Enfilade

Cultures of Curating: Curatorial Practices and the Production of Meaning c. 1650-2000
University of Lincoln, 12-13 July 2012

Proposals due by 1 February 2012

The 2012 conference of the Museums and Galleries History Group

While museum history now acknowledges the constructed nature of the museum narrative, and maintains that museum work such as cataloguing, conserving and displaying is not neutral, but actually produces meaning, relatively little work has examined the ways in which curatorial practices have developed, and the specific consequences for museums. Display has attracted most of the work that has been done, but ‘behind the scenes’ activities have not been investigated in such depth. We seek submissions which investigate any aspect of the developing work of the curator, from creating an acquisitions policy, to labelling and documentation, to publicity work, as we wish to explore curating as both craft and profession. We also invite contributors to consider how curatorial practices constituted the museum object, and attempted to produce or suppress certain meanings for museum objects; and how such practices formed particular relationships between curators and other museum figures such as donors and visitors. We are interested in submissions which consider a wide variety of periods and places, and all types of curating, from fine art to science.

Keynote speaker: Dr Sam Alberti (Director, Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons)

We invite papers on themes such as:
• How curators were trained, and how they understood their role
• Cataloguing and museum documentation
• Acquisition – the role of the curator
• Conservation and storage
• Display and interpretation
• How and why curatorial practices changed
• The role of place and space in shaping curatorial practices
• Curatorial practices, disciplines and discourses of knowledge
• Curatorial practices and relationships with the wider public

We also invite session proposals. Session proposals should include a brief outline of the session (250 words) as well as three abstracts (300 words max. each) for the proposed session. For session proposals, please indicate who will chair the session. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to chair@mghg.org or Kate Hill (khill@lincoln.ac.uk).

IV Congresso de Historia da Arte Portuguesa
Lisbon, 21-24 November 2012

Proposals due by 29 February 2012

The Portuguese Association of Art Historians (APHA) is pleased to announce that the Call for Papers for the IV Congress of Portuguese Art History is now open and can be consulted on the site of the congress: http://www.chap-apha.com/pdf/CFP20110921.pdf). It consists of 12 thematic sessions, as well as a number of open sessions. The languages of the Congress are Portuguese, English, Spanish, French and Italian.

The abstracts, of no more than 300 words, should be sent by email (until February 29, 2012) both to the secretary of the congress (secretariado@chap-apha.com) and the organizers of the respective sessions. The abstracts should be accompanied by a brief curriculum vitae (including institutional affiliation, address and contact details).

The participants will be notified by March 31, 2012 and the program of the Congress will be available on May 7, 2012. The full texts of the communications should be delivered to the organizers of the respective sessions by July 31, 2012. The texts of each session should be made available to its participants to ensure an informed debate.

The abstracts and full texts of the communications will be published in print and digital form by September 30, 2012 and, based on that material, the organization of the Congress will publish in 2013 an Hommage to José-Augusto França, to whom the Congress is dedicated.

From the Association of Historians of American Art:

American Art: The Academy, Museums, and the Market
The Second Association of Historians of American Art Symposium
Boston, 12-13 October 2012

Proposals due 1 December 2011

We invite proposals on any aspect of American Art that relate to the symposium’s theme of the Academy, Museums, and the Market. Proposed papers should be 20-minute, formal papers on any period of American art, in any media, from 1600 to the present day. We are also inviting proposals, from current graduate students at the dissertation stage, for a Graduate Student Lightning Round Session at the conference. Proposed papers for this session should be a 5-minute synopsis of the larger research project. In the subject line of your email, please distinguish whether you are applying for inclusion in the general symposium (20-minute paper) or in the Graduate Student Lightning Round Session (5-minute paper). Please only apply to one type of session. Please send your proposal and a short cv by December 1, 2011 to both David Dearinger and Melissa Renn, AHAA Symposium co-chairs at dearinger@bostonathenaeum.org and melissa_renn@harvard.edu.

From Warwick:

Spaces of Work, 1770–1830
University of Warwick, 28th April 2012

Proposals due by 1 December 2011

Spaces of Work, 1770-1830 will address the relationships between workers and spaces in Britain. We aim to showcase current research and are particularly interested in interrogating under-analyzed types of work and space. For example, we hope to develop the theorization of types of work that critics have not conventionally understood as ‘work’ (the performance of music as practical activity, for instance). We also aim to bring attention to under-analysed spaces. For example, due to Romanticism’s traditionally rural focus, literary critics of this period have only recently begun to interrogate urban spaces; interdisciplinary discussion of urbanism in this period would therefore be particularly valuable. We aim to analyze the interfacing of work and space as two factors that fundamentally shape everyday life in order to gain a greater understanding of material life in the period. To these ends, 500 word abstracts are invited which attempt to answer questions such as the following:
• How do workers and their work uniquely shape space?
• How does space facilitate or hinder workers and their work?
• How does the social relationship among workers and between them and their supervisors/masters alter according to the work they are doing and the spaces in which they perform it?
• How does gender, race, and/or class inform workers’ relationship to each other in different contexts of space and work?

Possible approaches could include, but are not limited to: genteel work and the city; work in spaces of ‘leisure’; work and (sub)urban domestic spaces; men’s work in the home; space and female accomplishment; work and emergent manufacturing/industrial spaces. Please send submissions to the conference organizers, Kate Scarth & Joseph Morrissey, at j.morrissey@live.co.uk by 1/12/2011. Papers at the conference will be thirty minutes in length, with a generous allocation for questions.

Confirmed keynote speakers: Karen Harvey (University of Sheffield) and Jennie Batchelor (University of Kent)

From the journal’s website:

Shift: Graduate Journal of Visual and Material Culture
Proposals due 1 March 2012

Shift welcomes academic papers, exhibition and book reviews, as well as discussions concerning other art-related events from current graduate students. The committee welcomes submissions dealing with visual and material  culture from any discipline. Papers may address a full range of topics and historical periods. Topics may include, but are not limited to, art and propaganda, patronage, gender and identity, spirituality and art, nationalisms and regionalisms, modernism and modernity, performance art, photography and film, perspectives in theory, methodology, and historiography, collection and representation, art and technology. Please see Submission and Style Guidelines on our website for appropriate guidelines.

For each issue, submitted papers will be reviewed by an Editorial Committee composed of current graduate students from The University of Western Ontario. Papers considered the strongest will be sent to the Editorial Board, which is composed of upper-level graduate students and established scholars. Papers judged by the Editorial Board as contributing to existing scholarship will be accepted for publication in the journal. All papers are selected by blind jury panel, and are therefore considered refereed.

This journal is an online publication. All manuscripts should be sent by email to editors@shiftjournal.org. Papers must be submitted to the editors of Shift by 1 March 2012. The issue launch will take place 1 October 2012.

Histories of British Art, 1660-1735: Reconstruction and Transformation
King’s Manor, University of York, 20-22 September 2012

Proposals due 2 March 2012

We welcome proposals from graduate students, academics working in History of Art and other Humanities disciplines, curators and all others engaged in research on the field. The conference is a key output of a major AHRC-funded project on art of the period, Court, Country, City: British Art, 1660-1735. This project is ran in collaboration between Tate Britain and the University of York, and led by Professor Mark Hallett (York), Professor Nigel Llewellyn (Tate), and Dr. Martin Myrone (Tate).

Conference costs will be heavily subsidized thanks to AHRC funding, however spaces for the conference are limited and priority will be given to speakers. A number of graduate student bursaries will be available. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to claudine.vanhensbergen@tate.org.uk

A PDF of the poster is available here»

Knowledge in a Box: How Mundane Things Shape Knowledge Production
Kavala, Greece, 26-29 July 2012

Proposals due by 15 January 2012

Organizers: Susanne Bauer (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany), Maria Rentetzi (National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece), and Martina Schlünder (Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany)

We invite proposals from scholars in the history of science, technology, and medicine, science and technology studies, the humanities, visual and performing arts, museum and cultural studies and other related disciplines for a workshop on the uses and meanings of mundane things such as boxes, packages, bottles, and vials in shaping knowledge production. In keeping with the conference theme, we are asking contributors to include specific references to the ways in which boxes have played a role—commercial, epistemic or otherwise—in their own particular disciplinary frameworks.

Boxes have always supported the significance of the objects they contained, allowing specific activities to arise. In the hands of natural historians and collectors, boxes functioned as a means of organizing their knowledge throughout the eighteenth century. They formed the material bases of the cabinet or established collection and accompanied the collector from the initial gathering of natural specimens to their final display. As “knowledge chests” or “magazining tools” the history of box-like containers also go back to book printing and the typographical culture. The artists’ boxes of the early nineteenth century were used to store the paraphernalia of a new fashionable trend. In the late nineteenth century the box became the pharmacist’s laboratory and a device for standardizing and controlling dosage of oral remedies. In the twentieth century radiotherapy the box was elevated to a multifunctional tool working as a memory aid to forgetful patients or as “knowledge package” that predetermined dosages, included equipment, and ready-made radium applicators.

Focusing on medicine, boxes have played a crucial role since the eighteenth century when doctors ought to bring instruments to their patient’s house for surgical or obstetrical interventions. In modern operating rooms boxes organize the workflow and build an essential part of the aseptical regime. Late twentieth century biomedical scientists store tissue samples in large-scale biobanks, where samples contained in straws are placed in vials, then the vials in boxes which in turn are stacked up in “elevators.” This storage system facilitates retrieval with barcodes, indexing each individual sample so that additional variables can be retrieved from a database. Thus the container and its content are tied up in a close epistemic and material relationship. (more…)

Design/History/Revolution
The New School, New York, 27-28 April 2012

Proposals due by 7 December 2011

Keynote speaker: Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture & Design, MoMA

Whether by providing agitprop for revolutionary movements, an aesthetics of empire, or a language for numerous avant-gardes, design has changed the world. But how? Why? And under what conditions?  We propose a consideration of design as an historical agent, a contested category, and a mode of historical analysis. This interdisciplinary conference aims to explore these questions and to open up new possibilities for understanding the relationships among design, history and revolution. Casting a wide net, we define our terms broadly. We seek 20-minute papers that examine the roles of design in generating, shaping, remembering or challenging moments of social, political, economic, aesthetic, intellectual, technological, religious, and other upheaval. We consider a range of historical periods (ancient, pre-modern, early modern, modern, post- and post-post-modern) and geographical locations (“West,” “East,” “North,” South,” and contact zones between these constructed categories). We examine not only designed objects (e.g., industrial design, decorative arts, graphic design, fashion) but also spaces (e.g., architecture, interiors, landscapes, urban settings) and systems (e.g., communications, services, governments). And we welcome a diversity of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary approaches.

This conference brings together scholars from the humanities, sciences, and social sciences with designers, artists, and other creators. We hope not only to present multiple methodological approaches but also to foster conversations across traditional spatial, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries.

We list some possible subject areas, and encourage you to propose others:

• Design and political / cultural / economic revolution….. Design and technological revolution…. Design and the print revolution
• Design and government…. Design and social movements…. Design and surveillance…. Design and empire….
• Design and historicity…. Design and the sacred……Design and the avant-garde…..
• Design and memory…. Design and philosophy/philosophies of design…. Design and literature / literature of design….
• Design and the everyday…. Design and consumerism… Design and education….
• Designed landscapes…. Design and the environment…Design and the city….
• Design and science … Design and cybernetics ….

Please submit a 250-word abstract (maximum) and 1-page CV to: designhistoryrevolution@gmail.com

Laura Auricchio, Associate Professor of Art History and Chair of Humanities, The New School, NYC

From the Chicago Art Journal:

Chicago Art Journal: Historiographies of New Media
Proposals due by 28 November 2011

The Chicago Art Journal, the annual publication of the University of Chicago Department of Art History, is seeking submissions of original work by graduate students and faculty for its 2011-2012 edition. This year’s issue asks how new media have affected not only the production of art, but also the production of knowledge about art. What is at stake in approaching art history through the concept of new media?

The term ‘new media’ has been applied to a range of formats (from photography to video to the internet) that have revolutionized the modes of transmission and reproduction of ‘old’ media of art at particular historical moments. Although the concept of new media seems to promise a mass media address, artists have often emphasized the limits of circulation—for instance, in closed circuit television, or zines that made use of Xerox processes and yet were distributed to small networks through the mail. Such a dialectical relation escapes media theory’s emphasis on mass distribution, and points instead toward misalignments and points of friction between the imaginative and material aspects of new media. Furthermore, from the double slide lecture to the publication of photographs in books, and from the use of facsimiles in the classroom to broadcasts of ‘art on television,’ the formation and performance of the art historical discipline has itself been contingent upon pivotal introductions of reproductive media. In turning our attention to new media, we consider art history’s rhetorics of description and display.

The importance of thinking through the art historical repercussions of new media has become paramount. Just as recent scholarship has addressed the nuances of ‘pre-modern’ and modern notions of mediality (including forms of mechanical reproducibility and audiovisual displays emergent in the middle ages), so might we aim to reframe more contemporary art historical categories of ‘lateness’ (such as Rosalind Krauss’s ‘post-medium condition’). Here we propose examining notions of new media within a long durée. How do such temporal categories foreground technologies that are positioned as obsolete? As Peter Weibel has proposed, “the intrinsic success of the new media resides less in the fact that they have developed new forms and possibilities of art than in the fact that they have enabled us to establish new approaches to the old media of art—and above all, have kept the latter alive by forcing them to undergo a process of radical transformation.” What conditions of possibility are embedded (or not) in the positioning of art as new media? How might we emphasize the aesthetic and pedagogical aspects of new media over notions that emerged out of communications theory, such as interactivity? We are especially interested in papers that address new media art histories that diverge from the well-known chronologies of Euro-American technological developments. Topics might include but are not limited to:

• performance and circulation of art history through facsimiles, photographs, slide projections, radio, and television
• responses and counter-responses to new media technologies within art criticism, critical theory, and film theory
• legacies of Friedrich Kittler and Miriam Hansen for theorizing new media
• analog and digital in art and art history
• historical modes of mechanical reproduction, imprinted coins, technologies of the book, seals, etc.
• ekphrasis
• transfers and transformations among media, media as reference for other media
• in what way are new media performative and public?
• materiality of new media, processes of materials
• new media and abstraction, issues of movement and circulation
• wider implications of artists’ practices in Xerox, zines, artists’ books, flip books, holograms, etc.
• relationship between art transmitted through media and art as media
• aesthetics of television in the context of capitalism and communism
• new media’s relevance for reframing art historical cycles and geographies of innovation
• challenges to medium specificity, from medium unspecificity to post-medium condition
• art and technology movements, including the role of dance and ‘new music’
• computerized models of art, computational ways of thinking
• collectivity and coalitions, notions of ‘social media’
• photography as new media
• historiographies of ‘video art,’ including the role of projection and the long durée of optical media
• queer aesthetics and new media
• painting after the advent of network theory
• theories of text as visual image and text as mediation

Submissions
Full papers must follow The Chicago Manual of Style, and should not exceed 4000 words. Each submission should include an abstract of approximately 500 words. If you would like to submit an abstract without a full paper, please contact the editors in advance. Both Word documents and PDFs are welcome. All contributors should include their name, address, telephone number, and email address. Authors are responsible for securing image reproduction rights and any associated fees. Please send submissions to the graduate student editors Solveig Nelson and Stephanie Su at UChicagoArtJournal@gmail.com by November 28, 2011.