal Conversations of Matsumura Goshun (1752–1811): Lineages of Style in Poetry and Visual Representation, Sonia Coman, Smithsonian Institution
• The Power of Indirect Transmission and the Kōrin Hyakuzu (ca. 1815 and 1826), Frank Feltens, Smithsonian Institution
• A New Mold: Mori Yūsetsu and the Genealogy of the Banko Brand, Harrison Schley, University of Pennsylvania
• Futurism as Archaism: Kinoshita Shuichirō (1896–1991) Glorifies a Dancing Girl, Daria Melnikova, Columbia University
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Between Truth and Persuasion: Images and Historical Narration from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century
Thursday, 13 February, 10:30–12:00, Lobby Level – Continental B
Chairs: Alessandra Di Croce, Columbia University and Federica Soletta, Princeton University
Discussant: Alessandro Giardino, Saint Lawrence University
• The Signal Liberties of Copley’s The Death of Major Peirson, Nika Elder, American University
• Historical Inducements and the Pictorial Crusade of Francesco Hayez, Laura Watts Sommer, Daemen College
• Stefano Bardini’s Photo Archive, ‘il Bel Paese,’ and the Golden Age of Tuscan Art, Anita Moskowitz
• The Engraved Photograph as Architectural Evidence, Peter Sealy, University of Toronto
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Politics, Religion, and the Body: Artistic Production, Consumption, and Social Space in China
Thursday, 13 February, 10:30–12:00, 3rd Floor – Joliet Room
• Seeing and Unseeing: Visuality and Mind Games in Ming- Dynasty Arhat Painting, Einor K Cervone, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Gao Fenghan’s (1683–1749) Path to Eccentricity and the Growth of Epigraphical Writing in Early Qing Yangzhou, Yun- Chen Lu
• Billiards, Bicycles, and Charity Fairs: Courtesans Staging the Fashionable in Public Gardens in Semi-colonial Shanghai (1880s–1910s), Jinyi Liu, Bard Graduate Center
• From Dalian to Changchun: Official Art Exhibitions in Japanese-Manchuria, Gina Kim, University of California, San Diego
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Black Artists in the Early Modern Americas
Thursday, 13 February, 2:00–3:30, 3rd Floor – Wilford C
Chair: Rachel A Zimmerman, Colorado State University – Pueblo
• ‘The Head of a Hogshead’: Neptune Thurston and Enslaved Artistic Labor in British North America, Jennifer C. Van Horn, University of Delaware
• José Campeche, the 1797 British Attack on San Juan, and Portraiture in late Eighteenth-Century Puerto Rico, Emily K. Thames, Florida State University
• Collecting Fears: Paper Amulets in Brazil’s Malê Uprising, Angie M. Epifano, Yale University
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Historians of British Art
Past & Present: Britain and the Social History of Art
Thursday, 13 February, 2:00–3:30, 4th Floor – 4K
Chairs: Meredith J. Gamer, Columbia University and Esther Alice Chadwick, Courtauld Institute of Art
• Pictures Exchanged for Windows: Ruskin, Dilke, and Social History of Symbols, Andrei Pop, University of Chicago
• Gerard Baldwin Brown and the Origins of the Social History of Art in Great Britain, Barbara J. Larson, University of West Florida
• ‘It was, like any other period, a time of transition’: 1970s Britain and the ‘Native Art-Historical Journal’, Samuel Bibby, Association for Art History
• Islands of Art History, Douglas R. Fordham, University of Virginia
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International Art Market Studies
Market Data: Beyond Prices and Provenance
Thursday, 13 February, 2:00–3:30, 8th Floor – Lake Erie
Chairs: Diana Seave Greenwald, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Kim Oosterlinck, Université libre de Bruxelles
• What To Say When Trying To Sell Paintings: Text Models and Rhetoric Strategies in British and French Auction Sales Catalogues (1750–1820), Sandra Van Ginhoven, Getty Research Institute
• What To Say When Trying To Sell Paintings: Text Models and Rhetoric Strategies in British and French Auction Sales Catalogues (1750–1820), Matthew Lincoln, Carnegie Mellon University
• The (R)emigration of Jewish Art Dealers and the Shape of the German Art Market Scene: Approaching a Difficult Topic, Meike Hopp, ZI Munich
• Subversion in the Fine Print: ‘The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement’ at Auction, Lauren van Haaften-Schick, Cornell University
• Conflict, Looting, and the Market in Mesopotamian Antiquities, Oya Topçuoğlu, Northwestern University
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Committee on Intellectual Property
Defining Open Access
Thursday, 13 February, 4:00–5:30, Lobby Level – Continental A
Chair: Anne Collins Goodyear
• What Open Access Principles Do We Need for Cultural Heritage?, Evelin Heidel, Independent
• How Open is Open Enough? Rationalizing Open Access at the Project Level, Mikka Gee Conway, J. Paul Getty Trust
• Two Sides of the Same Coin? Open Access and Fair Use, Anne M. Young, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields
• Case Study: The Art and Architectural ePortal, Patricia J. Fidler, Yale University Press
• Sharing Digital Content through International Museum, Library, and Archives Networks Today: An IMLS Examination of Copyright’s Implications, Nancy Elaine Weiss, Institute of Museum and Library Services
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Shifting Tides: Visual Semantics in the Atlantic World, 1600–1900
Thursday, 13 February, 6:00–7:30pm, 3rd Floor – Williford A
• Cicero in the Land of Coatlicue: Renaissance Humanism in Colonial Mexico, JoAnna Reyes Walton, University of California, Los Angeles
• Dyer Beware: Processing Indigo and the Limits of Diagram, Colleen M. Stockmann
• Visual Histories of the Spanish Caribbean in the Age of the Enlightenment, Jennifer A Baez, Florida State University
• Potted Pre-Raphaelites: Britain’s Colonial Plant Trade and the Victorian Avant-Garde, Lindsay Wells, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Altered Terrains: Landscapes of Colonial America
Friday, 14 February, 8:30–10:00am, Lower Level – Salon C5
Chairs: Theresa Avila, CSU Channel Islands and Emmanuel Ortega, University of New Mexico
Discussant: Kirsten P. Buick, The University of New Mexico
• Social and Political Landscapes within European Colonial Maps, Theresa Avila, CSU Channel Islands
• The Invisible-Substantial-Presence of Painted Landscapes in Seventeenth-Century Cuzco, Natalia Vargas Márquez, University of Minnesota
• Decolonizing Aeriality in Colonial El Salvador: Indigenous Geospatial Knowledge in the “Descripcion Geografico-Moral de la Diocesis de Goathemala,” 1768–70, Carlos Anílber Rivas, University of Los Angeles
• The Mexican Picturesque: Nineteenth-Century Sentimentality and the Visual Construction of the Nation, Emmanuel Ortega, University of New Mexico
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Undergraduate Research and Mentoring Undergraduate Research – Poster Presentations, Part 2
Friday, 14 February, 2:00–3:30, Lower Level Lobby
Chair: Alexa K. Sand, Utah State University
• At the Pleasure of the Pharaoh: Decoding the Reliefs of the Medinet Habu Eastern High Gate, Chloe Jayne Landis
• The Case of Der hammer: Aesthetic Influences on Art and Culture in the Yiddish Communist Press, Goldie Gross
• Mapping Social and Spatial Encounters in Eighteenth-Century Venice, Noah Scott Michaud, Wired! Lab . . .
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Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender
Early Modern Women in the Streets? Women’s Visibility in the Public Sphere
Friday, 14 February, 2:00–3:30, Lower Level – Salon C5
Chair: Maria F. Maurer, University of Tulsa
• Bitter Tears, Carnal Traces: Female Poets at Michelangelo’s Funeral, Laura C. Agoston, Trinity University
• Visibility and Enclosure in the Vida of the Painter and Nun, Estefanía de la Encarnación (ca. 1597–1665), Tanya J. Tiffany, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
• Asserting Female Agency in the Spanish Colonies: Doña Rosalía de Medina and the Confraternity of Saint Rosalía in Eighteenth-Century Cuenca, Isabel Oleas-Mogollon, Independent
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Objects from Elsewhere: Transcultural Constructions of Identity
Saturday, 15 February, 8:30–10:00am, 3rd Floor – Private Dining Room 2
Chairs: Robert Wellington and Alex Thomas Burchmore, Australian National University
• Between Imperial Self-Fashioning and Military Alliance: The Gift of a Turquoise Glass Bowl from Persia to the Republic of Venice, Negar Sarah Rokhgar, Rutgers University
• Art and Science in the Palace of the Empress Dowager: An Investigation of the Ningshou Gong Display Archives from the Kangxi Reign (1661–1722), Joyce Yusi Zhou, Bard Graduate Center
• Framing Self/Other Relations through Curatorial Strategies of Containment and Classification in Eighteenth-Century Porcelain Display, Alex Thomas Burchmore, Australian National University
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Sensual Texts, Material Histories: Language in the Long Eighteenth Century
Saturday, 15 February, 10:30–12:00, 3rd Floor – Joliet Room
Chair: Elizabeth Bacon Eager, Southern Methodist University
• Composing Type, Throwing Pigments: The Revolutionary Potential of Marbling in Early America, Jennifer Chuong
• Giambattista Bodoni’s Abstract Types: The Role of ‘Exotic’ Writing Systems, Craig D. Eliason, University of St. Thomas
• Making and Writing the Romain du Roi Typeface, Sarah Simpson Grandin, Harvard University
• Worshiping Myriad Gods for Longevity: Carved Lacquer Boxes with the Qianlong Emperor’s Religious Pantheons and Scripture Offerings, Zhenpeng Zhan, Sun Yat-sen University
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The Fragmented Self: Objects from Elsewhere and the Search for New Identities
Saturday, 15 February, 10:30–12:00, 3rd Floor – Private Dining Room 2
Chairs: Robert Wellington, Australian National University, and Alex Thomas Burchmore, Australian National University
• Carlos Villa: Trans-Pacific Imaginaries in Filipino American Art, Margo L. Machida, University of Connecticut
• From Modernism to Transculturalism: Reclaiming African Sculptures as Found Objects in Contemporary Art, Lisa S. Wainwright, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• ‘Connected and Interwoven’: Transculturality and the Performance of Identity in the Mughal Court of Awadh, Monica Anke Hahn, Community College of Philadelphia
• The ‘Cosey Corner’: The American New Woman’s Exotic Imaginary, Sarah Wheat, University of Michigan
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Seeking Narrative Justice: Idiosyncrasies and Contradictions of Black Body Representation
Saturday, 15 February, 4:00–5:30, Lower Level – Salon C6
• Aesthetics of Abolition in Late Eighteenth-Century England, Alyssa M Fridgen, Independent
• Tethering the Flag: Visual Aesthetics of Black Citizenship in the U.S., Nnaemeka Ekwelum, Northwestern University
• Becoming (Un)Masked: Semiotics of Identification in Nick Cave’s Hye-Dyve (2017), Cristina Albu, University of Missouri-Kansas City
New Book | Mural Painting in Britain, 1630–1730
Forthcoming from Routledge:
Lydia Hamlett, Mural Painting in Britain 1630–1730: Experiencing Histories (London: Routledge, 2020), 184 pages, ISBN: 978-1138205833, £120 / $155.
This book illuminates the original meanings of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century mural paintings in Britain. At the time, these were called ‘histories’. Throughout the eighteenth century, though, the term became directly associated with easel painting and, as ‘history painting’ achieved the status of a sublime genre, any link with painted architectural interiors was lost. Whilst both genres contained historical figures and narratives, it was the ways of viewing them that differed. Lydia Hamlett emphasises the way that mural paintings were experienced by spectators within their architectural settings. New iconographical interpretations and theories of effect and affect are considered an important part of their wider historical, cultural, and social contexts.
Lydia Hamlett is Academic Director in Visual Culture at the Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Murray Edwards College.
C O N T E N T S
Introduction: Re-experiencing British Murals
1 Animating Histories
2 Triumph and Return: Bringing the Gods onto Man’s Stage
3 Murals and Metamorphoses
4 Poetry, Painting, and Politics: The Early 1700s
5 The Frenzied Age of Mural Painting
Conclusion: Defining Mural Painting as a Genre
Exhibition | British Baroque: Power and Illusion
John James Baker, The Whig Junto, 1710, oil on canvas, 319 × 365 (London: Tate, from the collection of Richard and Patricia, Baron and Baroness Sandys, accepted by HM Government in Lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Tate in 2018, T15046).
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From the press release (3 February 2020) for the exhibition:
British Baroque: Power and Illusion
Tate Britain, London, 4 February — 19 April 2020
Curated by Tabitha Barber, with David Taylor and Tim Batchelor
British Baroque: Power and Illusion is the first ever exhibition to focus on baroque culture in Britain. From the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the exhibition explores the rich connections between art and power in this often-overlooked era. The show includes many new discoveries and works displayed in public for the first time, many on loan from the stately homes for which they were originally made.
The baroque is usually associated with the pomp and glory of European courts, epitomised by that of Louis XIV, but baroque visual culture also thrived in Britain under very different circumstances. From the royal court’s heyday as the brilliant epicentre of the nation’s cultural life, to the dramatic shift in power that saw the dominance of party politics, this exhibition shows how magnificence was used to express status and influence. As well as outstanding paintings by the leading artists of the day, including Sir Peter Lely, Sir Godfrey Kneller and Sir James Thornhill, the show also uncovers pivotal works by lesser known names.
British Baroque begins by exploring art’s role in the construction of a renewed vision of monarchy, including portraits of Charles II and idealised representations of his power. It looks at the splendour, colour and vivacity of the Restoration court, as well as the critiques of its tone and morals. Portraits by Lely, including Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland with her son, as the Virgin and Child 1664, were used to illustrate the important position held by royal mistresses while works by Jacob Huysmans, such as Catherine of Braganza c.1662–64, shaped the independent visual identity of the Queen consort.
The visual and devotional differences between Protestant and Catholic worship are examined in the religious art of the period. Emotionally charged altarpieces from the contentious Catholic chapels of Mary of Modena and James II are on show, as well as beautiful carvings by Grinling Gibbons and Thornhill’s designs for the painted dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. Another theme explored is the wonder and artifice of still life and perspective trompe l’oeil, including works by Samuel van Hoogstraten collected by members of the Royal Society, Chatsworth’s famous violin painted as if hanging on the back of a door, and the hyper-real flower paintings of Simon Verelst which looked so real that they fooled the diarist Samuel Pepys.
Godfrey Kneller, Portrait of Matthew Prior, 1700 (Cambridge, Trinity College).
The profound visual impact and drama of baroque architecture is represented with works by the great architects of the age: Wren, Hawksmoor, and Vanbrugh. Architectural designs, lavish prints, and wooden models relating to the significant buildings of the age, such as St Paul’s Cathedral, Hampton Court Palace, and Blenheim Palace, are shown alongside vast painted birds-eye views of estates. As well as architecture, the exhibition looks at the awe-inspiring illusion of painted baroque interiors. Mythological mural paintings, which frequently carried contemporary political messages, were designed to overwhelm spectators and impress upon them the power, taste, and leadership of their owners.
War and politics dominated the reigns of William III and Anne. The exhibition includes heroic equestrian portraiture, panoramic battle scenes, and accompanying propaganda. Victories such as Blenheim celebrated individuals such as the Duke of Marlborough, but they also embodied the might of the nation on a European stage. The show concludes with the dignified grandeur of portraiture made in the last two decades of the Stuart period, when party politics offered an alternative avenue to power. As well as imposing portraits of courtiers and aristocrats, the new political elite is seen in Kneller’s depiction of the Whig Kit-Cat Club and John James Baker’s enormous group portrait The Whig Junto from 1710.
British Baroque: Power and Illusion is curated by Tabitha Barber, Curator, British Art 1550–1750, Tate Britain, with David Taylor, Curator of Pictures and Sculpture, National Trust, and Tim Batchelor, Assistant Curator, British Art 1550–1750, Tate Britain. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue and a programme of talks and events in the gallery.
Tabitha Barber and Tim Bachelor, British Baroque: Power and Illusion (London: Tate Publishing, 2020), 176 pages, ISBN 978-1849766814, £25 / $35.
Call for Papers | The Art of the Dealer: Selling Antique Ceramics
John Dixon Piper, Old Curiosity Shop, Bury St Edmunds, ca. 1860
(Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program)
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From the Call for Papers:
The Art of the Dealer: Selling Antique Ceramics
Masterpiece Fair, London, 26 June 2020
Proposals due by 1 March 2020
The French Porcelain Society is proud to announce its second study morning at the prestigious Masterpiece Fair to be held on Friday, 26th June 2020. It will focus on the pivotal role played by dealers trading in antique and second-hand ceramics in Europe and America from the 1880s to the present day in the formation of both private and public collections, in influencing taste, and furthering knowledge and scholarship. Confirmed speakers include Dr Charlotte Vignon (shortly to take up her position as director of the Cité de la céramique Sèvres), who will speak on Duveen Brothers, and John Whitehead, who will speak on the Antique Porcelain Company. The morning will conclude with a round-table discussion between leading dealers, curators, and collectors. Tickets will include entrance to the fair and participants will have the opportunity to join a tour of the ceramics stands after the study morning. Details of the programme and booking information will be announced on the society’s website.
We invite submissions for 20-minute illustrated papers on any aspect of selling antique ceramics, from the 1880s to the present. Possible topics include:
• case studies of notable dealers and the collectors they served
• the market for specific types of ceramics including Sèvres, maiolica, blue and white, Wedgwood, and oriental porcelain
• trans-national trading networks
• the role of the auction house, provenance, and price trends
• scholar dealers and the retailing of ceramics
• the role of the dealer in helping to establish museum collections
• the evolution of art and antique fairs and dealer exhibitions
• buying back Sèvres for the French Nation
Please send your submission, of no more than 300 words, together with a brief CV to: patricia.ferguson@earthlink.net; C.McCaffrey-Howarth@leeds.ac.uk; and diana_davis@hotmail.co.uk by 1 March 2020.
Lecture | Jane Raisch on Early Modern Facsimiles
This month at UT Austin’s Ransom Center:
Jane Raisch, Original Copies: The Facsimile before Photography
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 27 February 2020
Called “the nightmare of book collectors” by John Carter and Nicolas Barker, facsimiles do not hold a particularly revered position in bibliography and book history. The opposite of the venerated ‘original’, facsimiles are seen as a compromise at best and downright deception at worst. And, yet, people have long been driven to make reliable copies of old documents. Raisch’s lecture will delve into the pre-history of today’s digital reproductions, looking in particular at the creative technical strategies that 16th- through 18th-century scholars and printers devised to reproduce the visual qualities of inscriptions and manuscripts. It will ask how and why early print copied material objects that came before—and, in the process, it will rethink and expand our understanding of what facsimile can mean today. Lecture in the Prothro Theater. Reception to follow. Thursday, 27 February, 4.30–7.00pm.
Jane Raisch, PhD is Lecturer in the Department of English at The University of York in the United Kingdom.
New Book | The Age of Undress
From Yale UP:
Amelia Rauser, The Age of Undress: Art, Fashion, and the Classical Ideal in the 1790s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 216 pages, ISBN: 9780300241204, $50.
Neoclassicism recast as a feminine, progressive movement through the lens of empire-style fashion, as well as related art and literature
The Age of Undress explores the emergence and meaning of neoclassical dress in the 1790s, tracing its evolution from Naples to London and Paris over the course of a single decade. The neoclassical style of clothing—often referred to as robe à la grecque, empire style, or ‘undress’—is marked by a sheer, white, high-waisted muslin dress worn with minimal undergarments, often accessorized with a cashmere shawl. This style represented a dramatic departure from that of previous decades and was short lived: by the 1820s, corsets, silks, and hoop skirts were back in fashion.
Amelia Rauser investigates this sudden transformation and argues that women styled themselves as living statues, artworks come to life, an aesthetic and philosophical choice intertwined with the experiments and innovations of artists working in other media during the same period. Although neoclassicism is often considered a cold, rational, and masculine movement, Rauser’s analysis shows that it was actually deeply passionate, with women at its core—as ideals and allegories, as artistic agents, and as important patrons.
Amelia Rauser is professor of art history at Franklin and Marshall College.
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