Call for Papers | The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain
From ArtHist.net:
The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, 27–28 September 2024
Proposals due by 31 May 2024
This summer, Pallant House Gallery presents The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain (11 May – 20 October), a major exhibition exploring the continuing and fundamental relevance of the genre of still life to British art and art history. Historically still life has been viewed as the lowest genre of art, but in fact it has been employed by leading British artists to grapple with some of the most profound themes relating to the human condition, and as a vehicle for experimentation with new forms and ideas. In keeping with Pallant House Gallery’s mission to explore new perspectives on British art from 1900 to now, the exhibition demonstrates how artists working in the 20th and 21st centuries have continually reimagined traditional still life. It questions how still life has been used to explore themes such as mortality and loss, fecundity and love, the uncanny and subconscious, the domestic environment and questions of gender, abundance and waste. Today these themes also extend to climate change and to the legacy of colonialism and empire.
Starting with the introduction of still life in Britain by émigré artists in the 17th century, the exhibition reveals how modern and contemporary artists have engaged with and reinterpreted traditional art history. It then presents a history of modern and contemporary British art as understood through the lens of the still life, showing how the genre sits at the heart of groups and movements including the Bloomsbury Group, Scottish Colourists, Seven & Five Society, Unit One, Surrealism, St Ives and post-war abstraction, Neo-romanticism, pop art, post-war figurative art, conceptual art, and the YBAs. Encompassing painting, prints, photography, sculpture, and installation, The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain includes over 150 works by more than 100 leading artists working in Britain. The exhibition is accompanied by a site-specific installation by Phoebe Cummings.
This symposium will seek to draw out connections between historic and contemporary art, and will provide an opportunity to further explore key themes in the exhibition. The keynote lecture will be delivered by a leading British artist. The two sessions will include papers by art historians and curators concerning artists and themes in historic, modern, and contemporary British art, and artists talking about themes in their work.
We seek contributions that investigate, though are not limited to:
• the reinterpretation and renewal of this traditional genre
• the exploration of gender identity through still life
• how the world’s underlying uncertainties are expressed through a genre traditionally perceived as domestic
• still life as an art form that goes beyond reality to explore symbolism, the sub-conscious, and the uncanny
• the connections between still life and global commerce and its connections to colonialism and the British Empire
• the contribution of émigré and Diaspora artists to the enduring significance of the genre
• still life as a site for the exploration of materiality
To be considered as a speaker, please send an abstract of up to 400 words to curatorial@pallant.org.uk, including your name, affiliation, contact details (phone number and email address), and a short biography with details of any recent publications. The deadline for submissions is 31 May 2024 (12pm). We will aim to contact successful candidates by Monday, 1 July.
The symposium has been generously supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Speakers will be paid a fee of £150. Speakers will be able to claim travel expenses (up to £100) and accommodation costs (up to £100) for the Friday evening. There will be no delegate fee for speakers. Delegate tickets will be £50 full price (£30 for students) and will include refreshments and lunch. Tickets will go on sale via the Pallant House Gallery website nearer the time of the conference.
Workshop | Collecting, Growing, and Exploring
From ArtHist.net:
Collecting, Growing, and Exploring in Early Modernity
EPHE Sorbonne, Paris 11 June 2024
Organized by Maddalena Bellavitis and Catherine Powell-Warren
Registration due by 6 June 2024
The last few decades have produced a number of studies devoted to the relationship between collecting and science, highlighting the relationship between a growing interest in botany and the fascination with the collection of naturalia, especially from the mid-sixteenth century onward. These objects of natural origins aroused the admiration of enthusiasts and scientists alike. Underexplored, however, is the extent to which collecting and scientific experimentation and exploration were related in the early modern period. Thus, this workshop aims to focus attention on the collections of naturalia, on the one hand, and on the attempts to grow exotic plants in Europe and the adventurous journeys that the search for tropical plants and animals they encouraged, on the other. To be included in the list of participants, please send an email to maddalena.bellavitis@gmail.com.
p r o g r a m m e
10.00 Morning Session
• Maddalena Bellavitis (Saprat, EPHE) and Catherine Powell-Warren (Ghent University/FWO) — Welcome and Introductions
• Marie Bigotte (Durham University) — Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Princely Garden Collections of Naturalia
• Madeline White (University of Oxford) — ‘Indian Maiz…in my Garden at Mitcham’: Global Networks, Local Gardens, and Oxford’s du Bois Herbarium
• Baijayanti Chatterjee (University of Calcutta) — The Foundation and Growth of the Calcutta Botanical Garden: Plant Collecting and Botanical Science under the East India Company, 1786–1815
• Anil Paralkar (Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Ruprech-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, WittenLab, Witten/Herdecke University) — The Datura in Gottorf: Botanizing, Ethnographing, and Imagining India in 17th-Century Germany
13.30 Lunch
15.00 Afternoon Session
• Seán Thomas Kane (Binghamton University) — Cosmographic Singularities: André Thevet as a Collector of American Exotica, 1556–1590
• India Cole (Queen Mary University of London) — The Duchess of Beaufort’s Pioneering Collections
• Silvia Papini (Università di Firenze – Pisa – Siena) — Exploring Nature in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany: Mercantile Perspectives in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries
• Celia Rodriguez Tejuca (Johns Hopkins University) — Stabilizing Materials across Time and Space: A Natural History Cabinet in 18th-Century Havana
17.15 Discussion and Conclusions
Exhibition | Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art
Opening in November at the Alte Pinakothek:
Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), Nature into Art
Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 26 November 2024 — 16 March 2025
Toledo Museum of Art, 12 April — 27 July 2025
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 23 August — 7 December 2025
Rachel Ruysch, Blumenstrauß / Bouquet of Flowers, 1715 (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek München, 878).
Rachel Ruysch’s deceptively realistic floral still lifes—paintings of exotic plants and fruit, butterflies and insects—were already sought-after and expensive collector’s items during the artist’s lifetime. Demand was so great that the Amsterdam painter could afford to produce merely a few works a year.
As the daughter of the renowned professor of anatomy and botany Frederik Ruysch, the first female member of The Hague’s Confrerie Pictura, a court painter in Düsseldorf, a lottery game winner, and the mother of eleven children, Rachel was an exceptional figure. In November, the Alte Pinakothek will open the world’s first major monographic exhibition of her work. Discover the wondrous world of Rachel Ruysch, who between art and science perfected fine painting and artistic freedom amidst illustrious patrons in Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, and Florence.
Symposium | Angelica Kauffman
Angelica Kauffman, Self-portrait with Bust of Minerva, detail, ca. 1780–84, oil on canvas, 93 × 76 cm
(Chur: Grisons Museum of Fine Arts, on deposit from the Gottfried Keller Foundation, Federal Office of Culture, Bern)
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From the Royal Academy:
Angelica Kauffman
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 7 June 2024
As part of the Royal Academy’s retrospective exhibition of the work of Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807), this one-day symposium will provide an in-depth look at the work of one of the RA’s founding members. Known for her society portraits and pioneering history paintings, Kauffman painted some of the most influential figures of her day—queens, countesses, actors, and socialites. Her history paintings often focused on female protagonists from classical history and mythology. Organised in partnership with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, this symposium will address Kauffman’s international career and her time in London, her inspirations and subjects, and her place in the art world at the time and her position now in the broader context of art history.
Speakers include Emma Barker, Rosalind Polly Blakesley, Bettina Baumgartel, Rebecca Cypess, Ellen Hanspach-Bernal, Yuriko Jackall, Chi-Chi Nwanoku, Wendy Wassyng Roworth, Jane Simpkiss, and Annette Wickham. The day will conclude with a special artist in-conversation between Sutapa Biswas and Griselda Pollock.
If you have any accessibility needs, please contact public.programmes@royalacademy.org.uk.
p r o g r a m m e
8.30 Private View of the Exhibition
10.00 Welcome and Opening Remarks
• Rebecca Lyons
10.10 Session 1 | Angelica Kauffman and the Royal Academy of Arts
Chair: Rebecca Lyons
• Annette Wickham — Angelica Kauffman at the Royal Academy: From a Face on the Wall to Painting the Walls
• Bettina Baumgärtel — Angelica Kauffman in Context
• Jane Simpkiss — An Artist among Equals: A Comparative Analysis of Angelica Kauffman’s Self-Portraits with Those of Her Male Contemporaries
11.35 Break
12.00 Session 2 | Performance and Self-Fashioning in 18th-Century London
Chair: Marie Tavinor
• Chi-chi Nwanoku — 18th-Century Musical Prodigies
• Rebecca Cypess — Music and the Self-Fashioning of Angelica Kauffman
• Emma Barker — Figuring the Sibyl: Angelica Kauffman and the Image of Female Genius
1.25 Lunch Break
2.40 Session 3 | The International Business of Art
Chair: Sarah Victoria Turner
• Yuriko Jackall and Ellen Hanspach-Bernal — The Connections between Style, Reputation, and Business Acumen
• Rosalind Polly Blakesley — Kauffman in the Reign of Catherine the Great
• Wendy Wassyng Roworth — An Enterprising Artist: Angelica Kauffman and the Business of Art
4.10 Break
4.30 Artist Talk / In-Conversation
• Griselda Pollock and Sutapa Biswas
5.30 Concluding Remarks
• Sarah Victoria Turner
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Note (added 23 May 2024) — The posting was updated to include programme details.
London Art Week 2024
From the press release for London Art Week, with selected highlights including the following:
British Women Artists, 1750–1950
Karen Taylor Fine Art, London Art Week, 28 June — 5 July 2024
Penelope Cawardine (1729–1804), Portrait of a Lady Looking in a Mirror, black and red chalk on laid paper, oval 15.3 × 11.5 cm. More information is available here»
Karen Taylor Fine Art’s exhibition British Women Artists, 1750–1950 coincides with the exhibition of the Tate Britain’s Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920. It will include a number of scientific works by Sarah Stone and others; portraiture, which provided the livelihood for many female artists from the 18th century to Laura Knight; and landscapes from a wide range of female artists.
Karen Taylor is a private dealer in British and topographical art, principally works on paper, with a particular interest in works of historic and geographical importance and British women artists. She works by appointment in London and is proud to include major institutions in the USA, UK, and Europe amongst her regular customers. Karen worked in the British drawings department at Sotheby’s and after 10 years moved to Spink, where she ran the picture department. In 1999, she established Karen Taylor Fine Art, and regularly exhibits at fairs in London and holds exhibitions during London Art Week.
The related catalogue includes an introduction by Paris Spies-Gans.
Exhibition | Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920
From the press release for the exhibition:
Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920
Tate Britain, London, 16 May — 13 October 2024
Tate Britain presents Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920. This ambitious group show charts women’s road to being recognised as professional artists, a 400-year journey that paved the way for future generations and established what it meant to be a woman in the British art world. The exhibition covers the period in which women were visibly working as professional artists, but went against societal expectations to do so.
Featuring over 100 artists, the exhibition celebrates well-known names such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Gwen John, alongside many others who are only now being rediscovered. Their careers were as varied as the works they produced. Some prevailed over genres deemed suitable for women like watercolour landscapes and domestic scenes. Others dared to take on subjects dominated by men like battle scenes and the nude, or campaigned for equal access to training and membership of professional institutions. Tate Britain will showcase over 200 works, including oil painting, watercolour, pastel, sculpture, photography, and ‘needlepainting’ to tell the story of these trailblazing artists.
Now You See Us begins at the Tudor court with Levina Teerlinc, many of whose miniatures are brought together for the first time in four decades, and Esther Inglis, whose manuscripts contain Britain’s earliest known self-portraits by a woman artist. The exhibition then looks to the 17th century. Focus is given to one of art history’s most celebrated women artists: Artemisia Gentileschi, who created major works in London at the court of Charles I, including the recently rediscovered Susanna and the Elders 1638–40, on loan from the Royal Collection for the very first time. The exhibition also looks to women such as Mary Beale, Joan Carlile, and Maria Verelst who broke new ground as professional portrait painters in oil.
Maria Cosway, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire as Cynthia from Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’, 1781–82, oil on canvas (The Devonshire Collection).
In the 18th century, women took part in Britain’s first public art exhibitions; these artists included overlooked figures such as Katherine Read and Mary Black; the sculptor Anne Seymour Damer; and Margaret Sarah Carpenter, a leading figure in her day but little heard of now. The show looks at Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, the only women included among the Founder Members of the Royal Academy of Arts; it took 160 years for membership to be granted to another woman. Women artists of this era are often dismissed as amateurs pursuing ‘feminine’ occupations like watercolour and flower painting, but many worked in these genres professionally: needlewoman Mary Linwood, whose gallery was a major tourist attraction; miniaturist Sarah Biffin, who painted with her mouth, having been born without arms and legs; and Augusta Withers, a botanical illustrator employed by the Horticultural Society.
The Victorian period saw a vast expansion in public exhibition venues. Now You See Us showcases major works by critically appraised artists of this period, including Elizabeth Butler (née Thompson)’s monumental The Roll Call 1874 (Butler’s work prompted critic John Ruskin to retract his statement that “no women could paint”), and nudes by Henrietta Rae and Annie Swynnerton, which sparked both debate and celebration. The exhibition will also look at women’s connection to activism, including Florence Claxton’s satirical ‘Woman’s Work’: A Medley 1861, which will be on public display for the first time since it was painted; and an exploration of the life of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, an early member of the Society of Female Artists who is credited with the campaign for women to be admitted to the Royal Academy Schools. On show will be the student work of women finally admitted to art schools, as well as their petitions for equal access to life drawing classes.
The exhibition ends in the early 20th century with women’s suffrage and the First World War. Women artists like Gwen John, Vanessa Bell and Helen Saunders played an important role in the emergence of modernism, abstraction and vorticism, but others, such as Anna Airy, who also worked as a war artist, continued to excel in conventional traditions. The final artists in the show, Laura Knight and Ethel Walker, offer powerful examples of ambitious, independent, confident professionals who achieved critical acclaim and—finally—membership of the Royal Academy.
The exhibition guide is available here»
Tabitha Barber, Tim Batchelor, Carol Jacobi, eds., Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920 (London: Tate Publishing, 2024), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-1849769259, £40.
Conference | The First Public Museums, 18th–19th Centuries
From ArtHist.net:
Publics of the First Public Museums: II. Literary Discourses, 18th–19th Centuries
Durham University, 23–24 May 2024
Organized by Carla Mazzarelli and Stefano Cracolici
The workshop Publics of the First Public Museums (18th and 19th Centuries), II. Literary Discourses is an integral part of the research project Visibility Reclaimed: Experiencing Rome’s First Public Museums (1733–1870), An Analysis of Public Audiences in a Transnational Perspective (SNSF 100016_212922). The second of three encounters, this workshop delves into the examination of literary discourses vital to understanding the experiences of early museum-goers. Travel literature has long represented a privileged source for investigating the origins of the first public museums and the practices of access to public and private collections in Europe. However, in the light of recent studies aimed at deepening the material history of the museum and the encounter of the public with the institutions, these sources deserve a closer scrutiny in both methodological and critical terms. Following the inaugural Rome session that focused on institutional sources, the Durham workshop turns its gaze towards the rich literary narratives with the aim of analysing them also in a comparative perspective with the primary sources. As museums sought to define and engage their public, literature often became both a mirror and a mould, reflecting and shaping societal perceptions. With a spotlight on interdisciplinary and transnational approaches, the Durham workshop calls for a deeper probe into the visual and material realms of museums, emphasizing the interplay between literary discourses and artworks, collections, display, space, audiences ‘narrated’ in the museum and the evolving institutional norms of the 18th and 19th centuries. Information and streaming on request: visibilityreclaimed@gmail.com.
Principal investigator
Carla Mazzarelli, Università della Svizzera italiana, Accademia di architettura di Mendrisio, Istituto di storia e teoria dell’arte e dell’architettura
Project Partners
Giovanna Capitelli, Università Roma Tre
Stefano Cracolici, Durham University
David García Cueto, Museo del Prado
Christoph Frank Università della Svizzera Italiana
Daniela Mondini, Università della Svizzera Italiana
Chiara Piva, Sapienza Università di Roma
Organising Secretary
Gaetano Cascino (Università della Svizzera italiana)
Lucia Rossi (Università della Svizzera italiana)
t h u r s d a y , 2 3 ma y
9.00 Welcome by Ita MacCarthy (Durham University, Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Director)
9.15 1 | Methodological Reflections
This session serves as an introduction to the workshop, providing a shared reflection on the current state of research and the future prospects. It will focus on the comparative, interdisciplinary, and intermedial analysis of literatures within the field of museum studies.
Chair: Christoph Frank (Università della Svizzera italiana)
• Carla Mazzarelli (Università della Svizzera italiana) — Letterature e pubblici del Museo: fonti o modelli?
• Stefano Cracolici (Durham University) — Musei d’Arcadia
• Marco Maggi (Università della Svizzera italiana) — ‘Tutta l’arte del buon governo trastullando imparare in un passeggio’: A Literary Rearrangement of the Duke of Savoy’s Great Gallery
11.15 2 | Museums at Hand
This session will analyse literary genres for museum visitors, like guidebooks, and the role of periodicals in broadening museum audience engagement. Discussions will cover the evolution of these texts and new reading approaches introduced by Digital Humanities.
Chair: Giovanna Capitelli (Università Roma Tre)
• Damiano Delle Fave (Sapienza Università di Roma) — Pubblici dei musei a Roma nelle guide dell’Ottocento
• Gaetano Cascino (Università della Svizzera italiana) — ‘I Romani non frequentano le gallerie di Roma’: discussioni e stereotipi sui visitatori dei musei di Roma nella stampa di secondo Ottocento
• Pietro Costantini (Università di Teramo) — Viaggio in Abruzzo: Vincenzo Bindi e I Monumenti storici ed artistici degli Abruzzi
12.30 Keynote Address
• Carole Paul (University of California, Santa Barbara) — The Museum Going Public in 18th-Century Italy
13.15 Lunch Break
14.15 3 | Museums on the Beaten Track
This session focuses on museum experiences in travel literature, including correspondence, diaries, and travel accounts. Discussions will specifically examine the unique perspectives of visitor-narrators and how published literary accounts of museum visits compare or contrast with unpublished sources.
Chair: Mauro Vincenzo Fontana (Università Roma Tre)
• Rosa Maria Giusto (Napoli, CNR) — La ‘città-museo’ e i resoconti dei viaggiatori: le Notizie di Roma scritte dal Sig.re Aless.o Galilei
• Luca Piccoli (Università della Svizzera italiana) — Reise nach Italien dell’architetto Simon-Louis Du Ry: resoconti pubblici e privati sui musei in Italia a confronto
• Ludovica Scalzo (Università Roma Tre) — ‘The torch, like Promethean fire, makes every statue live’: visite a lume di fiaccola nei musei romani dai resoconti di viaggio della prima metà dell’Ottocento
15.30 Coffee Break
15.45 4 | Varieties of Sightseeing
This session explores the variety of visiting spaces, perspectives, and geographies in the 18th and 19th centuries, including museums, monuments, private palaces, and studios. Discussions will focus on what these diverse viewpoints reveal about sociocultural dynamics.
Chair: David García Cueto (Museo Nacional del Prado)
• Daniel Crespo-Delgado (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) — Los monumentos y las colecciones de arte en la literatura de viajes española (y por España) de la Ilustración
• Victoria Arzhaeva (EPHE-PSL, laboratoire Histara) — Les pensionnaires russes au Vatican: l’expérience muséale à travers la correspondence artistique et les journaux intimes du XIXe siècle
• Michele Amedei (Università di Pisa) — ‘The Studio was a monument of his intelligent taste and æsthetic
culture’: l’atelier dell’artista nei resoconti e diari di viaggio di visitatori nordamericani nella Toscana dell’Ottocento
17.00 Keynote Address
Christoph Frank (Università della Svizzera italiana) — In the Shadow of the Americas: The Humboldts and Schinkel in the Rome of the Early 1800s
f r i d a y , 2 4 m a y
9.00 5 | Literary Landscapes
This session aims to reflect on how literature provides a multifaceted view of the museum experience, extending the analysis to landscape traversal. It will consider the poetic charm of narrative evocations that capture the emotions of a setting and the ekphrastic descriptions that articulate artworks in written words.
Chair: Ita MacCarthy (Durham University)
• Cecilia Paolini (Università di Teramo) — Il Controcanto di Clio: George Sand e l’inascoltata interpretazione del paesaggio italiano tra spazio barocco e romanticismo progressista
• Elizaveta Antashyan (Sapienza Università di Roma) — ‘A Walk through the Hermitage’: Russia’s First Public Museum and Its Reflections in Literature during the Reign of Alexander II (1855–1881)
10.00 6 | Museum Tales
This session is dedicated to literary texts that transform museum visits into narratives. It explores how notions of time and space during such visits compare with the temporal dynamics of literary narration and how the perception of the visited places differs from travel accounts.
Chair: Sara Garau (Università della Svizzera italiana)
• Lucia Rossi (Università della Svizzera italiana) — Il ‘Museo di Roma’ tra esperienza, ricordo e costruzione narrativa: I Miei Ricordi e le Lettere di Massimo d’Azeglio
• Meghan Freeman (Yale University) — The Intimacies of Art Travel in Henry James
• Corinne Pontillo (Università di Catania) — ‘S’arrestò davanti alla Gioconda’: visitare il Museo del Louvre attraverso la letteratura
11.15 Coffee Break
11.30 7 | Sensory Visits
This session explores how the concept of the museum as a space to ‘read’ differs from its traditional perception as a space to ‘visit’. It will examine, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the implications of this distinction in literary and museological discourses, with a special focus on the sensory dimension of navigating through texts and the museum.
Chair: Marco Maggi (Università della Svizzera italiana)
• Isabelle Pichet (UQTR, Trois Rivières) and Dorit Kluge (VICTORIA | International University, Berlin) — Experiencing 18th-Century Art Exhibitions in Paris and Dresden: A Sensory Interplay between Exhibition and Text
• Sofia Bollini (Università Luigi Vanvitelli, Napoli / Università della Svizzera Italiana) — Il preparato anatomico come oggetto museale e letterario nella cultura tardottocentesca
• Laura Stefanescu (Villa I Tatti, Harvard University) — Vernon Lee’s Gallery Diaries: An Aesthetic Bodily Experience of Italian Museums in the Early 20th Century
12.30 Discussion and Conclusion
Exhibition | Fanciful Figures
Soane office hand, RA Lecture Drawing of the Portico of Holkham Hall, Norfolk, 1806–19
(London: Sir John Soane’s Museum 17/1/20)Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Museum)
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Now on view at Sir John Soane’s Museum:
Fanciful Figures
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, 22 March — 9 June 2024
Fanciful Figures turns visitors’ attention to ‘staffage’, the small human and animal figures in architectural drawings, which became increasingly popular during the eighteenth century. Drawing on the drafting practices of past and present, the exhibition illustrates staffage’s ability to animate architects’ visions, both for built projects and unrealised designs.
The Georgians placed these figures—whether beautifully dressed, sociable, or industrious—into their drawings to animate, add intrigue, and enhance the aspirational appeal of their designs. They also played, and continue to play, an important role in indicating the scale and function of architectural elements and drawing attention to the special features of designs. Just as architects today use staffage to help prospective buyers imagine a life in and around new developments, these historic scenes were created to market new possibilities to audiences. They have, therefore, taken on a new significance as a means of signalling shifts in style, demographics, work, and culture. Between the city traders and happy families, street-side boxing matches and children riding in dog-carts, the figures celebrated in this exhibition help piece together a vibrant picture.
The exhibition draws largely from the Museum’s own collection, including a very early instance of staffage by figure artist Leonard Knyff from 1695. This is shown alongside works by Soane’s favourite draughtsman Joseph Gandy and a series of never-before-seen prints by Benedict Van Assen, both pioneers in this practice.
A specially commissioned film, on display in the Museum’s Foyle Space, explores the representation of figures and communities in contemporary architectural drawing, illustrating the roles that these figures play in reflecting the values, priorities, and aspirations of architects and their projects. The film discusses this subject with four prominent architectural practices: Nimtim, Muf, Office S&M, and OMMX. At the cutting edge of their field, these architects question who is represented in architectural designs and what the impact of this representation of our shared spaces has on how we live.
Call for Articles | Fall 2025 Issue of J18: Clean
From the Call for Papers:
Journal18, Issue #20 (Fall 2025) — Clean
Issue edited by Maarten Delbeke, Noémie Etienne, and Nikos Magouliotis
Proposals due by 1 October 2024; finished articles will be due by 1 April 2025
This issue of Journal18 asks: what we might see if we regard the eighteenth century as possessed by a cleaning frenzy? Cleaning, as a process of removing excess matter to get to the essential or the original, engaged an eighteenth-century obsession with origins and etiology. This type of removal took place in a time of formulations and nebulous debates about race, class, and ethnicity and intersected with attempts to ‘purify’ the urban and rural environment as well as society itself. Cleanliness suggested a particular aesthetic that resonated with the tenets of neoclassicism but also with racialized notions of whiteness, as the opposite of ‘impure’, non-white races, cultures, and objects. In the increasingly disenchanted worldview of elites, cleaning artworks was also a way to annihilate any living presence connected to these objects, from bugs and microorganisms to ancestral spirits to immanent beliefs.
In eighteenth-century Europe, political, cultural, and religious authorities sought to clean artworks and monuments from anything that ‘soiled’ them, whether that was actual dirt, natural traces of use and time, or (hu)man-made ephemera, immaterial rituals, and ideological beliefs. These actions were symptoms of a power struggle between religious institutions and the state and between different cultures and countries, but also between local populations and an increasingly centralized administration. Even when presented as neutral measures of maintenance, such acts of cleaning often led to conflict. This was the case, for example, in late eighteenth-century Naples, when the German painter Jacob Philip Hackert was accused by local artists of disrespecting a number of Italian paintings he had cleaned. What for one cultural milieu diminished artistic value could be, for another, an integral part of the artwork.
This issue of Journal18 invites essays on acts of and discourses around cleaning in the long eighteenth century, particularly cases that address issues of authority and ownership. Who was entitled to touch, handle, modify, or clean an artwork, relic, building, or monument? What/who was allowed to reside within such buildings and objects, and what/who had to be erased or exterminated? What was the significance of defining the ‘pure’ or ‘original’ state of such artworks? What line of separation did actors draw between cleaning and destruction? Was cleaning gendered, and, if so, how? Who was expected to do the cleaning, and who was allowed to produce dirt? What are the connections between racialized ideologies that led to the devastations of ethnic cleansing and eighteenth-century aesthetics of cleaning and cleanliness? Is there a way to contrast the ‘messiness’ of the early modern multi-modal ‘entangled’ historiography with the streamlined ‘cleanliness’ of eighteenth-century historical writing?
Proposals for issue #20 Clean are now being accepted. The deadline for proposals is 1 October 2024. To submit a proposal, please send an abstract (250 words) and brief biography to editor@journal18.org and nikolaos.magouliotis@gta.arch.ethz.ch. Articles should not exceed 6000 words (including footnotes) and will be due by 1 April 2025. For further details on submission and Journal18 house style, see Information for Authors.
Issue Editors
• Maarten Delbeke, ETH, Zurich
• Noémie Etienne, University of Vienna
• Nikos Magouliotis, ETH, Zurich
Call for Papers | The Secularization of Religious Assets
From the Call for Papers, which includes the French Appel à communication:
The Secularization of Religious Assets in Enlightenment Europe: Urban Development, Architecture, and Art Works
La sécularisation des établissements religieux dans l’Europe des lumières: Ville, architecture et œuvres d’art
Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, 27 November 2024
Organized by Ronan Bouttier, Gernot Mayer, and Raluca Muresan
Proposals due by 30 June 2024
The suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773 marks the last step of the Order’s progressive dissolution initiated fifteen years earlier, in Europe and in its colonies. This act of suppression was the culmination of a broader secularisation movement concerning religious congregations across Europe, from the 1760s to the French Revolution. In most cases, the State intended to take over the management of properties belonging to religious congregations described as useless for the common interest. Whether driven by reformatory or by economic interests, all acts of suppression and secularisation had the same consequences: a large number of movable assets and real property, estates and art works were either reallocated to other religious congregations or put on sale, when not confiscated altogether.
Several studies have already investigated the dispersal of abolished congregations’ assets in different parts of Enlightened Europe, but a broader overview is yet to be drawn. Furthermore, it is necessary to define common characteristics of confiscation procedures and real properties’ functional transformations during the three decades before the nationalisation of Church property undertaken in France in 1789. Besides, change of religious buildings’ ownership often led to their reconversion, and eventually to their architectural transformation. Rehabilitation, dispersal or destruction procedures of seized properties also must be taken into consideration. It is also important to broaden this inquiry to the transformation of the surroundings of these former religious properties because this process precipitated changes in the overall urban fabric as well as in the appropriation of urban space. Eventually, these changes of ownership involved movable assets and art works of the dissolved religious congregations. In this regard, one need also pay attention to works’ functional alterations, as they were attributed to other religious communities or to secular institutions and individuals. Therefore, our inquiry extends to the consequences of the largescale sales of art works on the collecting market.
We welcome proposals on following themes:
• Issues and procedures of architectural property confiscation in Europe and in its overseas territories
• Inhabiting and exploiting seized religious properties
• Dismantling seized properties and movable assets: procedures of architectural dismantling, networks and procedures of sale
Each paper should be 20 minutes long; the accepted languages are French and English. The conference will take place on 27th November in Paris, at the INHA (Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art). We look forward to reading your submissions of a maximum of 250 words, along with a CV and publications list. We require the contributors to send their submissions to secularisations@gmx.fr, and to entitle their submitted files as following: NAME_FORNAME_prop secularisations and NAME_FORNAME_CV. The submission deadline is 30 June 2024.
Organizers
• Ronan Bouttier, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
• Gernot Mayer, University of Vienna
• Raluca Muresan, Sorbonne Université
Scientific Committee
• Jean-Philippe Garric, Professor, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, HiCSA
• Richard Kurdiovsky, Interim Director of the Department of Art History, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna
• Olga Medvedkova, Director of Research, CNRS, Centre André Chastel
• Émilie d’Orgeix, Director of Research, École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE)
Enfilade 
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