Enfilade

Registration is now open! It’s an extraardinary programme with terrific small session offerings. If you’ve not (yet) been part of HECAA, please know that you would be very welcome—whether you’re an academic, a museum or heritage professional,  or simply someone interested in the eighteenth century. –CH

From the conference website:

HECAA@30: Environments, Materials, and Futures in the Eighteenth Century
Boston, Cambridge, and Providence, 12–14 October 2023

On the land of the Massachusett and neighboring Wampanoag and Nipmuc peoples, Boston developed in the eighteenth century as a major colonized and colonizing site. Its status today as a cultural and intellectual hub is shaped by that context, making it a critical location to trace the cultural legacies of racism and social injustice between the eighteenth century and today. For whom is ‘eighteenth-century art and architecture’ a useful category? What eighteenth-century materials, spaces, and images offer tools or concepts for shaping our collective futures? This conference marks HECAA’s 30th year as a scholarly society dedicated to facilitating communication and collaboration among scholars of eighteenth-century art to expand and promote knowledge of all aspects of the period’s visual culture.

The standard registration fee is $125; the discounted fee is $30. HECAA membership is required of all conference attendees. And please consider making a contribution to help cover travel costs for unfunded colleagues. Register here.

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Morning Panels at Bartos Auditorium, List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge

8.00  Registration

9.00  Introduction

9.15  Panel: Timing Aesthetics and the Aesthetics of Time
Chairs: Megan Baker (University of Delaware) and Joseph Litts (Princeton University)
• Carole Nataf (Courtauld Institute of Art), Shell Grottos and the Aesthetics of Deep Time in Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon’s Theories of the Earth
• Elizabeth Bacon Eager (Southern Methodist University), Peter Hill’s Regulator: Considering the Materiality of Time in the Context of American Slavery
• Daniella Berman (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University), Mismatched and Out of Time: Aesthetics of Contingency in 1800
• Lea C. Stephenson (University of Delaware), Reviving the Alabaster Portrait: J.P. Morgan’s Eighteenth-Century Collection and Whiteness

10.30  Coffee

11.00  Roundtable Panel: What’s Race Got To Do With It? Part I
Chair: Karen Lipsedge (University of Kingston)
Respondent: Victoria Barnett-Woods (Loyola University, Maryland)
• Stephen Hague (Rowan University), A Long S-Shaped Shadow from in the Long Eighteenth Century
• Lisa Vandenbossche (University of Michigan), Oceans of (In)stability: Race and Gender from Shore to Sea
• Chloe Wigston Smith (University of York), Race, Material Culture, and Women’s Work
• Adrienne L. Childs (Independent Scholar), Ornamental Blackness: What, Why, So What?
• Laura Keim (Stenton Historic House), Granting Her Requests: Dinah’s Freedom, Dinah’s Family, Dinah’s Place

12.30  Lunch

2.30  Afternoon Small Group Sessions in and around Cambridge
Sign up during conference registration.

House Tour and Roundtable Session | What’s Race Got to Do with It? Part II
Royall House and Slave Quarters (15 George Street, Medford)
Chair: Karen Lipsedge (University of Kingston)
Respondent: Kyera Singleton (Royall House and Slave Quarters)
• Nuno Grancho (Centre for Privacy Studies, Copenhagen), Domestic Space, Race and Gender in the Eighteenth-Century Danish Colonial Home
• Laura Engel (Duquesne University), The Paradox of Pearls: Gender, Race, Embodiment, and Domestic Space
• Caroline Fowler (Williams College, The Clark Art Institute), Privacy
• Sarah Lund (Harvard University), Republican Motherhood and Republican Equality: Female Engravers and the ‘Ideals’ of the French Revolution
• Tori Champion (University of St. Andrews), Race, Liminality, and the Floral Garland in French Portraiture

Object Session and Panel | For a Better Future: Networks of Pastel Painting
Art Study Center, Harvard Art Museums (32 Quincy Street, Cambridge)
Chairs: Valérie Kobi (Université de Neuchâtel) and Iris Brahms (Universität Hamburg)
• Alexa McCarthy (University of Southern Maine), Blue on Blue: The Tonality of Skin and Eighteenth-Century Pastel
• Heather McPherson (University of Alabama at Birmingham), ‘Pastel Crayons as Paintbrushes’: Chardin’s Portrait of a Man (1773)
• Isabelle Masse (Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec), Chardin’s Pastel Materials: A Hypothesis

Gallery Tour | Islamic and South Asian Painting
Harvard Art Museums (32 Quincy Street)
Led by Ayşin Yoltar-Yildirim (Harvard Art Museums)

Gallery Tour | Eighteenth-Century European and American Art
Harvard Art Museums
Led by Maher Fellow TBA (Harvard Art Museums)

Object Session | Legacies of the Enlightenment
Houghton Library (Harvard Yard, near Quincy and Harvard Streets)
Led by John Overholt (Houghton Library), Elizabeth Rudy (Harvard Art Museums), and Kristel Smentek (MIT)

Gallery Tour | Time, Life, and Matter: Colonial Science
Historical Scientific Instruments Collection, Harvard University Science Center (1 Oxford Street)
Led by Sara J. Schechner (Harvard University)

Suggestions for Self-Guided Visits
• Harvard Art Museums permanent collection galleries and exhibits including Disrupt the View: Arlene Schechet. Present your HECAA@30 conference badge for free admission to the HAM on Thursday afternoon.
• Resetting the Table: Food and Our Changing Tastes, and Glass Flowers: The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (11 Divinity Avenue), $15 general admission.
• MIT Special Collections Library, Self-guided viewing of volumes of a first-edition folio of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie.

5.30  Reception and Viewing Session at the Boston Athenaeum
Wine and cheese reception generously co-sponsored by the Boston Athenaeum for all conference attendees. Eighteenth-century highlights from the Atheneum’s rare books and prints collection will be on view in the Study Room, and significant 18th- and 19th-century American paintings are hung throughout the building.

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Morning Panels at Bartos Auditorium, List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge

9.00  Introduction

9.15  Rethinking the Material Afterlives of Animals
Chairs: Sarah Grandin (Clark Art Institute) and Catherine Girard (St. Francis Xavier University)
• Dani Ezor (Southern Methodist University), Tortoiseshell: From Sea Turtle to Snuffbox
• Kaitlin Grimes (Auburn University), The Elephant and the Lathe: The Intimate Materiality of Monarchical Ivory Portraits in Early Modern Denmark-Norway
• Sylvia Houghteling (Bryn Mawr), The Silk and the Worm: Writing Sericulture into the History of South Asian Textiles
• Cynthia Kok (Yale University), Thinking into Early Modern Mother-of-Pearl, Materiality and Liveliness

10.30  Coffee

11.00  Workshop: Quilt! Inclusivity in Eighteenth-Century Studies
Chairs: HECAA DEI Committee

12.30  Lunch

2.30  Afternoon Small Group Sessions at MFA Boston, Part I
Sign up during conference registration.

Object Session and Panel | Mining for Mica at the MFA, 90-minute session
Morse Study Room, MFA Prints and Drawings
Chair: Ruth Ezra (University of St. Andrews)
• Margaret Masselli (Brown University), A Glittering Ghagra: Women’s Clothing, Shisha Embroidery, and Mica Mining in Eighteenth-Century India
• Katherine A. P. Iselin (Emporia State University), Materiality and Image on Folding Fans
• Ruth Ezra (University of St Andrews), Brilliant Boxes

Object Session and Panel | Paying Attention: Materials, Materiality, and the Definitions of Technical Art History, 90-minute session
Voss Seminar Room, MFA Conservation Center
Chair: Daniella Berman (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU)
• Josephina de Fouw (Rijksmuseum), The Whole is Greater than the Sum of Its Parts: Research into the Rijksmuseum Collection of Dutch Eighteenth-Century Decorative Interior Paintings
• Courtney Books and Amy Torbert (St Louis Art Museum), Bridging the Apparent Divide: Thoughts from the Field on ‘Responsible Art History’ and ‘Technical Art History’
• Heidi Strobel (University of North Texas), Picking at Threads: A Material Analysis of an Embroidered Picture
• Andy Schulz (University of Arizona), The Collaborative Creation of Meaning in a Hand-Colored Set of Goya’s Caprichos

Object Session and Panel | Ivory: Animal Body and Artistic Material, 90-minute session
MFA Center for Netherlandish Art Seminar Room
Chairs: Katherine Fein (Columbia University) and Deepthi Murali (George Mason University)
• Erika Riccobon (Leiden University), Folding Fans in Translation: Ivory as Painting Medium and Site of Crosscultural Design in the Early Phase of the Canton Trade
• Maggie Keenan (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art), Disembodied Eyes: The Fragility of Flesh and Ivory Appeal
• Marina Wells (Boston University), Incisions into the Gendered History of American Marine Ivory
• Kristine Korzow Richter (Harvard University), Ivory as a Biomineral: Relationships between Biomechanical Structure, Interspecies Life Histories, and Tool Functionality

Gallery Session | Art of the Americas
MFA Art of the Americas Wing, Ground Floor Galleries
Chair: Ethan Lasser (MFA Boston)
• Michele Navakas (Miami University of Ohio), Coral, Women, Labor: Joseph Blackburn’s Isaac Winslow and His Family (1755)
• Wendy Bellion (University of Delaware), Benjamin West’s King Lear
• Matthew Gin (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), Uncanny Encounters in Cindy Sherman’s Madame de Pompadour (née Poisson) Tea Service (1990)

Gallery Session | European Porcelain and Decorative Arts
MFA Gallery 142
Chair: Michael Yonan (University of California, Davis)
• Amy Freund (Southern Methodist University), Sinceny Manufactory, France, Tray with Chinoiserie (?) Hunting Scene, c. 1750
• Maura Gleeson (Independent Scholar), Meissen Manufactory, Germany, Modeled by Johann Joachim Kändler, Macaw, c. 1732
• Thomas Michie (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Alcora Manufactory, Spain, Console Table, c. 1761–63
• Sarah Williams (Millsaps College), Nicolas Lancret, Le Déjeuner de jambon, 1735
• Michael Yonan (University of California, Davis), Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, A Hypochondriac, c. 1775–80

Gallery Tour | Jewish Ritual Silver in Eighteenth-Century Europe and America
MFA Galleries
Led by Simona Di Nepi (MFA Boston)

3.30  Afternoon Small Group Sessions at MFA Boston, Part II
Sign up during conference registration.

Gallery Session | New Approaches to Silver
MFA Firestone Gallery, 141A
Chair, Dani Ezor (Southern Methodist University)
• Agnieszka A. Ficek (CUNY Graduate Center)
• Brittany Luberda (Baltimore Museum of Art)
• Ben Miller (S.J. Shrubsole)

Gallery Session | Tiny Treasures: The Magic of Miniatures
MFA Rabb Gallery
Chair: Courtney Harris (MFA Boston)
• Gerri Strickler (MFA Boston), Nevers Glass
• Lauren DiSalvo (Utah Tech), Miniaturizing the Picturesque Landscape through Micromosaic Souvenirs
• Damiet Schneeweisz (Courtauld Institute of Art), Rethinking the Potency of the Early Modern Miniature in the Americas

Gallery Tour | Porcelain, Painting, and Scholar Rocks of the Qing Dynasty
MFA Chinese Art Galleries
Led by Nancy Berliner (MFA Boston) and Dawn Odell (Lewis and Clark College)

4.30  Roundtable: The Politics of Materiality
Alfond Auditorium, MFA Boston
Chairs: Jennifer Chuong (Universität zu Berlin) and Elizabeth Bacon Eager (Southern Methodist University)
• Sarah Cohen (University at Albany, SUNY)
• Edward S. Cooke, Jr. (Yale University)
• Kathryn Desplanque (UNC Chapel Hill)
• Kailani Polzak (UC Santa Cruz)
• Jennifer Van Horn (University of Delaware)

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Morning Panels at Brown University

8.30  Bus departs from the Marriott Cambridge to Providence, Rhode Island
Please sign up during registration for a seat on the bus.

10.00  Global Sacred Garden Encounters
Chair: Emily Everhart (Art Academy of Cincinnati)
• Lelaine Bangilan Little (Misericordia University), Firstfruits of the Land: Vegetal Motifs in Art and Architecture of the Spanish Philippines
• Susan Taylor-Leduc (Independent Scholar), Mesdames at Bellevue: Collecting Plants, Sacralizing the French Picturesque, 1775–92
• Emily Thompson (Washington University, St Louis), Sacred Translations: Giambologna’s Samson and Its European Encounters

11.30  Lunch

12.30  Panel: Indigenous Imprints
Chair: Douglas Fordham (University of Virginia)
• Monica Anke Hahn (Community College of Philadelphia), Reproducing ᎤᏍᏔᎾᏆ (Otacite Ostenaco), 1762–2023
• Eleanore Neumann (University of Virginia), Living Proof: Retrospective Agency in Judy Watson’s experimental beds (2012)
• Laura M. Golobish (Ball State University), James Lavadour’s Lithographic Geologies and Stewardship of the Land
• Kimberly Toney and Pedro Germano Leal (John Carter Brown Library and John Hay Library, Brown University), The John Carter Brown’s Americana Platform: A Digital Tool for Researching the History and Culture of the Early Americas

2.30  Afternoon Small Group Session in Providence, RI
Sign up during conference registration.

Object Session | Fashion, Race, and Power in the Eighteenth Century
RISD Musuem, Textile Study Center (20 North Main Street)
Chair: Amelia Rauser (Franklin and Marshall College)
• Priscilla Sonnier (University College, Dublin), Flax, Fashion, and Free-Trade: Manufacturing Gendered Patriotism in Ascendancy Ireland
• Emma Pearce (University of Edinburgh), Plaided Products: Checked Cloth in Caribbean Textile Markets
• Marina Kliger (Harvard Art Museums), “Cut into Pieces”: The Politics of the “Robe de Cachemire” and the Fashions of the Franco-Persian Alliance in Paris, 1808–15

Gallery Session | Indulging the Self, Stimulating the Globe: Chocolate, Sugar, Empire, Enslavement
RISD Museum, Trading Earth: Ceramics, Commodities, and Commerce exhibition
Chairs: Tara Zanardi (Hunter College) and Elizabeth Williams (RISD Museum)
• Alicia Caticha (Northwestern University), Rethinking a Wedgwood Creamware Basket or, the Secret History of Sugar Sculpture
• Nina Dubin (University of Illinois Chicago) and Meredith Martin (New York University), Gods of the Indies
• Katherine Calvin (Kenyon College), The Cape Coast Castle Platter: Currency and Consumption across the Atlantic

Gallery Tour | East and South Asian Works on Paper
RISD Museum Print Study Room
Led by Wai Yee Chiong (RISD Museum)

Object Session | The Visual Culture of War in the Global Eighteenth Century
Hay Library Special Collections
Chair: Dominic Bate (Brown University)
• Chloe Northrop (Tarrant County College), “Rodney Triumphant”: James Gillray and 1782 Satirical Prints of the American War for Independence
• Remi Poindexter (The Graduate Center, CUNY), Cooper Willyams’ “A Scene at St. Pierre” and the French Revolution in Martinique
• Rebecca Szantyr (The New York Public Library), Keeping Tabs on the British Empire
• Heather Belnap (Brigham Young University), “Les Amours Prussiens” and Other Narratives of Sexual Politics in Allied-Occupied Paris
• Enrique Ramirez (Taubman College, University of Michigan), Airs Apparent: Chemistry and Aeronautics on the Brink of War

Object Session | How To Teach with Collections
Hay Library Special Collections
Led by Heather Cole (Brown University Library)

Object Session | Native American Collections
Special Collections, John Carter Brown Library
Led by Kimberly Toney (John Carter Brown Library)

House Tour | Mahogany at the John Brown House
John Brown House (52 Power Street)
Led by John Brown House docents

Architecture Walking Tour | Colonial Providence
Benefit Street

4.00  Roundtable | The Interstitial Eighteenth Century: Objects, Actors, and Ideas ‘In-Between’
Chairs: Emily Casey (University of Kansas) and Matthew Gin (University of North Carolina, Charlotte)
• Bart Pushaw (University of Copenhagen), A Queer Qulleq and Inuit Art History between Rhetoric and Reality
• Joseph D. Litts (Princeton University), Capsized Aesthetics: Risk Management, Shipwrecks, and Vernet
• Lauren Cannady (University of Maryland, College Park), Green Infrastructure: An Extramural Garden as Case Study
• Caitlin Meehye Beach (Fordham University), Yamqua, In Between

5.30  Wine and Cheese Reception

6.45  Bus departs from Providence to the Marriott Cambridge
Please sign up during registration for a seat on the bus.