Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

Textual Embodiments: Remediating Meaning across the Disciplines

Link Campus University, Rome, 11–12 September 2026

Proposals due by 1 June 2026

Eighteenth-century philology, as the science of editing and interpreting texts, while evolving in compartmentalised disciplines within the modern university curricula, formalised the analysis of written and visual works according to a shared methodology. Throughout its long history, philology has gone through important changes in the understanding of each component of the hermeneutic circle: author, text and reader. All periods in which philology was formalised as a discipline—i.e. the Hellenistic period, the Renaissance, and the second half of the eighteenth-century in Göttingen—have elaborated a methodology in response to important changes in the material production and dissemination of texts. A focus on the technology of writing, the critical evaluation of the manuscript tradition, and the manufacturing of printed books and critical editions have all accompanied its evolution in response to the ground-breaking technological innovations of the time mediating culture transfer.

As we are undergoing a new technological revolution with the production and dissemination of digital texts, this conference shall focus on the question of mediality in the production and circulation of texts, artistic works, and performances from all periods. What is the role of each medium (writing, printing, digital textuality, artistic practice, embodied performance) in shaping communication strategies, literary and journalistic genres, as well as interactions and synergies with other media accompanying the written text? Which communities are involved in these exchanges? The topics proposed shall ideally contribute to a transhistorical, intermedial and interdisciplinary reflection.

Possible topics include
• the circulation of manuscript texts (including collections of poems, libri amicorum, albums, diaries, etc)
• text/image dynamics from the medieval period to the contemporary era
• genres of periodical fiction and non-fiction
• digital editions of manuscript texts
• the evolving structures of the English language in relation to specific media
• the history of reading, writing and publishing
• the mediators of culture-transfer (printers, booksellers, illustrators, colonial agents)
• serialization (of printed texts and visual narratives)
• the evolving media landscape through the lens of aesthetics—performativity in conceptual art, experimental theatre, modern dance
• literary narratives foregrounding specific media
• self-reflexive transmedial adaptation studies

Please send a 250-word abstract to Alberto Gabriele a.gabriele@unilink.it and Carlo M. Bajetta at c.bajetta@univda.it by 1 June 2026.

From ArtHist.net:

New Research on Venetian Art

A Study Day for Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Researchers

Online, 24 October 2026

Proposals due by 30 June 2026

The Venetian Art History Research Group (VAHRG) invites submissions for its second virtual conference, open to current PhD students and postdoctoral researchers working on any aspect of Venetian art history. The conference will take place online via Zoom on Saturday, 24 October 2026, and will be hosted by members of the VAHRG committee. We welcome proposals for short papers presenting current research on Venetian art. Presentations may be given in either English or Italian, be accompanied by a PowerPoint, and not exceed 20 minutes. Those interested in participating are invited to submit a proposal title and an abstract (maximum 200 words) to venetianahg@gmail.com by Tuesday, 30 June 2026. Please also include your current university affiliation and the contact details of your supervisor(s).

From ArtHist.net:

The Public of the Monument, 1789–2026: Collective Celebration in Question

Le Public du monument, 1789–2026: La célébration collective en question

13th Symposium for Young Researchers in Sculpture

Online and in-person, Musée Rodin, Paris, 9 October 2026

Organized by Thierry Laugée

Proposals due by 31 May 2026

“This is how the Republic knew how to impress the masses, by involving them in these great national performances.” –Pierre-Jean David d’Angers, “Fêtes nationales,” Dictionnaire politique: Encyclopédie du langage et de la science politiques (Paris, Pagnerre, 1842), pp. 400–01.

Through these words, published by Pagnerre in 1842 in the Dictionnaire politique, Pierre-Jean David d’Angers elevated the revolutionary festivals of Year II of the Republic to the status of exemplary models, considering them to be authentically popular in nature. The Festival of the Supreme Being in particular—staging the participation of the people in the celebration of temporary statues—aroused an enthusiasm conducive to moral elevation and reminded the sculptor of the emancipatory function of the sculpted monument. David’s attentiveness to the collective dimension of the monument must be situated within the broader history of public statuary. For shared celebration—whether marking an inauguration or assuming a more symbolic form—constitutes one of the necessary conditions for a monument to be genuinely perceived as public, that is, as belonging to those who encounter it in their daily lives. Whether an association commemorates the anniversary of a great man before his statue, a spontaneous gathering assembles around an effigy in defense of a political cause, or supporters climb the statue of the Republic to celebrate a club’s victory, such gestures represent as many ways of celebrating a monument—or of celebrating with it.

Incidentally, the popular gatherings of 1899 around the sculpted monument Le Triomphe de la République by Jules Dalou are said to have inspired him with the idea of his Monument aux ouvriers, attesting to the political and artistic emulation generated by the public appropriation of the monument.

Public statuary, by inscribing itself within urban space, exists in daily proximity to pedestrians. Although the statue is intended to convey a message to them, to shape their memory, or to signal the values upheld by the locality, the role of the passerby cannot be confined to passive reception. Beyond potential financial participation through taxation or public subscription, it is the passerby who ultimately accepts—or rejects—the monument and integrates it into local social life.

To recount the history of a public monument entails reconstructing, through archival sources, the genealogy of debates and the administrative and financial decisions that led to its erection, followed by an examination of the artist’s successive projects culminating in its execution in its definitive material, and possibly its inauguration. Yet one of the fundamental stakes of public statuary lies in its inscription within the future of a locality. Every episode occurring on or around the monument, up to its potential dismantling, forms part of the long-term history of the public monument. This urban history generally escapes the artist’s control; it is composed of ceremonies and festivities that focus on the statue or incorporate it into a spatial framework defined either by deliberate choice or by necessity. This symposium therefore seeks to examine the modalities and paradoxes of celebrating statuary within the city, as well as the multiple actors involved in these collective forms of celebration. It aims to observe the statue’s “fellow citizens,” those for whom it is intended, in order to better understand their role, their practices, and the attachment they may gradually develop toward an effigy over time.

One of the proposed research perspectives concerns the study of the ways public monuments are inaugurated. As Bertrand Tillier notes, “these collective uses of the monument at the moment of its inauguration, as it enters the public sphere, generate a shared emotional experience” (La Disgrâce des statues, 2022). This emotion may surface in speeches, poems, concerts, or songs—forms whose study has, until now, remained largely peripheral. Yet a rich and varied corpus of artistic and literary works, whether published or unpublished, accompanies these ceremonies. Yet there exists a rich body of artistic and literary productions, published or unpublished, that mark the rhythm of the ceremonial proceedings and contribute to the staging of the collective.

The ways in which a monument is celebrated prove to be remarkably varied, and in some cases, they overlap significantly with religious ceremonial practices, particularly through processional forms. These points of permeability between civic and sacred spaces, far from being incidental, invite a deeper examination of the circulation of practices, symbols, and ritual registers through which individuals express attachment to—or acknowledgment of—a secular figure.

Beyond the moment of inauguration alone, it becomes clear that public statuary functions as a form of spectacle. Another research perspective during this study day will therefore be to examine the forms and uses of this spectacularization, understood as a mode of collective engagement within public space. Particular attention may be given to the most ephemeral expressions of statuary, a transitory character that appears at first glance to contradict the ideal of permanence. From the First Republic to the most recent Olympic Games, the display of temporary statues—in plaster, cardboard, paper, fabric, or resin—during civic celebrations attests to the structuring role of statuary in shaping urban discourse. Contributions addressing the use of pyrotechnics, illumination, or sound design in relation to monuments are especially encouraged, since these devices play a significant part in the festive appropriation of public monuments.

This study day is explicitly interdisciplinary in scope and is intended for scholars across all fields of the humanities and social sciences, with the aim of fostering dialogue, methodological exchange, and the enrichment of historical knowledge concerning sculpted monuments. Particular attention will be given to contributions that offer a fresh perspective on groups of monuments, civic celebrations, or related practices.

Proposals for papers may be submitted in French or English. They must include a title, an abstract (between 1500 and 2000 characters), and a brief biographical note (between 500 and 1000 characters). They should be sent before 31 May 2026 to colloques@musee-rodin.fr.

Research and Organizing Committee
Amélie Simier, Director of the Musée Rodin
Thierry Laugée, Professor of Contemporary Art History, Nantes Université, CReAAH-LARA
Emilia Philippot, Senior Curator, Head of Curatorial Affairs, Musée Rodin
Véronique Mattiussi, Head of the Research department, Musée Rodin
Franck Joubin, Researcher, Conference Coordinator, Musée Rodin

From the Call for Papers:

Painting and Genre

St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, 6 August 2026

Organized by Sofya Dmitrieva

Proposals due by 31 May 2026

Painting genres structure artistic practice, shape reception, and inform institutional frameworks. Yet as an analytical category, genre has long occupied a marginal position within art history.

This is not to suggest that the discipline has produced no genre theory. Influential studies, such as Wayne Franits’s Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution (Yale University Press, 2004), have addressed genre explicitly, and scholarship on individual genres, particularly portraiture and landscape, is vast. Questions related to genre, most notably the academic hierarchy of genres, have received sustained scholarly attention, from Jean Locquin to Christian Michel, Mark Ledbury, and Paul Duro. Indeed, one of the discipline’s foundational texts—Alois Riegl’s The Group Portraiture of Holland (1902)—is a genre study.

Art-historical approaches to genre have likewise been varied and innovative. To cite just a small selection of recent examples, Amy Freund has examined the hunting portrait from a sociohistorical perspective, linking it to the changing status of the sword nobility in the early eighteenth century (Art History, 2019); Susanna Caviglia has revisited history painting under Louis XV, relating it to contemporary political and cultural discourses on pleasure (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2020); and Stephanie O’Rourke has explored how late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century landscape painting registered practices of resource extraction (University of Chicago Press, 2025).

Still, despite this substantial body of scholarship, the study of genre has remained largely overshadowed by iconographic and formalist approaches. In contrast to literary and film studies, where genre theory occupies a central methodological position, art history has yet to develop a comparably sustained theoretical framework for the analysis of genre.

This one-day conference invites contributions that place genre at the centre of the analysis of painting. It seeks to foreground genre not merely as a classificatory device but as a critical category through which artistic production, reception, and historiography can be re-examined. While certain periods, such as the Dutch Golden Age, readily lend themselves to genre-based analysis, the conference is not limited chronologically or geographically. Case studies of genres from all periods and regions are welcome, as are experimental theoretical contributions and historiographical papers that reflect on the role genre has played within art history, theory, and criticism.

Possible questions include, but are not limited to:
• What formally defines a painting genre?
• What mechanisms govern the formation, stabilisation, and transformation of genres?
• How do hybrid genres emerge and operate?
• How do generic expectations shape viewer perception and interpretation?
• How do genres reflect their historical contexts, including political ideologies, class relations, and gender roles?
• How do genres articulate sociocultural practices?
• What role have genres played within institutions (academies, museums, auction houses) and the art market?
• How has the notion of genre developed within the history, theory, and criticism of art?

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be provided at the venue. The organiser intends for the conference to result in a publication. Please submit a 300-word abstract for a 20-minute presentations and a 100-word biography to Sofya Dmitrieva (sofya.k.dmitrieva@gmail.com) by May 31.

From ArtHist.net:

Hungry for Data: Studying Court Dining and Using Sensory Data, 1300–1800

Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, Vilnius, 29–30 May 2026

Proposals due by 10 April 2026

Interested in how data, the senses, and court dining can be studied together?

The workshop Hungry for Data: Studying Court Dining and Using Sensory Data, 1300–1800 invites contributions for a hands-on, interdisciplinary event in Vilnius, 29–30 May 2026. Topics include sensory and spatial approaches to court dining, measurable proxies such as lighting, acoustics, ventilation, circulation, seating and visibility, as well as AI, modelling, and data visualisation. The call particularly welcomes contributions from researchers in history, art and architectural history, heritage studies, heritage science, digital humanities, computer science, geospatial and sensor data analysis, simulation, and AI. Early career researchers are warmly encouraged to apply. Submit an abstract (max 300 words) and a short CV (max 1 page) by 10 April 2026 to email@stephan-hoppe.de and fabian.persson@lnu.se.

From ArtHist.net:

Reframing Methodologies: Women Artists in Italy, 1607 to the Italian Unification

Sixth Edition of the Annual International Women in the Arts Conference (AIWAC)

University of Arkansas Rome Center, 15–17 October 2026

Proposals due by 30 April 2026

Following the two exhibitions Roma Pittrice: Artiste al lavoro tra XVI e XIX secolo (Rome, Palazzo Braschi, 25/10/2024 – 04/05/2025) and Donne nella Napoli spagnola: Un altro Seicento (Naples, Le Gallerie d’Italia, 20/11/ 2025 – 22/3/2026), this conference seeks to foster critical reflections on methodologies for the study of women artists. More than fifty years after Linda Nochlin’s seminal question, “Why have there been no great women artists?”, we aim to reassess and critically examine the current state of scholarship on women and gender in the arts.

We invite scholars to present papers addressing any aspect of women artists and their participation in cultural discourses from the early modern to the modern period. The goal is to reconsider and reframe methodological approaches within the discipline. While the field has made significant advances, it has also perpetuated certain narratives and myths that have shaped—at times uncritically—the rhetoric of feminist art history. This conference aims to interrogate these assumptions and to reassess the historiographical and philological foundations of the field.

The year 1607 marks a significant turning point: the Accademia di San Luca in Rome opened its doors to women for the first time, contributing to the professionalization of women artists. In the decades that followed, other Italian cities adopted similar practices. Alongside academies, artistic training was also provided through workshops, which functioned as de facto private academies. Although only a limited number of women were admitted to official institutions—such as the Accademia di San Luca, where women were documented as members from 1607, albeit excluded from life drawing and governance—many women accessed professional training through alternative structures. These included art schools founded by women artists themselves, such as Elisabetta Sirani’s school in Bologna and Virginia da Vezzo’s in Paris. Artemisia Gentileschi likewise maintained a workshop in Naples, where she trained her daughter Prudentia as well as several male artists.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
• Methodological approaches to the study of women artists (past, present, and future)
• Revisiting canonical narratives and persistent myths in feminist art history
• Archival, philological, and historiographical challenges in reconstructing women’s artistic production
• Women artists and artistic training: academies, workshops, and alternative pedagogies
• Professional networks, patronage, and mobility (local, national, and transnational)
• Women artists as teachers, workshop leaders, and agents of artistic transmission
• The role of institutions (academies, courts, convents) in shaping women’s artistic careers
• Gendered access to artistic genres (portraiture, history painting, still life, etc.)
• Women artists and the art market
• Self-representation, authorship, and artistic identity
• Women artists in relation to family workshops and dynastic practices
• Cross-cultural exchanges and the presence of Italian women artists abroad or expatriate women artists in Italy.
• The reception and historiography of women artists from the 17th to the 19th century
• Rethinking periodization: from early modern to modern frameworks
• Digital humanities and new tools for researching women artists

Selected conference papers will be published in the AIWAC Acta Colloquia post-print series, in collaboration with Brepols Publishers, following a peer-review process.

To submit a proposal, please ensure the following requirements are met:
• Abstract: Submit an abstract in English (Word format), with a maximum length of 500 words (excluding author name(s) and contact details).
• Short Biography: Include a brief biographical note of no more than 150 words.
• File Format and Naming: Save the proposal as a .doc file (PDF files will not be considered), using the following naming convention: AIWAC6_Surname.doc
• Curriculum Vitae: Include a short CV.
• Submission Method: Send all materials via email to clollobr@uark.edu and amodesti@unimelb.edu.au.

Submission Deadline: 30 April 2026
Notification of Acceptance: 18 July 2026
Presentation Format: Accepted papers will be allocated a maximum of 20 minutes for presentation.
Funding: Please note that the organizers are unable to provide financial support for travel and/or accommodation expenses for speakers or attendees.
Participation Fee: A conference participation fee will be required. Details regarding the fee will be communicated upon acceptance of proposals.
Notification Policy: Due to the high volume of submissions, only successful applicants will be notified.
Conference Venue and Format: The conference will take place at the University of Arkansas Rome Center and will feature a combination of selected paper presentations and keynote lectures.
Final Program: The complete conference program will be circulated by the end of September 2026.

From TIAMSA:

Art as Luxury, Luxury as Art: Markets and the Making of Value

The International Art Market Studies Association Conference

Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York, 22–24 October 2026

Proposals due by 29 May 2026

Luxury has long been an important context for art. In sixteenth-century Antwerp, art was a key part of the city’s thriving luxury trade; Our Lady’s Pand—the first permanent art market in Europe—was one of several panden that served these new industries. In eighteenth-century Paris, marchands-merciers such as Edme-François Gersaint sold paintings, drawings, and engravings alongside porcelain, lacquer, jewelry, and shells. At the turn of the twentieth century, the dealer Joseph Duveen not only cultivated in his American industrialist clients a taste for Old Master painting but also promoted European furniture, tapestries, and objets d’art, staging these works in lavish period rooms in his New York gallery to underscore their sumptuousness.

Art has likewise provided a crucial context for luxury. In Belle Époque Paris, Paul Poiret—the designer who arguably created fashion’s first modern lifestyle brand—used art to elevate his enterprise, enlisting artists to create textile designs and sponsoring an avant-garde art gallery. “The designer is, by definition, an artist in luxury,” he wrote. Today’s luxury fashion houses follow Poiret’s model, integrating artworks into their retail spaces, establishing their own art foundations, and developing products in collaboration with artists. Eschewing the labels ‘luxury’ and ‘fashion’, they recast themselves as ‘cultural brands’. At the same time, art businesses situate themselves ever-more explicitly within the luxury sphere. In 2019, Sotheby’s auction house reorganized into two divisions—fine art and luxury—and in 2021, Christie’s revised its website to identify itself as “a world-leading art and luxury business.”

The tenth annual TIAMSA conference focuses on the relationship between the art and luxury markets, both historically and in the contemporary moment, examining their points of intersection, their reciprocal influences, and the ways in which each has shaped—and defined itself in relation to—the other.

Proposals may consider (but are not limited to) the following themes:
• The evolving definitions of ‘art’ and ‘luxury’ over time, and the shifting status of the applied and decorative arts.
• The relative value of art vis-à-vis luxury and the influence of industrialization.
• Historical figures and businesses associated with the art market who also dealt in luxury objects.
• Historical figures and businesses in luxury fields—such as fashion and jewelry—who aligned themselves with fine art.
• Modes of display and sale across art and luxury, historically and today.
• Contemporary art businesses that increasingly rely on the sale of luxury objects, or that adopt sales and marketing tactics from the luxury sector.
• The conditions that historically led auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s to specialize in fine art—and that more recently have driven their expansion into luxury categories.
• The ‘artification’ of luxury as a business strategy, from artist-brand collaborations to art-filled retail spaces.
• The phenomenon of luxury brands establishing their own art museums, staging pop-up art exhibitions, and transforming their flagship stores into museum-like spaces.
• Art museum exhibitions focused on luxury brands, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1983 Yves Saint Laurent exhibition, the Guggenheim’s 2000 Armani show, and the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Alexander McQueen, Dior, and Cartier exhibitions.
• Luxury’s role in expanding the definition of art, including collaborations with artists on NFTs.
• How the values of luxury are shaping art and vice-versa.

We welcome proposals from scholars at all career stages and from a variety of disciplines, including art market studies, luxury studies, art history, economic history, fashion studies, museum studies, cultural sociology, business history, and other related fields.

Please submit an abstract (no more than 300 words) and a short bio by Friday, 1 May 2026, using this form: https://forms.office.com/r/Husr007JDz

Successful papers will be notified by 29 May 2026. For inquiries, please contact tiamsaconference@sia.edu.

From the MFA Boston:

Location, Location, Location: Artistic Procedures, Knowledge, and

Place in Early Modern Netherlandish Art, 1550–1800

Center for Netherlandish Art Colloquium

Online, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 15 May 2026

Organized by Renata Nagy, Hannah Prescott, and Henrike Scholten

Proposals due by 29 March 2026

Artistic practice and practical forms of expertise do not occur in a vacuum, but are situated in a particular place, whether globally or locally. For instance, the Center for Netherlandish Art (CNA) supports the study of art from the Low Countries, but is situated in Boston; this location influences the work CNA fellows do, the objects they examine, and the networks that enhance their scholarship. This year’s CNA colloquium explores how the particularities of place shaped not just the lives of early modern artists and scholars, but also influenced their work. Talks may consider how trade networks, interpersonal dynamics, and local ecologies influenced the possibilities for learning, the availability of technical procedures, and the markets accessible to artistic practitioners.

The CNA seeks papers from emerging scholars that explore the connections between knowledge and locality in Dutch and Flemish art from approximately 1550 to 1800. We invite contributions from MA and PhD students, PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career museum professionals. As we amplify our efforts toward becoming truly inclusive, ensuring that diversity and equity are lived values, we actively encourage candidates from all backgrounds and in any discipline that interacts closely with art or material culture.

In the early modern period, making sense of the world encompassed a wide variety of practices, from observing objects of art and nature firsthand to learning and sharing expertise through established social networks. For instance, women active in the home displayed and disseminated knowledge through the use of everyday materials and objects; readers of natural history publications shaped visual and textual knowledge based on their own local experience; and artists active outside of artistic centers like Amsterdam were limited but also propelled by their local environments. These varied practices provide a shared terrain rather than a single interpretive framework for the exploration of knowledge and its relationship to place.

Paper topics may include but are not limited to:
• The influence of local networks on artistic production and scientific visual culture
• How the material culture of the domestic sphere shaped the development and demonstration of knowledge
• The extent that place (whether as a site of production or origin of a particular object or material) impacted art historical interpretations of something as central or peripheral
• The ways people consumed knowledge in the early modern Low Countries
• The extent that knowledge consumption can be divided into the categories of ‘local’ and ‘global’
• How global trade and the consumption of foreign materials revised established methods of artistic or craft production
• How the peripheries of artistic production, as opposed to cosmopolitan centers such as Antwerp or Amsterdam, influenced artists and scholars
• How size and portability impacted where objects were used

Two to three papers will be selected for presentation during colloquium. Selected candidates will have the opportunity to workshop their papers during a rehearsal presentation one week before the colloquium.

Please submit a title and abstract (300 words maximum) together with a CV in a single PDF file to cna@mfa.org, using ‘Call for Papers’ as the email subject line. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis through 29 March 2026. Selected participants will be notified by 3 April 2026.

The Founders of the Center for Netherlandish Art at the MFA are Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and Susan and Matthew Weatherbie. The conference is organized by CNA Fellows Renata Nagy, Hannah Prescott, and Henrike Scholten.

From ArtHist.net:

Baroque Stucco Marble Altars: Materials, Conservation, and Meaning

National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana, 15–16 September 2026

Proposals due by 15 April 2026

The Restoration Centre – Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia, in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, and the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, University of Ljubljana, invites proposals for the international conference Baroque Stucco Marble Altars: Materials, Conservation and Meaning.

The conference will explore the complex phenomenon of Baroque stucco marble altars as both material and cultural artefacts. By bringing together experts from various disciplines, the event aims to encourage a comprehensive discussion on the artistic, technical, and historical significance of these works of art. Special attention will be given to questions of materiality, workshop practices, artistic exchanges, and the conservation and restoration of stucco marble. The conference seeks to highlight not only the aesthetic and symbolic meaning of these altars but also the diverse methods and approaches used to study, preserve, and interpret them today. We welcome contributions from conservators, restorers, art historians, and scientists investigating stucco marble from any perspective. The working language of the conference is English.

Please submit your proposal for a 20-minute paper (complete with a title, a 250-word abstract, and a short biography of no more than 100 words) to stuccomarble2026@gmail.com by 15 April 2026. Further practical information regarding the conference programme will be provided after the selection of papers.

Organisers
Restoration Centre – Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia
Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana
Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, University of Ljubljana

Co-organisers
Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS)
Slovenian Society for Conservation-Restoration (DRS)
National Gallery of Slovenia

From ArtHist.net:

Creating the Sacred at Court:

Sensorial Practices and Experiences in Europe, 1300–1800

Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, 21–23 September 2026

Proposals due by 15 May 2026

How does the sacred come into being? Art history, architectural history, and religious studies have long demonstrated that the sacred is not merely an inherent property of spaces, objects, or images, but is constituted in part through (worldly) staging. Light regimes, overwhelming chromatic effects, dense olfactory atmospheres, architectural materials, and spatial structures capable of producing resonances, all contribute to the sensorial construction of the holy. Yet sacred space is never purely environmental. Singing and speaking, moving and sometimes even dancing participants and audiences are integral to the performative creation of the sacred as well as to its perception.

But how can we approach such past sensorial enactments and experiences today? How can we model the historical sensory dimensions of ceremonies and devotional acts on the basis of surviving spaces, furnishings, or liturgical and courtly sources? And how might contemporary cognitive science alongside digital, virtual, and AI-based methods enable new forms of analysis, simulation, and interpretation? These questions lie at the centre of the working group ‘Sacred Spaces’ within COST Action 24164: Sensing Europe’s Court Spaces at the Crossroads of Past, Present and Future (SENSES). ‘Court Space(s)’ should be understood here as the spatial and material environment of medieval and early modern courts in Europe (1300–1800), seen as playing a significant role in shaping social structures, behaviours, and ways of life. The Action explores the full gamut of sensory experiences linked with the court residence and its life throughout history until today to build a better understanding of this complex cultural phenomenon, to support its survival as European heritage, and to contribute actively to its role as shaper of a collective identity for the future.

Sacred space at court should be understood as a multiple ranging from the smallest scale to the largest. Architecturally speaking, it comprises the court chapel, or as the case may be, the church, even an entire monastery (e.g. the convent palaces of the Hispanic world, such as the Escorial and the Descalzas Reales in Madrid, Spain, but also the monastery at Brou, France, built by the widowed regent of the Habsburg Low Countries). As part of the private apartments, the oratories constitute another component, one which serves as connection. But sacred space at court includes much more, the courtly organization behind the chapel’s service frequently taking care of worldly matters such as the prince’s valuables, for instance; the great hall adjacent to the smaller chapel actually serving as auditorium of the Mass for the lower ranks at court, and so on. On a larger scale, courts established religious networks extending across their lands, such as the Habsburg archdukes serving as regents establishing seven Marian shrines in strategic sites of the Low Countries around 1600.

Focusing on courtly contexts from 1300 to 1800, the conference intends to explore the inter-sensorial performances and experiences within religious spaces of European court residences. It is explicitly conceived as forward-looking, aiming to open future avenues of research and foster shared methodological standards across disciplines.

We especially welcome contributions that
• explore inter-sensorial experience from an interdisciplinary perspective
• address the performative and embodied dimensions of sacred space at court in all its forms (such as court chapels, churches, monasteries, oratories)
• reflect epistemological questions of approaching past perception
• present proof-of-concept projects using digital, virtual, or AI-based methods

We encourage participation from art and architecture historians, scholars in cognitive sciences and historical cognition studies, olfactory heritage studies, digital humanities researchers, heritage specialists and curators, as well as digital designers and simulation experts. Early career researchers are strongly encouraged to apply.

Please submit an abstract (max 300 words) and a short CV (max one page) by 15 May 2026 to krista.dejonge@kuleuven.be and joanna.olchawa@lmu.de. Participants must register with COST (free of charge). Travel and accommodation costs of accepted speakers will be reimbursed according to COST rules. Early career researchers may also apply for Short-Term Scientific Missions. More information is available here and here.

Organisation
Andrea Vargová (Slovak U. of Technology, Bratislava)
Monika Rychtáriková (KU Leuven / Slovak U. of Technology, Bratislava)
Magdaléna Kvasnicová (Slovak U. of Technology, Bratislava)
Vojtech Chmelík (Slovak U. of Technology, Bratislava)

Scientific Committee
Krista De Jonge (KU Leuven), Chair
Monika Rychtáriková (KU Leuven)
Andrea Vargová (Slovak U. of Technology, Bratislava)
Joanna Olchawa (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Dubravka Botica (U. of Zagreb)
Jiří Kubeš (U. of Pardubice)
Philippe Vendrix (Tours, RicercarLab, Centre d’Études supérieures de la renaissance)
Pedro Luengo Gutiérrez (U. of Seville)
Mona Hess (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg)
José Eloy Hortal Muñoz (U. Juan Carlos, Madrid)