Exhibition | The Van de Veldes: Greenwich, Art, and the Sea
Willem van de Velde the Younger, A Royal Visit to the Fleet in the Thames Estuary, 1672, detail, 1672–94, oil on canvas, 165 × 330 cm (Greenwich: National Maritime Museum, BHC0299). More information is available here»
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Now on view at Greenwich:
The Van de Veldes: Greenwich, Art, and the Sea
Queen’s House, Greenwich, 2 March 2023 — 14 January 2024
Curated by Allison Goudie and Imogen Tedbury
In the winter of 1672–73, two celebrated Dutch artists arrived in London. Willem van de Velde the Elder (1610/11–1693) was renowned for his highly accurate drawings of ships and maritime life. He would even go to sea himself, paper in hand, to capture naval battles as they were raging. His son, Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633–1707), was a famed painter. From calm coastal scenes to fierce storms, his work captured the many moods of the ocean.
The Burning of the Royal James at the Battle of Solebay, 28 May 1672, tapestry designed by Willem Van de Velde the Elder, made by Thomas Poyntz, 1672 (Greenwich: National Maritime Museum).
King Charles II offered them a studio space at the Queen’s House in Greenwich and each a salary of £100 a year to create drawings and paintings of ‘Sea Fights’. Here they worked, creating magnificent paintings and tapestries, as well as thousands of detailed sketches, drawings, and designs. The National Maritime Museum has the largest collection of works by the Van de Veldes in the world, and now, 350 years on from their first arrival in England, the Queen’s House will once again become a home for these artists, whose work would inspire generations of marine painters, including J.M.W. Turner. The Van de Veldes: Greenwich, Art and the Sea follows the journey of these émigré artists and explores how they changed the course of British maritime art.
“The Van de Velde collection at Greenwich is remarkable not only for its sheer size but for what it reveals about how a 17th-century artist’s studio functioned,” says Dr. Allison Goudie, Curator of Art. “This exhibition celebrates this extraordinary aspect of the Van de Velde collection here, and the unique connection it now has with the Queen’s House, the location of the Van de Veldes’ studio for over 20 years.”
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Note (added 8 October 2023) — The posting was updated to include Dr. Goudie and Dr. Tedbury as the curators of the exhibition.
Conference | The Power of Flowers, 1500–1750
From ArtH.net and the conference website:
The Power of Flowers, 1500–1750
Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, 14–15 June 2023
Organized by Jaya Remond and Catherine Powell-Warren
Flowers and fruits have been mobilized as expressions of power and counter-power since long before the poet Allen Ginsberg coined the slogan ‘Flower Power’ in 1965 to encourage nonviolent protest, and Hippies in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury area weaved flowers in their hair. In the newly founded Dutch Republic, the house of Orange-Nassau relied on the orange not only as a short-hand for its name, but also a signifier of the trading empire it developed. Sultan Süleiman the Magnificent was known for his taste in gardens and incorporated flowers in his official insignia (Tughra), a complex work of calligraphy conveying the power and legitimacy of his rule. During the early modern (re)discovery of nature, flowers and their fruits (local and foreign) offered unique promises for profit while their pictorial representations promoted their commercial potential and could also stand as artistic objects. This interdisciplinary conference aims to investigate how flowers and the fruits they produce represented power in a myriad of ways in the early modern world. The speakers will address the function of flowers—including the flowering process, culminating in fruit—as tools of political, religious, or commercial power, as instruments of global and local knowledge transfer and appropriation, as well as their role in art-making, science, and the construction of gender from around 1500 to 1750.
The conference will take place in person at the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent; presentations will not be live-streamed or recorded. Conference registration is required. The registration fee of 20 euros (10 euros for students) includes two lunches and a reception following the keynote address. The conference is organized by Prof. dr. Jaya Remond, Assistant Professor of Early Modern Art History at Ghent University, and Dr. Catherine Powell-Warren, FWO Postdoctoral Researcher in Art History at Ghent University. For any practical questions, please contact Lien Vandenberghe (lien.vandenberghe@ugent.be) or Lisa Schepens (l.schepens@ugent.be).
W E D N E S D A Y , 1 4 J U N E 2 0 2 3
9.00 Registration and Coffee
9.30 Welcome Remarks
9.45 Far Removed from the Hortus Conclusus: Women Harnessing Flowers and Power, Part I
• Zara Kesterton (Cambridge) — Flower Girls: Pastoralism, Fashioning, and Gender Politics in 18th-Century France
• Lucia Querejazu Escobari (Zurich) — A Rose from Lima and Kantutas for Pomata: Saint Rose of Lima, Our Lady of Pomata, and the Construction of the Symbolical Garden of the Colonial Andes
11.00 Coffee Break
11.15 Far Removed from the Hortus Conclusus: Women Harnessing Flowers and Power, Part II
• Henrietta Ward (Cambridge) — Exchanging Seeds: Agnes Block and Her Flower Drawings
• Bożena Popiołek and Anna Penkała-Jastrębska (Krakow) — The Private Garden as a Symbol of Innovation and Power at the Noble Women’s Courts in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the First Half of the 18th Century
12.30 Lunch Break
14.00 Philosophy and Medicine: The Intrinsic Power of Flowers & Fruits, Real and Imagined, Part I
• Fabrizio Baldassarri (Venice) — The Silence of the Lambs: Sensitive and Vegetative Powers in Plantanimals
• Océane Magnier (Tours) — Violet Powder: The Perfume of the Flower and the Scent of the Iris
15.15 Coffee Break
15.30 Re-Centering the Garden: The Garden as a Backdrop for Memory, Art, and Networking
• Arjan van Dixhoorn (Utrecht) — Re-Centering the Garden in Philosophical Life: Hondius’s Dapes inemptae of 1618/1621
• Tine L. Meganck (Brussels) — Bruegel’s Spring Garden as Mastery of Nature
• Klara Alen (Antwerp) — From Rubens’s Garden to The Swan Inn: Tulips and Trust in Early Modern Antwerp
17.30 Keynote Address
• Claudia Swan (St Louis) — Handling Flowers in Early Modern Europe: A Florilegium of Gestures
18.45 Reception
T H U R S D A Y , 1 5 J U N E 2 0 2 3
9.30 Trading, Exchanging, and Controlling Plants and Flowers, Part I
• Philippe Depairon (Kyoto) — New Flowers in Old Yamato
• Elena Falletti (Castellanza) — How Botanical Gardens Helped to Shape International Law
10.45 Coffee Break
11.00 Trading, Exchanging, and Controlling Plants and Flowers, Part II
• James M. Córdova (Boulder) — Art in Bloom: The Polysemy of Flowers in Colonial Mexican Visual Culture
• Daniel Margócsy (Cambridge) — The Flowers of St Thomas: Colonial Botany and the Hortus malabaricus, c. 1680
12.15 Lunch Break
13.30 Philosophy and Medicine: The Intrinsic Power of Flowers & Fruits, Real and Imagined, Part II
• Anna Svensson (Uppsala) — Arvid Månsson’s Örta-Book: Translating Medicinal Plant Knowledge in 17th-Century Sweden
• Dominic Olariu (Marburg) — Herbal Books at Court as a Gesture of Medical Erudition and Medical Providence
14.45 Coffee Break
15.00 Paper Plants and the Epistemic Power of Flower Imagery, Part I
• Clio Rom (Springdale, Arkansas) — On Being Planted and Portrayed: Horticulture and Floral Imagery in Seicento Rome through the works of Anna Maria Vaiani
• Lara de Mérode (Brussels) — Hortus floreus Archiducis Leopoldi or the Power of Flowers at the Service of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (1614–1662)
16.15 Paper Plants and the Epistemic Power of Flower Imagery, Part II
• Sheila Barker (Philadelphia) — Giovanni Battista Ferrari’s “Flora, overo Cultura dei fiori” (1638)
• Katherine M. Reinhart (Broome County, New York) — Painting Plants, Engraving Gloire
17.30 Concluding Remarks
Symposium | Dutch and Flemish Drawings, 1500–1800
Rembrandt van Rijn, Landscape with Canal and Boats, ca. 1652–55, pen in brown ink with brown wash on paper, framing lines in brown ink, 10 × 20 cm (The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Ackland Art Museum, Peck Collection, 2017.1.67). From The Peck Collection: “In 2017 the Ackland Art Museum . . . received its largest gift to date. Donated by UNC alumnus Dr. Sheldon Peck and his late wife Leena, the gift included 134 largely seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch and Flemish drawings as well as a generous endowment to support a new curator of European and American art before 1950, future acquisitions, exhibitions, educational materials, and public programming related to the collection.”
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From ArtHist.net:
Making, Collecting, and Understanding Dutch and Flemish Drawings, 1500–1800
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1–2 June 2023
The Peck Drawings Symposium celebrates Old Master drawings on the occasion of the exhibition The Art of Drawing: Master Drawings from the Age of Rembrandt in the Peck Collection at the Ackland Art Museum, on view in Amsterdam at the Rembrandt House Museum (18 March – 11 June 2023).
Research in early modern Dutch and Flemish drawings touches on a wide variety of issues, including the study of materials and techniques; issues of attribution and oeuvre cataloguing; and expanding our understanding of the provenance, collecting, and display of works on paper. This symposium offers scholars a chance to come together to present and discuss recent research in this specialized field, which now evolves to encompass new methodologies and concerns.
Registration is available here»
T H U R S D A Y , 1 J U N E 2 0 2 3
9.00 Registration, with Coffee and Tea
9.30 Welcome Remarks
9.45 Session 1
• The Case of Pieter Vlerick: A Netherlandish Draughtsman’s ‘Many Beautiful Views of the City on the Tiber’ — Stijn Alsteens (Christie’s)
• (Re)Introducing Jan Snellinck (1544/49–1638) as a Draughtsman — Maud van Suylen (Rijksmuseum)
• Drawings Made to be Engraved: Paul Vredeman de Vries and Claes Jansz. Visscher — Peter Fuhring (Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection, Paris)
• A Helmet Design by Johannes Lutma the Elder? — Reiner Baarsen (Rijksmuseum)
11.05 Coffee and Tea
11:35 Session 2
• The Portable Studio: Navigating the Early Netherlandish Sketchbook — Daantje Meuwissen (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam)
• Deconstructing the Antique: The Ornamental Language in the Sketchbook of the Cornelis Anthonisz. Workshop — Oliver Kik (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in Brussels (KIK-IRPA)
• Playground and Repository: Maarten van Heemskerck’s Roman Sketchbook — Tatjana Bartsch (Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome)
• Fresh Eyes on Old Sketchbooks: Revisiting the Content and Function of 17th-Century Dutch Sketchbooks — Yvonne Bleyerveld (RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague/Leiden University)
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Session 3
• Making the Invisible Visible: New Digital Technologies in the Study of Drawings — Thomas Ketelsen and Carsten Wintermann (Klassik Stiftung Weimar)
• Local Landscapes on Paper from Afar: The Connoisseurial Relevance of Washi in the Drawn Oeuvres of Dutch Artists — Sanne Steen (Erasmus University, Rotterdam)
• Hunting Moldmates of 17th-Century Dutch Drawings — C. Richard Johnson, Jr. (Utrecht University)
• Rembrandt’s Drawings: The Cut — Birgit Reissland (RCE – Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, Amsterdam)
15.20 Coffee and Tea
15.50 Session 4
• Aert Schouman’s Animal Drawings in Teylers Museum — Marleen Ram (Teylers Museum, Haarlem)
• Beyond Academies: The Inaugural Drawing Session at Felix Meritis in 1789 — Charles Kang (Rijksmuseum)
• Life on Paper: New Insights into the Drawing Practice of Christina Chalon (1749–1808) — Austėja Mackelaitė (Rijksmuseum)
17.30 Exclusive visit to the Rembrandt House Museum to view the Peck Collection exhibition
F R I D A Y , 2 J U N E 2 0 2 3
8.00 Exclusive visit to the Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum
9.00 Coffee and Tea
9.45 Session 5
• The Less Well-known Side of Andries Both as a Draughtsman — Jane Shoaf Turner (Master Drawings; formerly Rijksmuseum)
• ‘Alle de posturen, die de soldaten in ‘t hanteren van hare wapenen behoren te gebruycken’: Jacques de Gheyn’s Drawings for The Exercise of Arms For Calivers, Muskettes, and Pikes — Susanne Bartels (University of Geneva)
• The Drawing Oeuvre of Pieter Quast (c.1605–1647): An Assessment — Jochai Rosen (University of Haifa)
• A Sea of Drawings: The Van de Veldes at the Queen’s House, Greenwich — Allison Goudie, Emmanuelle Largeteau and Imogen Tedbury (Royal Museums, Greenwich)
11.05 Coffee and Tea
11.35 Session 6
• Wallerant Vaillant (1623–1667): A Dutch Artist in the Vienna Collection of Prince Dmitry M. Golitsyn — Catherine Phillips (Independent Scholar)
• The Bookseller and Publisher Isaac Tirion and His Collection of Drawings — Everhard Korthals Altes (Delft Technical University)
• Johann Friedrich von Uffenbach (1687–1769) as Collector of Drawings — Anne-Katrin Sors (Göttingen University)
• Rediscovering Pieter de Hooch: 18th-Century Dutch Reproductive Drawings and the Auction Market — Junko Aono (Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo)
13.00 Lunch
14.10 Session 7
• On the 17th-Century Reception of Pieter Saenredam’s Drawing Practice — Lorne Darnell (Courtauld Institute)
• Material Sympathies: Paper as Water in 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Drawings — Sarah W. Mallory (Harvard University)
• Still a Hot Case: Reconsidering the ‘Du-Gardijn’ Inscriptions — Annemarie Stefes (Independent Scholar)
• Copious Copies: On the Trail of a Drawing Practice and Its Aesthetic and Material Implications — Christien Melzer (Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin)
15.30 Coffee and Tea
16.00 Final Session
• TBA
17.00 Drinks and Appetizers
Conference | The Dutch Museum of Freemasonry
From ArtHist.net:
‘A Heritage Collection, Unparalleled in the World’: An Introduction to the Dutch Museum of Freemasonry
The Hague, 25 May 2023
Registration due by 22 May 2023
The Vrijmetselarij Museum / Dutch Museum of Freemasonry. Designed by the architects A.P. Smits and J. Fels., the building was constructed in 1908 for the furniture manufacturer Harmen Pander. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, September 2010).
Freemasonry is one of the oldest social networks in the world. It has been active in the Netherlands since 1721 and is distinguished by a remarkable ritual tradition. For over three centuries the initiation society produced an impressive cultural heritage. Through strict collection policy, this earned a museum status in the middle of the 19th century under the rule of Grand Master Prince Frederick (1797–1881) and subsequently grew into a heritage collection of (inter)national importance. The Vrijmetselarij Museum or Dutch Museum of Freemasonry is located in The Hague.
The museum consists of three interlinked collections: historical archives, scientific library (including the famous Bibliotheca Klossiana, acquired by Prince Frederick), and historical objects. The collection not only reflects the development of freemasonry, its tolerant ideas, and ritual tradition. It also documents 300 years of the social, political, and cultural history of the Netherlands and its international contacts, as well as the lives and works of 70,000 members. From the history of Western expansion to the emancipation of women, from art history to gender studies, the collection is a gold mine for researchers from all disciplines within the humanities.
The Dutch Museum of Freemasonry is internationally renowned amongst academic researchers, although it is less well known to the wider Dutch public. Ample reason therefore exists to put this best kept ‘secret’ in The Hague in the spotlight with an international conference. Experts from different countries and disciplines will discuss the founding of the collection and its relevance as heritage of international calibre, with lectures in English. A special guest speaker from America (via Zoom) is Dr. Margaret Jacob, author of The Radical Enlightenment and Living the Enlightenment. She consulted the Dutch lodge archives for her groundbreaking research. This conference provides a unique introduction to a collection that has been preserved in The Hague for more than 150 years, and which should continue to be cherished in the future.
The event will be held at the Carlton Ambassador Hotel in The Hague, which is conveniently located near the Dutch Museum of Freemasonry, and another significant venue: the lodge rooms designed by Karel de Bazel in 1916. These rooms, which were created by the renowned architect, Freemason, and Theosopher, are now a protected monument and part of the Beeld & Geluid Den Haag building complex. Guided tours of the museum and the lodge rooms will be organized for participants.
The conference is open to students, researchers, and heritage professionals, as well as to lodge members and anyone with a love of history or cultural heritage. Advance registration is required, and availability is limited. Participation fee: €75 regular rate / €50 OVN donors / €35 students (please enclose a copy of your student ID). The fee covers coffee, tea, and drinks at the closing reception, along with a copy of the conference publication and tours. To register, please email info@stichtingovn.nl. After sending your email, you will receive a registration form and additional information. Places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, and will be confirmed only upon receipt of payment.
Preliminary conference program, 9.30–18.00
• Opening by Vera Carasso, Director Dutch Museums Association
• The Dutch Museum of Freemasonry and the Study of Humanities (via Zoom) — Margaret C. Jacob, Professor Emerita, Department of History, UCLA
• From 18th-Century Club Archive to National Heritage: The Dutch Museum of Freemasonry — Andréa Kroon, Kroon & Wagtberg Hansen / Guest Curator Vrijmetselarij Museum, Den Haag
• The Kloss Library: A Goldmine for Researchers — Jan Snoek, Professor of Ritual and Religious Studies, University of Heidelberg
• Archive, Library, Objects: The Unique Hybrid Nature of Masonic Collections — Martin Cherry, Librarian of the Museum of Freemasonry, London
• Western Esotericism and the Dutch Museum of Freemasonry (via Zoom) — Henrik Bogdan, Professor of Religious Studies, Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, University of Göteborg
• Egyptology and Freemasonry: An Example of Interdisciplinary Research Opportunities — Eugène Warmenbol, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Art, and Archaeology, Université libre de Bruxelles
• Freemasonry and the Study of Religion: Opportunities for Collaboration — Ab de Jong, Scientific Director of the Leiden Centre for Religious Sciences
• From Private to Public Collections: The Future of Masonic Museums — Andrew Prescott, Digital Humanities Department, Glasgow University
At Bonhams | Watches and Wristwatches
Lot 55: Joseph Martineau, Senr, London, gold and ruby-set key wind triple case pocket watch with shagreen outer case (441 individually set rubies), ca. 1760 (estimate: £20,000–30,000). Note (added 16 May 2023) — it sold for £48,180, as noted by the post-sale press release via Art Daily.
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From the press release for the sale:
Watches and Wristwatches
Bonhams, London, 11 May 2023
Bonhams Watches and Wristwatches sale on 11 May will offer staple designs from names including Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, and IWC, along with a significant single-owner collection of exquisite 17th- and 18th-century pocket watches. The 14 pocket watches, come from the collection of T. P. Camerer Cuss, renowned for his discerning eye for special timepieces. Included are designs by the father of English clockmaking Thomas Tompion (1639–1713), alongside works by George Graham and Joan Dellavos.
Lot 58: Thomas Tompion, 18K gold and gilt metal key wind quarter repeating pair case pocket watch, London Hallmark for 1709–10. It appears to have been made for Mary Montagu, Duchess of Montagu (1689–1751), daughter of the 1st Duke of Marlborough (estimate: £20,000–30,000).
Penelope Andrews, Bonhams Head of Watches in London, said: “It’s a privilege to offer such a significant collection of early pocket watches from the esteemed Camerer Cuss Collection in the Knightsbridge sale. The timepieces represent some of the leading names of watchmaking including Tompion and Graham. The watches are truly works of art; they transcend from being simply a watch into exceptional decorative pieces. We look forward to presenting the outstanding horological selection to our clients.”
Leading the sale is a fine and rare 18K gold and gilt metal key wind quarter repeating pair case pocket watch by esteemed maker Thomas Tompion (Lot 58, estimate: £20,000–30,000). Tompion was known for his exceptional designs and high society patrons, creating arguably some of the world’s greatest clocks. The watch on offer, from around 1709, represents an important quarter repeating watch of the highest quality; it is one of the earliest surviving with jewelled bearings and diamond end stones for the balance, complete with a beautiful watch dial featuring a central cherub and garland cartouche design. The timepiece was made for Mary, Duchess of Montagu (1689–1751), as indicated by the cypher ‘MM’ on the outer case below the coronet; it is believed to be one of only three watches that Tompion made for a female.
Lot 59: George Graham. 18K gold key wind repeating pair case pocket watch with repousse decoration. London Hallmark for 1718–19. Pierced and engraved outer case with repousse depicting Hercules being led, possibly by Hermes, to Cerberus with four embossed shells to the quarters depicting busts of classical figures (estimate: £15,000–20,000).
A fine and rare 18K gold key wind repeating pair case pocket watch with repousse decoration by George Graham, ca. 1718, is also included in the sale (Lot 59: estimate: £15,000–20,000). Featuring a finely produced repousse outer case depicting Hercules being led by a figure in classical armour, the watch is an exquisite example of the art of watchmaking and the art of the goldsmith from an esteemed maker rarely seen on the market. Also on offer is a Joan Dellavos fine and rare gold key wind open face pocket watch, ca. 1765, with a striking enamel scene depicting Venus blindfolding Cupid set within a decorative cartouche surround (estimate: £15,000–20,000).
Outside of the Camerer Cuss Collection, another important lot is a Joseph Martineau, fine and rare gold and ruby-set key wind triple case pocket watch with a shagreen outer case made in about 1760. It includes 441 individually set rubies forming a radiating circle to the back and bezel of the middle case and further decoration to the white enamel dial (Lot 55: estimate: £20,000–30,000).
Other Highlights from the T. P. Camerer Cuss Collection
• A William Snow fine and rare silver and leather key wind pair case pocket watch with pin decoration. The watch, ca. 1670, has a silver dial with a central engraved rosette, and the decorative pin work on the back of the leather covered outer case features exuberant floral designs. Offered with an estimate of £12,000–18,000.
• A John Snow silver key wind pair case ‘puritan’ pocket watch, ca. 1640. The early design was fashionable between 1630 and 1660 and features a silver dial along with an early method of fitting the crystal ‘glass’ held in place by tags around the underside of the bezel. Offered with an estimate of £12,000–15,000.
Additional Sale Highlights
• Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, reference 16523, ca. 1999. The stainless steel and 18K gold automatic chronograph bracelet watch has a sunburst champagne and diamond set dial. Offered with an estimate of £12,000–18,000.
• Rolex Submariner ‘Kermit’, stainless steel automatic calendar bracelet watch, reference 16610, ca. 2004. The special edition submariner with a green and black dial is offered with an estimate of £10,000–15,000.
• IWC limited edition 18K rose gold automatic calendar wristwatch, ca. 2015. The big pilots watch ‘Le Petit Prince’ with sunburst blue dial is offered with an estimate of £8,000–12,000.
Conference | Historical Fragments
From Eventbrite:
Historical Fragments: Making, Breaking, and Remaking, 1500–1800
Online and In-person, University of Edinburgh, 19 May 2023
Taking ‘fragmentation’ as the conceptual starting point for the day, The Material and Visual Culture in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Research Cluster will host a one-day hybrid conference that considers the materiality and shifting conditions of global objects and collections (focusing on the time period 1500–1800) as they are broken, fragmented, remade, or assembled. Seeking to investigate the ‘brokenness’ of such material culture objects and collections, the conference will de-centre conservation and restoration which often dominate discourse on the subject. The Research Cluster aims to provide a space to foster interdisciplinary discussion on the material approaches to fragmented objects through material culture.
Online registration is available here»
P R O G R A M M E
9.00 Arrival
9.15 Welcome
9.30 Keynote
Chair: Carol Richardson (University of Edinburgh)
• Catriona Murray (University of Edinburgh) — Smashing Statues: Breaking and Remaking the Monumental Bodies of King Charles I
10.30 Break
10.45 Morning Session: Early Career Researcher and PhD Papers
Chair: Seren Nolan (University of Edinburgh)
• Simon Spier (Victoria & Albert Museum) — Tinker, Burner, Riveter, Turner: The ‘China Mender’ in 18th-Century Britain
• Agata Piotrowska (University of St Andrews) — Assembled, Catalogued, Displayed in Their Brokenness: Shakespeare’s Chair, Stones from the Tomb of Romeo and Juliet, and Other Objects Telling the Story of Duchess Izabela Czartoryska’s Collection
• Hanne Schonkeren (Vrije Universiteit Brussel/ Research Foundation of Flanders) — Sustained Splendor: (Re)assembling Early Modern Luxury Objects
• Esther Rollinson (University of Manchester) — ‘Trim’d with gold but very old’: Exploring the Importance of Preservation and Remaking for the English Catholic Community, ca. 1660–1800
• Yi Shan (University of Texas, Austin) — Meaningful Losses: Exploring the Knowable Past by Collecting Premodern China
12.15 Lunch
1.00 Afternoon Session: Historical Fragments Roundtable
Chair: Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth (University of Edinburgh)
• Alejandro Nodarse (Harvard University) — Goya’s Remedy (‘Remidio’): On Print as Fragment
• Serena Dyer (De Montfort University) — A Fashionable 1760s Gown
• Lauren Working (University of York) — Sea Change: Regenerative Shipwrecks
• Sarah Laurenson (National Museums Scotland) — Quartz Crystals and the Cairngorms, 1750–1820
2.30 Break
3.00 Walk to St Cecilia’s Hall
The walk is 15–20 minutes; please email materialcultureresearcheca@ed.ac.uk if you require transport.
3:30 St Cecilia’s Hall, in-person attendees only
Presentation by Jenny Nex (Musical Instruments Collections Curator, St Cecilia’s Hall) — The Fragmentation, Remaking, and Consumption of Musical Instruments, as Seen through Examples in the Collection at the University of Edinburgh
Tour of collections and object handling session
5.00 Close
Exhibition | Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art
Charles Willson Peale, The Edward Lloyd Family, 1771, oil on canvas, 48 × 57 inches
(Winterthur Museum, 1964.0124 A)
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Having closed in March at the VMFA, the exhibition opens this month at the Frist Art Museum:
Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 8 October 2022 — 19 March 2023
Frist Art Museum, Nashville, 26 May — 13 August 2023
Curated by Leo Mazow
Explore the guitar as visual subject, enduring symbol, and storyteller’s companion. Strummed everywhere from parlors and front porches to protest rallies and rock arenas—the guitar also appears far and wide in American art. Its depictions enable artists and their human subjects to address topics that otherwise go untold or under-told. Experience paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and music in a multimedia presentation that unpacks the guitar’s cultural significance, illuminating matters of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and identity.
Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art is the first exhibition to explore the instrument’s symbolism in American art from the early 19th century to the present day. Featuring 125 works of art, as well as 35 musical instruments, the exhibition demonstrates that guitars figure prominently in the visual stories Americans tell themselves about themselves—their histories, identities, and aspirations. The guitar—portable, affordable, and ubiquitous—appears in American art more than any other instrument, and this exhibition explores those depictions as well as the human ambitions, intentions, and connections facilitated by the instrument—a powerful tool and elastic emblem.
The works in Storied Strings are divided into nine sections: Aestheticizing a Motif, Cold Hard Cash, Hispanicization, Parlor Games, Personification, Picturing Performance, Political Guitars, the Guitar in Black Art and Culture, and Re-Gendered Instruments. The exhibition also features smaller thematically arranged niche spaces, including The Blues, Women in Early Country Music, the Visual Culture of Early Rock and Roll, Hawaii-ana, and Cowboy Guitars.
Storied Strings is curated by Leo Mazow, the Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He has authored and coauthored a number of books, including Edward Hopper and the American Hotel, Thomas Hart Benson and the American Sound, and Picturing the Banjo.
Leo G. Mazow, Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2022), 264 pages, ISBN: 978-1934351222, $40.
C O N T E N T S
Alex Nyerges, Director’s Foreword
Acknowledgments
Lenders to the Exhibition
Guitar Parts Diagram
1 Introducing the Guitar in American Art
2 An American Guitar Primer (Dobney)
3 Hispanicization
4 The Guitar in Black Art and Culture
5 Personification
6 Guitar-Wielding Women
7 Aestheticizing the Motif
8 Cold Hard Cash
9 Political Guitars (Nichols)
10 Wood, Strings, and Stories (Deloria)
Endnotes
Checklist of Works in the Exhibition
Selected Bibliography
Index
New Book | Prints of a New Kind: Political Caricature in the United States
From Penn State UP; and save 30% with code NR23 (see below for details).
Allison Stagg, Prints of a New Kind: Political Caricature in the United States, 1789–1828 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2023), 266 pages, ISBN: 978-0271093321, $80.
Prints of a New Kind details the political strategies and scandals that inspired the first generation of American caricaturists to share news and opinions with their audiences in shockingly radical ways. Complementing studies on British and European printmaking, this book is a survey and catalogue of all known American political caricatures created in the country’s transformative early years, as the nation sought to define itself in relation to European models of governance and artistry. Allison Stagg examines printed caricatures that mocked events reported in newspapers and politicians in the United States’ fledgling government, reactions captured in the personal papers of the politicians being satirized, and the lives of the artists who satirized them. Stagg’s work fills a large gap in early American scholarship, one that has escaped thorough art-historical attention because of the rarity of extant images and the lack of understanding of how these images fit into their political context. Featuring 125 images, many published here for the first time since their original appearance, and a comprehensive appendix that includes a checklist of caricature prints with dates, titles, artists, references, and other essential information, Prints of a New Kind will be welcomed by scholars and students of early American history and art history as well as visual, material, and print culture.
Allison M. Stagg is a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Architecture and Art History at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany.
Orders must be placed at psupress.org to receive the discount; normal shipping charges apply. European customers may order through NBNi, using the code NR23 for a 30% discount.
New Book | The Wager
From Penguin Random House:
David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder (New York: Doubleday, 2023), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-0385534260, $30.
On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
But then … six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes—they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang.
The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann’s recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O’Brian, his portrayal of the castaways’ desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann’s work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.
David Grann is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z. Killers of the Flower Moon was a finalist for the National Book Award and won an Edgar Allan Poe Award. He is also the author of The White Darkness and the collection The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. Grann’s investigative reporting has garnered several honors, including a George Polk Award. He lives with his wife and children in New York.
New Book | A Treatise on Civil Architecture
From Rizzoli:
William Chambers, with a preface by Frank Salmon, A Treatise on Civil Architecture (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2023), ISBN: 978-9189696358, $80.
A gorgeous, oversize, clothbound facsimile of the classic 18th-century guide to the vocabulary of Western architecture
Sir William Chambers (1723–1796) was a Swedish British architect who designed imaginative castle buildings and luxurious interiors as well as simple and rational utilitarian architecture: some of his most famous works include the Roehampton Villa, Great Pagoda, and Somerset House (all located in London). Originally published in 1756, A Treatise on Civil Architecture is an architecture handbook in which Chambers explains the basics of the art of building, aiming “to collect into one volume what is now dispersed in a great many, and to select, from mountains of promiscuous Materials, a Series of Sound Precepts and good Designs.” The guidebook is supplemented by concise texts and beautiful illustrations of classical building types and their functions. Received with considerable acclaim upon its release, A Treatise on Civil Architecture quickly became the most popular practical work on architecture in the English language and has since been republished several times. This handsome clothbound edition is published in conjunction with the 300th anniversary of Chambers’ birth.
William Chambers (1723–1796) was an architect mainly active in and around London. Chambers was a founder member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768 and he published a number of both practical and theoretical books on architecture, gardening, and interior design.
Frank Salmon is Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) in History of Art, University of Cambridge and a Fellow at St John’s College, Cambridge. Since 2021 Dr. Salmon has served as the director at the Cambridge based The Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture.
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