Symposium | Women at Work
From AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions):
Women at Work: Collections in Museums of
Historical Art through the Lens of Gender
École du Louvre, Amphithéâtre Michel-Ange, Paris, 16–17 February 2026
Sandra Gamarra, Milagros, ca. 2008 (Courtesy of the artist).
In 2014, the Musée du Louvre held a lecture series, entitled Women Artists at the Museum? Current Perspectives. Building on this line of thought, the present symposium moves beyond acknowledging the under-representation of women artists in permanent collections: through a combination of theoretical approaches and real-world case studies, this symposium aims to explore the epistemological shift that must occur for women artists to take their rightful place in museum collections.
Museums play a key role in society as spaces of knowledge and, by extension, of power. By rendering objects visible and inscribing them within cultural narratives, museums contribute to creating dominant frameworks and, through them, collective imaginaries. Scholarship in art history, museology and, in particular, gender studies, challenges the existing hierarchies among artists, artworks and techniques, and critically examines the conditions under which artists trained and worked. This feminist approach, which also draws on postcolonial theory, is driving change in museum practices. By focusing on the permanent collections of historical art, an area still less studied from this angle than temporary exhibitions and modern or contemporary collections, this symposium will explore museum initiatives that generate new ways of seeing and understanding. Many historical art museums have launched research programmes, experimented with innovative display strategies, and developed new narratives and modes of transmission.
Such work challenges evaluation criteria grounded in the established canon and pushes back on the enduring myths and misconceptions that continue to shape art history. This naturally gives rise to pressing questions: Can gender studies play a role in fundamentally reconfiguring museums? Does a radical approach necessarily lose its force when articulated within an institutional setting? What initiatives of this kind, both past and present, have already been carried out, and with what outcomes?
Organised jointly by the non-profit organisation AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions) and the Musée du Louvre Museum Studies and Research Support Department, this international symposium (Elles sont à l’œuvre: Les collections des musées d’art ancien au prisme du genre) will bring together curators, academics, and artists working at the intersection of art history, museology, and gender studies, to harness the transformative potential that this interdisciplinary space holds for building the museums of tomorrow.
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9.30 Welcome by Françoise Mardrus, Musée du Louvre, and Camille Morineau, AWARE, MNAM-Centre Pompidou
9.45 Introduction by Griselda Pollock, Feminist Art Historian, Professor Emerita, University of Leeds
10.30 Session 1 | Mapping Presence: Revisiting Permanent Collections
Moderator: Chương-Đài VÕ, Curator, Writer, Editor and Professor, ENSAPC
• Annabelle Ténèze, Director, Louvre-Lens Museum
• Ilaria Miarelli Mariani, Director, Museum of Rome and the Municipal Museums of the City of Rome, and Ilaria Arcangeli, Researcher
• Fabienne Dumont, Art Historian, Art Critic and Professor at Jean-Monnet-Saint-Etienne University
• Gloria Cortes, Heritage Curator at the Fine Arts Museum of Chile, in Spanish with consecutive translation into English
13.15 Lunch break
14.30 Session 2 | Beyond the Fine Arts: Hierarchies of Genre and Gender
Moderator: Stéphanie Deschamps-Tan, Heritage Curator, Musée du Louvre
• Andaleeb Badie Banta, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
• Manon Lacaplain, Director and Heritage Curator, and Camille Belvèze, Heritage Curator, Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers
• Liliane Cuesta Davignon, Heritage Curator, González Martí National Museum of Ceramics and Decorative Arts
• Iris Moon, Associate Curator, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art
17.15 End of the first day
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9.30 Welcome by Carolina Hernández Muñoz, International networks project manager and coordinator, AWARE, and Matylda Taszycka, Head of Research Programmes, AWARE, MNAM-Centre Pompidou
9.45 Session 3 | Collections as Polysemous Spaces: Narrating Multiple Histories
Moderator: Clovis Maillet, Performance Artist and Medieval Historian
• Isabella Rjeille, Curator, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand
• Stephanie Sparling Williams, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum
• Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, artist
• Pawel Leszkowicz, Art Historian and Professor of Contemporary Art and Curatorial Studies, Academy of Art, Szczecin
• Zorian Clayton, Curator of Prints, Victoria & Albert Museum
13.00 Lunch break
14.30 Session 4 | Networks and Transmission: Working Collectively
Moderator: Julie Botte, Musée du Louvre
• Charlotte Foucher Zarmanian, Art Historian and Research Director, CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research)
• Laurien van der Werff and Magdalena Roosje Anker, Heritage Curators and Co-Chairs of ‘Women of the Rijksmuseum’, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
• Noelia Perez Garcia, Research Director of El Prado en femenino, Prado Museum and Professor of Art History, University of Murcia, and Carlos González Navarro, Heritage Curator of 19th-Century Painting, Prado Museum
• Susanna Avery Quash, Senior Research Lead and Head of ‘Women in the Arts Forum’, National Gallery, London
17.15 Conclusion by Anne Lafont, Art Historian and Research Director at EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences)
Conference | Kunst um 1800
In connection with the exhibition Art around 1800: An Exhibition about Exhibitions in Hamburg, as noted at ArtHist.net:
Kunst um 1800
Hamburger Kunsthalle, 29–30 January 2026
François Gérard, Ossian am Ufer der Lora beschwört die Geister beim Klang der Harfeum, 1810, oil on canvas, 211 × 221 cm (Hamburger Kunsthalle; photo by Elke Walford).
Der Workshop findet im Rahmen der Ausstellung Kunst um 1800. Eine Ausstellung über Ausstellungen statt, die den gleichnamigen Zyklus der Hamburger Kunsthalle in den Mittelpunkt stellt: Von 1974 bis 1981 widmete sich die legendäre Ausstellungsreihe in neun Teilen der Wirkmacht von Kunstwerken im „Zeitalter der Revolutionen“ und prägte Debatten über die gesellschaftliche Relevanz von Kunst, die bis heute nachwirken. Die Ausstellungen revidierten Narrative der europäischen Kunstgeschichte, indem sie Themen und Künstler ins Zentrum stellten, die mit den Konventionen ihrer Zeit brachen: Ossian, Caspar David Friedrich, Johann Heinrich Füssli, William Blake, Johan Tobias Sergel, William Turner, Philipp Otto Runge, John Flaxman und Francisco Goya. Die gegenwärtige Ausstellung Kunst um 1800 kommentiert und aktualisiert aus einer heutigen Perspektive die historischen Ordnungen und Präsentationen der Dinge, die unter der Regie des damaligen Direktors Werner Hofmann entstanden. Dazu werden über 50 Gemälde, Bücher und graphische Arbeiten der Sammlung der Kunsthalle aus der Zeit um 1800 in ein Zusammenspiel mit über 70 ausgewählten Leihgaben und Werken zeitgenössischer Künstler:innen gebracht. Das komplexe Gefüge im Kuppelsaal versteht sich als eine kritische Edition der Ausstellungen der 1970er Jahren und unternimmt zugleich einen Remix der künstlerischen Formen und Formate um 1800.
Bis zum 29. März 2026 entfaltet Kunst um 1800 in zehn Stationen mit damals gezeigten Werken ein Panorama der Epoche und widmet sich Themen wie Aufklärung, Gewalt, Träumen, politischer Landschaft, Industrialisierung sowie Revolution und Freiheit – stets aus heutiger Perspektive. Diesen Fragen geht auch der interdisziplinäre Workshop nach. In dieser Veranstaltung setzen sich Künstler- und Wissenschaftler:innen mit dem historischen Zyklus, der Musik um 1800, forschendem Kuratieren und historischen Leerstellen auseinander. So werden punktuell Aspekte betont, die im Zyklus der 1970er Jahre fehlten oder nur ansatzweise zum Vorschein kamen, jedoch für die Zeit um 1800 relevant sind: Der Kampf um Frauenrechte, die jüdische Aufklärung, Kolonialismus, Sklaverei, Abolitionismus und die Haitianische Revolution.
Eine Veranstaltung von Petra Lange-Berndt, Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar der Universität Hamburg, und Dietmar Rübel, Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, in Zusammenarbeit mit und der Hochschule für Musik und Theater sowie der Hamburger Kunsthalle. Der Eintritt zum Liederabend und zur Tagung ist frei.
Mit freundlicher Unterstützung der Hamburgischen Wissenschaftlichen Stiftung, der Franz Wirth-Gedächtnis-Stiftung und der Liebelt-Stiftung, Hamburg.
d o n n e r s t a g
19.00 Begrüßung — Alexander Klar (Direktor der Hamburger Kunsthalle)
Ossian und die Musik um 1800
Lieder u. a. von Franz Schubert, Joseph Haydn und Nan-Chang Chien nach Texten von u. a. James Macpherson, Matthäus von Collin, Anne Hunter, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock und Ludwig Rellstab; Konzept: Burkhard Kehring (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg)
Einführung — Ivana Rentsch (Institut für Historische Musikwissenschaft, Universität Hamburg)
Musikerinnen, Studierende der Hochschule für Musik und Theater: Anna Bottlinger (Sopran), Yi-Wen Chen (Klavier), Chen-Han Lin (Countertenor), Rita Rolo Morais (Sopran), João Sousa (Klavier)
f r e i t a g
10.15 Begrüßung — Petra Lange-Berndt (Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar, Universität Hamburg) & Dietmar Rübel (Akademie der Bildenden Künste München)
10.30 Hans Hönes (History of Art, University of Aberdeen) — Blick auf die Insel: Deutsch-britische Dialoge
11.15 Elisabeth Ansel (Institut für Kunstwissenschaften, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena) — „Gälische Überreste“: Ossian, Kolonialismus und die Schattenseiten der Romantik
12.00 Marten Schech (Künstler, Berlin) — Eine Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt. Die An-, Ein- und Umbauten für die Ausstellung Kunst um 1800
12.45 Mittagspause
14.00 Lucas Stübbe (Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar, Universität Hamburg) — Körper, Kolonialismus und Kunst um 1800. Eine kritische Impulsführung
14.45 Uta Lohmann (Institut für Judaistik, Universität Hamburg) — Moses Samuel Lowe und Benedict Heinrich Bendix. Zwei jüdische Künstler um 1800
15.30 Kaffeepause
16.00 Lea Kuhn (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte München) — Marie-Gabrielle Capet: Kunst der Konstellation
17.00 Ende der Tagung
Exhibition | Satirical Prints in Georgian London and Dublin
The exhibition recently closed in Dublin with the catalogue available from Churchill House Press and Centro Di:
Artists and Pirates: Satirical Prints in Georgian London and Dublin
Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, 13 November 2025 — 8 January 2026
Curated by Silvia Beltrametti and William Laffan
Single-sheet satire emerged in the louche milieu where politics and high society of late Georgian London intersected. Artists such as James Gillray (1756–1815) and Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827) combined devastating wit with graphic brilliance to lampoon the great and the good, the vain and the vacuous, creating timeless images inspired by moments of fleeting controversy or scandal. Availing of a legal loophole under which copyright law protecting images did not apply to Ireland, a business of pirating caricatures by London satirists also flourished in Regency Dublin. The work of these Dublin plagiarists—which though derivative is paradoxically inventive and vibrant—as well as prints of Irish subject matter by English caricaturists such as Gillray, is the subject of this exhibition and the accompanying publication. Caricature dealt with the great political issues of the day, including religious toleration and contested concepts of liberty, but was also a vehicle to explore less elevated and often risqué (sometimes scatological or pornographic) subject matter. Single-sheet satire, Georgian England’s greatest artistic innovation, and its smaller but still dynamic offshoot in early nineteenth-century Dublin offer a fascinating—and very funny—chronicle of the human comedy.
Silvia Beltrametti and William Laffan, eds., Artists and Pirates: Satirical Prints in Georgian London and Dublin (Fenit, County Kerry: Churchill House Press with Centro Di, 2025), 184 pages, ISBN: 978-8870385939, €30. With additional contributions by James Kelly (Professor of History at Dublin City University), David Fleming (Professor of History at the University of Limerick), and Ben Casey (PhD candidate, University of Maynooth).
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Note (added 21 January 2026) — The Centro Di website suggests that the exhibition will open at the Driehaus Museum in Chicago in May 2026, though the museum’s website makes no mention of it.
Online Conversation | Reflecting on Turner in 2025
Registration for this HECAA Great Conversation (open to non-HECAA members) is available here:
Turner in 2025: Reflecting on the Anniversary Year’s Exhibitions
With Chloe Wigston Smith, Richard Johns, Lucinda Lax, and Melissa Gustin
Online, 23 January 2026, 12.30 EST / 5.30 GMT
J.M.W. Turner, The Wreck Buoy, first exhibited in 1849, oil on canvas, canvas: 93 × 123 cm (Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery).
Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in 1775. To mark 250 years since his birth, a number of anniversary exhibitions were organized across the United Kingdom and the United States in 2025. Some contextualized Turner with other notable contemporaries; others focused on specific aspects of his career or mined collection holdings. This roundtable will bring together four curators of three Turner anniversary exhibitions to ask them to reflect on their exhibitions and ponder together what it means to exhibit Turner today.
• Melissa Gustin is Curator of British Art at the National Museums Liverpool, and curator of Turner: Always Contemporary at the Walker Art Gallery.
• Lucinda Lax is Interim Head of the Curatorial Division and Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art, and curator of J.M.W. Turner: Romance and Reality.
• Richard Johns is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History of Art at the University of York. Along with Smith, he was a co-curator of Austen and Turner at Harewood House.
• Chloe Wigston Smith is Professor in the Department of English at the University of York and Director of its Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Along with Johns, she was a co-curator of Austen and Turner at Harewood House.
Join us on Friday, 23 January 2026 at 12.30pm EST / 5.30pm GMT for this HECAA Great (Zoom) Conversation. The event is open to current and prospective HECAA members; so please share widely in your networks.
Conference | Reflections at Work
From ArtHist.net:
Reflections at Work / Le reflet à l’oeuvre
Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), Paris, 22–23 January 2026
Organized by Anne Pillonnet, Marie Thébaut-Sorger, and Romain Thomas
How do reflections (both physical and depicted) and lighting influence our perception of artworks and their presentation? Art historians, physicists, digital specialists and experts in perceptual phenomena will gather to discuss this question at the international conference ‘Reflections at Work’. Jointly organised by the teams of AORUM project (Analyse de l’Or et de ses Usages comme Matériau pictural, XVIe–XVIIe siècles) and FabLight project (La fabrique de l’éclairage dans les arts visuels au temps des Lumières, 1760–1820), this event is part of an interdisciplinary research initiative that aims to promote a collective exploration of reflections, light, and their role in past and present aesthetic experience.
t h u r s d a y , 2 2 j a n u a r y
9.00 Accueil des participants
9.10 Mot de bienvenue — Anne-Solène Rolland (INHA)
9.15 Introduction — Anne Pillonnet (Institut Lumière Matière, université Lyon 1), Marie Thébaud-Sorger (Centre Alexandre-Koyré CAK-CNRS, Paris) et Romain Thomas (INHA)
9.40 Session 1 | Reflection of Matter, Matter of Reflection
Présidence: Christophe Renaud (Laboratoire d’Informatique Signal et Image LISIC, université du Littoral Côte d’Opale) et Romain Thomas (INHA)
• ‘Alle de verwen van een regenboog vertoonend’ (« Montrant toutes les couleurs d’un arc-en-ciel ») : peindre l’iridescence de la nacre dans la nature morte néerlandaise du XVIIe siècle — Clara Langer (Laboratoire de Recherche Historique Rhône-Alpes LARHRA, université Lyon 2 /université de Constance)
• Reflets de matière, ce qu’ils révèlent — Anne Pillonnet (Institut Lumière Matière, université Lyon 1)
• La perception visuelle du brillant et des reflets — Pascal Mamassian (Laboratoire des Systèmes Percerptifs LSP, École normale supérieure PSL)
• Rendu des surfaces brillantes : entre réalisme physique et réalisme perceptuel — Samuel Delepoulle (Laboratoire d’Informatique Signal et Image LISIC, Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale)
• Peindre la lumière : les femmes, le portrait et la luminosité matérielle dans la Gênes du début de l’époque moderne / Painting Light: Women, Portraiture, and Material Luminosity in Early Modern Genoa — Ana Howie (Département d’histoire de l’art et d’études visuelles, université Cornell, Ithaca) (Intervention en anglais)
12.45 Pause déjeuner
14.00 Session 2 | Reflection on the Artwork: The Lighting Atmosphere
Présidence: Christine Andraud (Centre de Recherche sur la Conservation CRC, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle) et Ralph Dekoninck (Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres, université catholique de Louvain)
• Du bruit à l’extase, en quête de contemplation — Viviana Gobbato (Département Culture et Education Arc de Triomphe – CMN / Centre d’Histoire Culturelle des Sociétés Contemporaines CHCSC, université Paris-Saclay)
• L’art aux mains de la fée Électricité. Visiter le Salon la nuit (1879–1880) — Agathe Ménétrier (INHA)
• Capter le reflet, sonder la matière : dispositifs d’imagerie pour l’œuvre d’art et le corps humain — Mathieu Hébert (Institut d’Optique, université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne)
• La lumière du jour comme source lisible pour les contextes spatiaux et visuels de la fin du Moyen Âge : la nef de la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Freiberg (Saxe) / Daylight as a readable Source for Late Medieval Spatial and Visual Contexts: The Hall Nave of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Freiberg (Saxony) (Intervention en anglais) — Lia Bertram (École des Beaux-Arts, Dresde)
• Le calcul des reflets — Christophe Renaud (Laboratoire d’Informatique Signal et Image LISIC, université du Littoral Côte d’Opale)
17.00 Conclusion de la journée
f r i d a y , 2 3 j a n u a r y
9.00 Accueil des participants
9.20 Session 3 | Reflection in the Artwork: Symbol and ‘Off-screen’
Présidence: Martial Guédron (Laboratoire Arts, civilisation et histoire de l’europe ARCHE, université de Strasbourg) et Marie Thébaud-Sorger (Centre Alexandre-Koyré CAK-CNRS, Paris)
• Au miroir de l’armure — Diane Bodart (Département d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie, université Columbia, New York)
• Quelques dispositifs réflexifs chez Philippe de Champaigne à Port-Royal de Paris : retour sur « une hypothèse saugrenue » de Louis Marin — Frédéric Cousinié (Groupement de Recherche en Histoire GRHis, université de Rouen-Normandie)
• Usages du reflet chez Clara Peeters, Pieter Janssens Elinga et Jean Siméon Chardin — Matthieu Somon (Institut de recherche Religions, Spiritualités, Cultures, Sociétés RSCS, université catholique de Louvain)
• Réfléchir les reflets dans l’emblématique du XVIIe siècle — Ralph Dekoninck (Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres, université catholique de Louvain)
• « Une journée au XVIIIe siècle. Chronique d’un hôtel particulier » : Lumière sur une exposition — Ariane James-Sarrazin (Musée des Arts décoratifs)
11.55 Discussion
New Book | Let the Oppressed Go Free
From Penn Press:
Nicholas Wood, Let the Oppressed Go Free: Abolitionism in Colonial and Revolutionary America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), 384 pages, ISBN: 978-1512828320, $45.
Tenacious activism by Quakers, African Americans, and antislavery evangelicals made antislavery central to the American Revolution.
In Let the Oppressed Go Free, Nicholas P. Wood presents the opponents of slavery who sustained and expanded the antislavery movement during the American Revolution in the face of widespread hostility. These early abolitionists were inspired by antislavery theology: the view that slavery was a sinful form of oppression that would provoke God’s wrath against slaveholding societies. These principles were first advanced by a handful of Quakers and Puritans as early as the 1600s, but they did not become widespread until the second half of the eighteenth century. Quakers embraced antislavery theology during the French and Indian War, which they interpreted as divine chastisement for the sin of colonial slavery. Citing the prophet Isaiah, they pledged to please the Lord by letting the oppressed go free.
Antislavery theology became even more prominent during the American Revolution. When Parliament provoked an imperial crisis in the 1760s, abolitionists argued it was further evidence of God’s anger over slavery. The outbreak of war in 1775 made these arguments increasingly persuasive. Let the Oppressed Go Free demonstrates that antislavery activism during the Revolution by Quakers, African Americans, and evangelical patriots was more sophisticated and influential than historians have recognized. The northern states that began abolishing slavery during the Revolution did so in response to tenacious agitation and generally described their actions as designed to earn God’s blessing.
Let the Oppressed Go Free challenges many common assumptions about abolitionism and the American Revolution. Wood demonstrates that religion remained central to abolitionism rather than being displaced by ‘secular’ arguments about natural rights. And whereas some have argued that the Revolutionary War hindered antislavery progress and fueled racism, Wood shows that the war accelerated reform.
Nicholas P. Wood is Associate Professor of History at Spring Hill College.
New Book | The Centrality of Slavery
From Penn Press:
John Craig Hammond, The Centrality of Slavery: Empire and Enslavement in Colonial Illinois and Missouri (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-1512828429, $45. Early American Studies Series.
How French and American colonizers created systems of enslavement in the Middle Mississippi Valley.
The Centrality of Slavery examines how French and American colonizers used the powers of various imperial regimes to create slave societies in present-day Missouri and Illinois from the 1720s through the 1820s. The first book-length study of slavery and empire in both Illinois and Missouri, it begins with the origins of Native American and African American enslavement in the region. It then traces how successive French, Spanish, British, and American regimes shaped the development of slavery over the course of a century, examines the significance of the Northwest Ordinance’s ban on slavery in Illinois, and then analyzes the diverging histories of slavery in Illinois and Missouri in the early 1800s. The book concludes with an analysis of the Missouri Crisis and the compromise of 1820, along with the Middle Mississippi Valley’s significance in the road towards disunion and civil war in the late 1850s. More broadly, The Centrality of Slavery argues that the Middle Mississippi Valley sat astride the crossroads of imperial North America. The practices of empire and enslavement forged and fought over there exerted an outsized influence on the history of slavery in North America and the United States. Rather than treating the region’s eighteenth-century past as a prologue to the rise of the United States, John Craig Hammond analyzes the colonial history of the region on its own terms, through the European colonizers, American settlers, and enslaved people of Indigenous and African descent who shaped the development of slavery in the Middle Mississippi Valley.
John Craig Hammond is Associate Professor of History at Penn State University, New Kensington.
New Book | The Household War
From Penn Press:
John Blanton, The Household War: Property, Personhood, and the Domestication of Anglo-American Slavery, 1547–1729 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-1512828306, $55.
A bold reinterpretation of perennial debates over the origins and development of slavery in colonial English North America.
The Household War offers a bold reinterpretation of perennial debates over the origins and development of slavery in colonial English North America. John N. Blanton argues that the law and practice of slavery in the empire’s earliest American colonies were shaped by a tension between two competing definitions of the institution. One strand of thought, war-slavery ideology, claimed that the power of life and death transformed war captives into chattel slaves. The power to kill defined both war and slavery. But bringing war captives into enslavers’ private households was a dangerous proposition, and so a parallel ‘domestication’ ideology emerged calling for limitations on the power of enslavers and the recognition of the enslaved as persons held to labor in a variant of English servitude.
The Household War examines how the tensions between war-slavery and domestication ideologies, along with crucial political, economic, and cultural differences, shaped the development of slavery in Virginia and Massachusetts from their founding through 1729, creating distinct systems of bondage in England’s flagship mainland colonies. In Massachusetts, where a diversified and dynamic commercial economy afforded opportunities for mobility and access to material resources, the dominance of domestication ideology enabled enslaved people to negotiate their bondage, attain free status, and build free Black households and communities. Virginia, however, committed itself to war-slavery early in its development, with enslaved people defined as articles of property subject to enslavers’ power of life and death while the extreme inequality of plantation society made free Black household formation nearly impossible. Long before American independence highlighted their differences, then, Massachusetts and Virginia were already on distinct trajectories, laying the foundation for a future house divided on the question of slavery.
John N. Blanton is Assistant Professor of History at City College of New York.
Online Talks | Patricia Ferguson, Ivan Day, Neil Buttery, and Paul Crane
From the Museum of Royal Worcester:
Museum of Royal Worcester | Online Winter Talk Series, 2025–26
The Museum of Royal Worcester is thrilled to present another season of fascinating online talks to keep the winter blues at bay. Curl up with a warm drink and join us as we explore art, food, and history with three brilliant speakers.
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Ivan Day | Frozen Delights: A History of Porcelain and Ice Cream
Wednesday, 21 January 2026, 6pm
Ice Pail, 1776, William Davis Factory (Museum of Royal Worcester).
During the eighteenth century, ice cream became the ultimate show-off luxury for adorning a fashionable dinner table. As a result, new items for serving this novelty dish started to appear on the market. The challenge was to produce an attractive container which could be displayed centre stage on the sideboard or table, but which was also capable of preventing the ice cream from melting. These specialised three-part vessels first appeared in France in 1720s, where they were called seaux à glace—ice cream coolers. They employed a mixture of ice and salt to refrigerate their contents. By the 1770s the fashion for these beautiful vessels became an aristocratic craze, and nearly every European manufactory was producing them. In England, the Worcester factory played a leading role in developing some of the finest of these vessels. Ivan Day will guide us through the development of ice cream coolers and ice cream cups, with a focus on the marvellous examples produced at Worcester. Book here»
Ivan Day is one of the UK’s most celebrated food historians, broadcasters, writers, and curators, specialising in the reconstruction of period kitchens and historic table displays. His work has been exhibited in many institutions worldwide, including the Museum of London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Getty Research Institute. His publications include Cooking in Europe, 1650–1850 and Ice Cream: A History.
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Neil Buttery and Paul Crane | Sugar, Slavery and Empire / The Evolution of Worcester Sucriers
Wednesday, 4 March 2026, 6pm
A rare early Dr Wall Worcester Sucrier and Cover with Flame finial, ca. 1753. A unique example retaining its cover, the shape derived from silver. Ex Rous Lench collection Worcestershire.
Join food historian Neil Buttery and ceramics expert Paul Crane in a presentation discussing the role of sugar and the associated enslavement of African peoples in the growth and development of the British Empire and Worcester Porcelain in the eighteenth century. Neil will explore how the reach of the ‘sugar-slave complex’ was all-pervading, influencing the sale and evolution of fancy goods, especially those associated with the tea table, which, of course, included porcelain. As a case study, Paul will focus on the evolution of the sucrier in the first fifty years of Worcester Porcelain. Book here»
Neil Buttery is a multi award-winning food historian, author, podcaster, and chef. He hosts The British Food History Podcast and co-hosts A is for Apple: An Encyclopaedia of Food & Drink. His publications include A Dark History of Sugar, Before Mrs Beeton: Elizabeth Raffald, England’s Most Influential Housekeeper, Knead to Know: A History of Baking, and The Philosophy of Puddings. Dr. Buttery has recently collaborated with the Museum of Royal Worcester on projects to deliver narratives on the history of food and porcelain to wider communities. His permanent display “Dr. Wall’s Dinner” at MoRW recently won the Food on Display Award at the British Library Food Season Awards in 2025.
Paul Crane is an independent historian and consultant to the Brian Haughton Gallery, London. He is a descendant of Dr. John Wall (1708–1776), who founded the Worcester Porcelain Manufactory in 1751. Paul presently sits as a Trustee of the Museum of Royal Worcester, formerly the Dyson Perrins Museum in the city of Worcester. He also is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, an independent historian and researcher, and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars.
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Patricia Ferguson | Exploring the Rococo through Chelsea’s Gold Anchor Vases
Tuesday, 2 December 2025, 6pm — A recording is available here»
Vase (one of a pair), Chelsea Porcelain Factory, ca. 1762 (New York: The Metropolitan Museum, 1970.313.2a, b).
Of all design styles, Rococo was perhaps the most rebellious—ornate, theatrical, and a true ‘style without rules’. Emerging in France in the 1720s–30s, it featured curved, asymmetrical motifs drawn from nature, especially the acanthus leaf, and marine-inspired forms that gave rise to its name, from rocaille (‘rock’ or ‘shell’). Its greatest achievements appeared in the decorative arts—furniture, silver, and ceramics. By the 1750s–60s, English porcelain factories like Worcester and Chelsea embraced Rococo, even as taste was shifting toward Classical order. Worcester adapted Rococo silver shapes for tablewares, but Chelsea—under Flemish silversmith Nicholas Sprimont—produced some of the boldest Rococo porcelain in Europe, rivaling Meissen and Sèvres. This talk explores Chelsea’s gold anchor period (ca. 1758–64), its spectacular vases, its rivals, and its enduring legacy.
Patricia F. Ferguson is a ceramic researcher, a former curatorial consultant at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, she is an advisor on ceramics for the National Trust and other heritage organizations. Her publications include Pots, Prints, and Politics: Ceramics with an Agenda, from the 14th to the 20th Century (2021); Ceramics: 400 years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces (2017); and Garnitures: Vase Sets from National Trust Houses (2017).
Exhibition | Savonnerie Carpets of Louis XIV
Opening soon (for just one week) at the Grand Palais:
Le Trésor Retrouvé du Roi-Soleil / The Rediscovered Treasure of the Sun King
Grand Palais, Paris, 1–8 February 2026
Curated by Wolf Burchard, Emmanuelle Federspiel, and Antonin Macé de Lépinay
For the first time in history, the monumental carpets commissioned by Louis XIV for the Louvre’s Grand Gallery are brought together and displayed beneath the glass roof of the Grand Palais.
In 1668, as King Louis XIV prepared to make the Louvre his royal residence, he entrusted his First Painter, Charles Le Brun, with a bold and magnificent commission: the creation of 92 carpets, woven at the Savonnerie Manufactory, to adorn the floor of the palace’s most majestic gallery. Each carpet, nine meters wide, was meant to form a spectacular decorative ensemble, one of the most ambitious ever conceived for a royal palace. Fate, however, took a different course. Never installed in the Louvre, these treasures crossed the centuries through revolutions, sales, and dispersals. Today, 41 original carpets remain in the collections of the National Manufactories, 33 of which are complete. Brought together for the first time beneath the glass roof of the Grand Palais, alongside a carpet designed for the Galerie d’Apollon, they offer a display of rare magnificence. A unique and historic event, lasting just one week, inviting visitors to discover these jewels of French heritage in a setting worthy of their splendor.
Exhibition co-produced by the GrandPalaisRmn and Les Manufactures nationales – Sèvres & Mobilier national.
Curators
• Wolf Burchard | Curator, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Emmanuelle Federspiel | Conservatrice en chef du patrimoine, inspectrice des collections des Manufactures nationales – Sèvres & Mobilier national
• Antonin Macé de Lépinay | Inspecteur des collections des Manufactures nationales – Sèvres & Mobilier national
Scénographie
• Clément Hado and Anthony Lelonge – Manufactures nationales
Enfilade 
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