Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

Publics of the First Public Museums, 18th and 19th Centuries: Visual Sources

Online and in-person, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 5–6 June 2025

Organized by Carla Mazzarelli and David García Cueto

The conference Publics of the First Public Museums, 18th and 19th Centuries: Visual Sources 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 (FNS 100016_212922) directed by Carla Mazzarelli. Marking the third of three encounters (following I. Institutional Sources and II. Literary Discourses), this workshop delves into the examination of visual sources, vital to understanding the forms of representation of early museums and their publics. We intend to investigate a vast range of visual sources, from views of internal and external spaces to architectural and display projects, from caricatures to illustrations published in catalogues, guidebooks, voyages pittoresques up to the (self)representation of publics, museum staff (directors, custodians, ciceroni), and artists within the museum.

Visual sources have long represented a privileged source for investigating the origins of the first public museums and the impact on their publics. 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. As museums sought to define and engage their publics, visual sources often became both a mirror and a mould; they reflect and shape institutional and societal perceptions, contributing to build up the idea of museum but also to give a depiction of practices of access to public and private collections in Europe and in the World. The Museo Nacional del Prado welcomes this initiative as it has been involved since its foundation in 1819 in the process that the conference analyzes. The well known paintings that represent the spaces of Museo Nacional del Prado, since its opening, such as those of Fernando Brambilla, are an important starting and comparison point for the theme at the center of the conference discussion. On the other hand, paintings depicting ‘quadrerie’ have been a codified genre at least since the 17th century. Such artworks have also been read as sources for the study of the evolution of the display during the early modern age, but they also represent reference models for artists on how to represent the interiors of museum spaces, their publics and staff.

Direction
Carla Mazzarelli (Università della Svizzera italiana, Accademia di Architettura, Istituto di storia e teoria dell’arte e dell’architettura)
David García Cueto (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado)

It is possible to attend the sessions until all seats are filled or to follow the congress on line through the link to the Zoom platform that will be provided for all those enrolled. When enrolling you must choose a type of attendance.

Contact
visibilityreclaimed@gmail.com
congreso.visibily@museodelprado.es

t h u r s d a y ,  5  j u n e

10.15  Registration

10.45  Welcoming Remarks — Alfonso Palacio (Director Adjunto de Conservación e Investigación del Museo del Prado)

11.00  Session 1 |  Museums and Audiences in Image: Frameworks and Methodologies
Chair: David García Cueto (Museo Nacional del Prado)
• Carla Mazzarelli (Università della Svizzera italiana) — Alle origini del pubblico “esposto”. Proposte di lettura e confronto delle fonti visive
• Daniela Mondini (Università della Svizzera italiana) — Visiting Sacred Spaces as ‘Museums’
• Luise Reitstätter (Universität Wien) — Museums Ego Documents as Visual Source: Imaging First Publics within Founding Missions
• Javier Arnaldo Alcubilla (Museo Nacional del Prado) — La bohemia en el Prado: entre fuentes visuales y literarias

12.45  Keynote Address
• Sebastian Schütze (Universität Wien) — Going Public: The Gallery Picture and its Agencies

13.30  Lunch Break

14.45  Panel 2 | Mirroring Museums: The Public in Photographic Archives and Digital Atlases
Chair: Daniela Mondini (Università della Svizzera italiana)
• Beatriz Sánchez Torija (Museo Nacional del Prado) — El Museo del Prado y el uso de la fotografía como enlace con el público en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX
• Irina Emelianova (Università della Svizzera italiana) — European Art Museums and Their Audiences through the Photographic Collection of the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg: Between the End of the 19th Century and the Beginning of the 20th Century
• Paola D’Alconzo (Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II), Donata Levi (Università degli studi di Udine), Martina Lerda (Università di Pisa) — Dall’Atlante digitale dei musei italiani (DAIM): Immagini del pubblico, immagini per il pubblico

16.15  Coffee Break

16.30  Panel 3 | Museums in Sight: Visual Records of Visit and Display
Chair: Christoph Frank (Università della Svizzera italiana)
• Barbara Lasic (Sotheby’s Institute of Art) — Visualising Museal Trajectories at the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne
• Luca Piccoli (Università della Svizzera italiana) — ‘The colours of them so chosen to carry the eye forward’: alle origini dell’esperienza di visita del Museo Pio Clementino tra rappresentazione e realtà (1770–1796)
• Julia Faiers (Independent Scholar) — Experiencing Medieval Art at Toulouse’s First Public Museums

17.50  Break

18.00  Keynote Address
Andrew McClellan (Tufts University) — Towards a Machine for Looking: Science, Psychology, and Visitor Experience at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1900

f r i d a y ,  6  j u n e

10.00  Panel 4 | Strategies of Self-Presentation: Museums between Politics and Cultural Stereotypes
Chair: Chiara Piva (Sapienza Università di Roma)
• Benjamin Carcaud (École du Louvre / Ministère de la Culture) — Quelle image du visiteur les artistes ont-ils construite dans leurs œuvres? Les stéréotypes du visiteur de musée dans les salles du Louvre
• Adrián Fernández Almoguera (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid) — ¿Imágenes como estrategia? A propósito del Musée des Antiques en la cultura visual del Louvre imperial
• Cynthia Prieur (University of Victoria, British Columbia) — Shaping the Image of the Louvre Museum: Maria Cosway’s Prints of the Exhibitions of Looted Art

11.20  Coffee Break

11.35  Panel 5 | The Critical Eye: Museums and Publics Between Promotion and Satire
Chair: Stefano Cracolici (Durham University)
• Grégoire Extermann (Université de Genève) — Un caricaturista en París: el ginebrino Wolfgang Adam Töppfer y el público del Louvre imperial
• Ludovica Scalzo (Università Roma Tre) — Il pubblico dei musei nei primi periodici illustrati europei (1830–1850)
• Gaetano Cascino (Università della Svizzera italiana) — I musei di Roma e i loro visitatori in satira nella pubblicistica dopo l’Unità

13.00  Lunch Break

14.00  Panel 6 | The Public Image of the Private Museum
Chair: Carlos G. Navarro (Museo Nacional del Prado)
• Federica Giacomini (Istituto Centrale per il Restauro, Roma) — La Galleria Borghese in un’illustrazione de ‘Le Magasin Pittoresque’: per un’indagine del pubblico nell’Ottocento
• Kamila Kludwiecz (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań) Aldona Tolysz (the Office of the Provincial Conservator of Monuments in Warsaw) — Between Documentation and Self-Creation: The Role of Illustration in the Activities of Polish Private Museums in the 19th Century

15.00  Panel 7 | From National to Global Image: The Identity of the Museum and Its Audiences
Chair: Giovanna Capitelli (Università Roma Tre)
• Susanne Anderson-Riedel (University of New Mexico) Caecilie Weissert (Universität Kiel) Joelle Raineau-Lehuédé (Petit Palais) — A Global Public for France’s National Museum
• Elizaveta Antashyan (Sapienza Università di Roma) — Visibility Granted: The Hermitage Museum in the 19th Century and Its Representation in Contemporary Imagery
• Raffaella Fontanarossa (Indipendent Scholar) — Le muse in Oriente. I primi visitatori dei musei in Cina e Giappone attraverso le fonti visive
• Jonatan Jair López Muñoz (Univesidad Complutense de Madrid) — La imagen omnipresente. La representación regia en los museos nacionales del siglo XIX en España e Italia

16.45  Coffee Break

17.00  Panel 8 | A Museum for All? The Variety of Audiences on Display
Chair: Daniel Crespo Delgado (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
• Gemma Cobo (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid) — La mirada de la infancia: Nuevos museos y educación artística en la Europa de entresiglos, 1750–1850
• Anna Frasca-Rath (Friedrich-Alexander University) — Through the Eye of a Child? Visual Sources of/for Museum Publics in 19th-Century Vienna
• Marie Barras (Université de Genève) — See and Be Seen: Museums and Art Exhibitions as Fashion Stages, 1870–1900

18.20  Concluding Remarks by Carla Mazzarelli