Enfilade

From the Call for Papers, for this conference aimed at graduate students and early-career scholars:

The Salon and the Senses in the Long Eighteenth Century: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2–3 April 2020

Proposals due by 15 September 2019

The conference The Salon and the Senses in the Long Eighteenth Century: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, seeks to join the intellectual heritage of the salons with their multidisciplinary, multisensory natures. We will explore the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile aspects of the salon, considering the arts and sensory pleasures of the salon alongside the verbal arts—the poetry, literature, theater, and conversation—that were cultivated there.

Salons of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries knew no disciplinary boundaries. More than other institutions of the age, salons offered their habitués opportunities to engage with a wide range of social, cultural, artistic, literary, and verbal practices. A multidisciplinary approach requires that we—like salon hostesses and guests before us—open our minds across modern intellectual boundaries and reanimate the embodied practices of the institution. By bringing together scholars from numerous fields, we hope to shed new light on salons in all of their complexity. Above all, we seek to understand the multi-sensory nature of the salon: its sights, sounds, tastes, and smells; its conversations, texts, and subtexts.

We welcome proposals for conference presentations, performances, or interactive sessions.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• Senses and sensory experience
• Material culture, furniture, and fashion
• Emotions and expressive culture
• Gender, sexuality, and the body
• Salons as sites of global or local cultural exchange
• Aesthetics and philosophy
• Natural philosophy, collecting, and experimentation
• Letters and other texts
• Music and visual art
• Poetry, theater, and the novel
• Games, food, and sociability

Abstracts of up to 350 words, as well as a one-page curriculum vitae, should be sent by September 15, 2019 to jemjones@sas.rutgers.edu. Graduate students and early-career scholars are encouraged to apply. Selected participants will be notified by the end of October. The conference will be hosted by the Center for Cultural Analysis (CCA) at Rutgers University and is convened by the CCA’s “Experiencing the Salon” working group, led by Jennifer Jones (Department of History, jemjones@sas.rutgers.edu) and Rebecca Cypess (Department of Music, rebecca.cypess@rutgers.edu). For more information, contact Jennifer or Rebecca.

From ArtHist.net:

China and the West: Reconsidering Chinese Reverse Glass Painting
Vitromusée Romont, 14–16 February 2020

Proposals due by 15 September 2019

The Vitrocentre and Vitromusée Romont are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for an international conference on Chinese reverse glass painting and related research fields including other media to be held at the museum in Romont, Switzerland 14–16 February 2020. The workshop is jointly organized by the Vitrocentre and Vitromusée Romont and the Section of East Asian Art History (KGOA) at the University of Zurich. It will be held in conjunction with an important exhibition of Chinese reverse glass paintings, held at the museum from 16 June 2019 to 1 March 2020.

Devoted entirely to the glass arts, the Vitromusée Romont houses, manages and showcases important collections that bring together stained-glass windows, reverse glass painting, objects in glass, and graphic works, as well as tools and materials related to the glass arts. The Vitrocentre, its scientific partner, has core tasks primarily in researching the art history of glass arts. For the first time in Switzerland and at international scale, the Vitromusée presents a major survey dedicated to Chinese reverse glass painting, tracing its long history, little known to date. The exhibition gathers examples of the genre from two major collections, from Germany and France, as well as the Vitromusée’s own collection, and features both reverse glass paintings made for export to Europe and for local consumption within China.

The workshop aims to
• open a cross-cultural dialogue between scholars of Asian art and to offer a platform for the presentation and discussion of recent research on Chinese reverse glass paintings and popular culture
• revise historical approaches that have been prevalent in the study and research of Chinese reverse glass paintings and related fields
• elaborate on the existing theories and methodology on the topic
• form new research approaches and methods by young, emerging scholars.

Scholars and curators of Asian art from Europe and beyond are invited to submit their proposals for contributions on Chinese reverse glass paintings. Presenters can be either established scholars (working at museums, universities, or independent scholars) or junior scholars (holding an MA or PhD degree).

Possible topics for the workshop presentations on Chinese reverse glass paintings include
• Chinese reverse glass paintings as points of knowledge transfer between East and West
• Chinese reverse glass paintings in the context of cultural appropriation
• The question of export vs. local consumption of Chinese reverse glass paintings
• Chinese reverse glass paintings as popular and/or elite art
• Technical aspects, types of glass and painting techniques in Chinese reverse glass paintings
• Types of frames in Chinese reverse glass paintings and their meanings
• Connections of Chinese reverse glass paintings to Chinese popular prints
• Connections of Chinese reverse glass paintings to porcelain (Compagnie des Indes orientales, etc.)
• The question of 3D aesthetics in Chinese reverse glass paintings
• Various themes and motives represented in the Chinese reverse glass paintings
• Gaps in understanding of Chinese reverse glass paintings in the East and in the West
• Reception of Chinese reverse glass paintings in the West
• Other East Asian traditions of reverse glass paintings
• Collection histories of the Chinese reverse glass paintings in the West

The languages of the workshop are English, French, and German. Presentations are to last twenty minutes, followed by a ten-minute discussion period. The presentations and the viewing of the exhibition will take place on the first two days of the symposium (14-15 February). The final day (16 February) is an optional day with tours of local historical sites.

Please send a presentation title, a paper proposal (maximum 250 words), and a CV to Elisa Ambrosio (elisa.ambrosio@vitrocentre.ch) by 15 September 2019. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 15 October 2019. The workshop will cover the costs of accommodation and food during the workshop. Participants are expected to pay for their own transportation. In case you have any questions, please contact: Elisa Ambrosio, elisa.ambrosio@vitrocentre.ch.

Organizational Committee
• Francine Giese (Director of the Vitromusée & Vitrocentre Romont)
• Hans Bjarne Thomsen (Professor of East Asian Art History, University of Zurich)
• Elisa Ambrosio (Curator of the Vitromusée Romont and scientific collaborator of the Vitrocentre Romont)

From WG-AV:

Eastern Questions: New Perspectives on British Orientalism
Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village, Compton (Surrey) and Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham (Surrey), 16–17 October 2019

Proposals due by 31 July 2019

John Frederick Lewis, The Attendant on the Bath, 1854, oil on panel (Preston: Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library).

To coincide with Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village (WG-AV) exhibition John Frederick Lewis: Facing Fame (9 July – 3 November 2019) this interdisciplinary event aims to explore new perspectives on the intersection between Orientalism and visual culture across the long nineteenth century. Alongside WG-AV’s John Frederick Lewis exhibition, the collection of so-called ‘uncomfortable pictures’ at Royal Holloway (which includes Edwin Long’s Babylonian Marriage Market) will act as a catalyst for wide-ranging debates around Orientalism’s place within British scholarship today.

This conference invites contributions that explore the visual material of the Orient in the contexts of transculturation, imaginative geographies, and cultural border crossing in both directions. This event hopes to attract a wide range of perspectives and invites proposals from scholars in all sub-fields of the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers and will be particularly interested in the following topics:
• The Orient in British painting, sculpture, photography, print, the decorative and applied arts or other media
• British artist-travellers to the Middle East and North Africa in the long nineteenth century
• Edward Said’s Orientalism and its legacy forty years on
• British imperialism, colonial histories, and notions of the Orient
• Networks of artistic production and influence among artist-travellers
• Women as agents of empire
• Construction and presentation of gender
• Role and representation of Spain and European-based ‘othering’ as a precursor to travels to the East
• Interrelationship between British and French Orientalism
• Interrelationship between the Middle and Far East (including Chinoiserie and Japonisme)
• Intersections between Orientalist painting, history painting, and genre painting
• Legacies of British Orientalist artworks in public and private collections

In addition to 20-minute papers, we also invite participants for a series of pop-up debates that will take place with the exhibition space. We invite submissions for informal 2– to 3–minute responses to the following key works in John Frederick Lewis: Facing Fame at Watts Gallery and the Royal Holloway Art Gallery:
• John Frederick Lewis, In the Bezestein: El Khan Khalil (1860), Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery
• John Frederick Lewis, In the Bey’s Garden (1865), Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston
• Edwin Long, The Babylonian Marriage Market (1875), Royal Holloway
• David Roberts, Pilgrims Approaching Jerusalem (1841), Royal Holloway

For 20-minute papers, please submit abstracts of 300 words and biographies of no more than 100 words. If you would like to be a respondent in a pop-up discussion, please submit proposals of 150 words and biographies of no more than 100 words. Please send submissions to Abbie Latham at Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village (curatorialtrainee@wattsgallery.org.uk) by 31 July 2019. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.

This event is kindly supported by the British Art Research School (BARS), University of York and the Association for Studies in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE).

Next year at the University of Giessen (as noted at ArtHist.net):

„Privatheit“ in der höfischen Kultur der Frühen Neuzeit
Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, 28–30 September 2020

Proposals due by 25 August 2019

Veranstaltet vom Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, dem Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster und dem Historischen Institut der Philipps-Universität Marburg

Leitung: Dr. Kristina Deutsch (Münster), Prof. Dr. Eva-Bettina Krems (Münster), Prof. Dr. Sigrid Ruby (Gießen), Prof. Dr. Inken Schmidt-Voges (Marburg)

Das gesellschaftliche Leben an den Höfen der Frühen Neuzeit habe ein „Doppelgesicht“, schrieb einst Norbert Elias: Da ein „Berufsleben“ nicht existierte, gab es noch keine Trennung zwischen privatem und öffentlichem Dasein im modernen Verständnis. Heute sind wir, so scheint es, erneut konfrontiert mit einer Aufweichung der Grenzen zwischen diesen beiden Sphären, die mit dem Wandel der sozialen Medien und einer Neudefinition des Raumes (spatial turn) einhergeht.

Angesichts dieser hochaktuellen Problematik lohnt es, das Thema aus der historischen Perspektive zu beleuchten. Was bisher in der Forschung unter „Privatheit“ diskutiert wurde, adressiert ganz unterschiedliche Verständnisse und Konzepte, die wir kritisch vergleichen, hinterfragen und systematisieren wollen. Damit ist es möglich, jenseits problematischer Forschungsbegriffe zu einem frühneuzeitlichen Verständnis dessen zu gelangen, was wir unter Privatheit fassen (können). Insbesondere für die höfische Kultur besteht Nachholbedarf, da die Diskussion bislang geprägt war von der eingangs angesprochenen, grundsätzlichen Infragestellung der Existenz höfischer Privatheit. Demgegenüber steht die Annahme eines anthropologischen Grundbedürfnisses nach Rückzug und Muße. Denn der stets gespannte Bogen reißt auch zu Hofe irgendwann. So betonte bereits Baldassare Castiglione im frühen 16. Jahrhundert die Notwendigkeit fürstlicher Entspannung. Zahlreiche Rückzugsräume zeugen von dieser Komplementarität von otium und negotium, von Repräsentation und Intimität, von Öffentlichkeit und Privatheit.

Die interdisziplinär ausgerichtete Tagung nimmt den soziokulturellen Raum des frühneuzeitlichen Hofes in den Blick. Hier sind höchst ausdifferenzierte Formen der Sichtbarmachung und Instrumentalisierung von Nähe und Distanz zu beobachten, die es als sinnvoll erscheinen lassen, von einer lediglich graduellen Opposition von privat und öffentlich auszugehen und so die dialektische Qualität des Begriffspaars beizubehalten. Handlungen, Räume und Darstellungen richten sich an eine von Fall zu Fall zu definierende, mehr oder weniger eingeschränkte Öffentlichkeit, und sie gestalten den höfischen ‚Nahraum‘, um Herrschaftsstrukturen zu stabilisieren, politische Ambitionen zu rechtfertigen etc. Diese Inszenierungen von Intimität, Nichtzugänglichkeit, Unverfügbarkeit, Exklusivität, Innerlichkeit, Luxus oder—im Gegenteil—Schlichtheit stehen im Zentrum der Tagung, die nach den individuellen (und zugleich strukturbildenden) Zielen, Adressierungen und Funktionsweisen von „Privatheit“ am Hofe fragt. Wer darf überhaupt (im oben erläuterten Sinne) privat sein, und wem nützt die Privatheit? Wen schließt sie wann und wie aus?

Einen Interessenschwerpunkt bildet die Performanz des Privaten, die sich innerhalb der Leerstellen des offiziellen Zeremoniells entfaltet. Sie verfestigt sich in Form von Räumen, Texten und Objekten (Miniaturporträts, abschließbare Möbel, Kleidung etc.), deren besondere Eigenschaften—Kleinheit, Verknappung, Enge, Verschachtelung—und Gebrauch sowie ihre Lage im innersten, geschützten Bereich zur körperlich-emotionalen Erfahrung höfischer Privatheit gehören. Gerade in der ambivalenten Sphäre höfischer Rückzugsorte entstehen schon im 16. Jahrhundert geistige und künstlerische Freiräume. „[S]olo in luoghi appartati e privati”, „nur in entlegenen und privaten Räumen“, so Gabriele Paleotti 1582, seien bestimmte Innovationen möglich. Ausgerechnet in der Enge und Abgeschiedenheit des Privaten wird in der mentalen Konzentration die intellektuelle Öffnung möglich.

Hinterfragt werden soll das Verhältnis der „verspielten Privatheit“, die Jürgen Habermas für den französischen Adel in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts feststellte, zur „dauerhaften Intimität des neuen Familienlebens“. Denn Habermas’ auf die bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit bezogenes Konzept wurde zumindest im deutschsprachigen Raum längst von komplexeren Modellen abgelöst. Hypothetisch zu erwägen ist eine ‚Veradeligung‘ des Bürgertums, also die Übernahme adeliger Modelle durch das Bürgertum. Die gesellschaftlichen Umbrüche am Ende des Ancien Régime sollen deshalb noch mit in den Blick genommen, d.h. der Untersuchungszeitraum bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts gefasst werden. Den Anfang bildet das 16. Jahrhundert mit der Residenzenbildung und der Ausdifferenzierung von Innenraumfolgen im Schloss, die als Handlungsräume die zeremonielle Bedeutung von Nähe und Distanz erfahrbar machen.

Erwünscht sind Beiträge aus allen Bereichen der Hofforschung und allen historischen Disziplinen. Mögliche Themenfelder sind:
• Informalität und Individualität — Welche Gestaltungsweisen konstituieren den informellen Raum, welche Regeln herrschen in ihm, wie wird (vermeintliche) Privatheit organisiert? Warum und mit welchen Mitteln wird das Private instrumentalisiert? Inwiefern können sich jenseits des Zeremoniells Individualität und Kreativität ‚frei‘ entfalten? Oder gibt es vielmehr einen ‚Kanon‘ des Privaten?
• Schutz und Sicherheit — Die Kleinheit und hintere Lage des Kabinetts, die verrätselte Sprache und Vertraulichkeit eines Briefes, die Abschließbarkeit eines Möbels: Welche Medien erzeugen Sicherheit, welche Mittel stellen diese her bzw. inszenieren sie, und warum muss das Private geschützt werden? Hat höfische Privatheit eine Schutzfunktion, wer profitiert davon, und was wird geschützt?
• Männlichkeit und Weiblichkeit — Gibt es spezifisch männliche, spezifisch weibliche Privatheit, und wie manifestiert diese sich jeweils? Inwiefern ist das höfische Frauenzimmer ein „privater“ Bereich? Ist das Weibliche ein Mittel der Inszenierung von Privatheit? Wie sieht im Gegensatz dazu weibliche Öffentlichkeit aus?
• Begriffsgeschichten und Definitionen — Wie wurde der Terminus „privat“ in der Frühen Neuzeit definiert? Was verstand die Zeremonialwissenschaft des 18. Jahrhunderts unter „Campagne Ceremoniel“? Was galt als ein Lustschloss, und wer hatte dort Zutritt?

Geplant sind Vorträge zu je dreißig Minuten. Nachwuchswissenschaftler*innen (Promovierende und Postdocs) werden ausdrücklich zur Bewerbung ermutigt. Einzureichen sind ein tabellarischer Lebenslauf mit Publikationsliste und ein kurzes Exposé (max. 3000 Zeichen inkl. Leerzeichen), das den Vortragsvorschlag darlegt und einen vorläufigen Titel nennt. Wir bitten um die Einreichung Ihrer Bewerbung (ein einziges pdf-Dokument!) bis zum 25. August 2019 an das Sekretariat des Instituts für Kunstgeschichte der JLU: Barbara.Stommel@kunstgeschichte.uni-giessen.de. Fragen beantworten wir gerne via kristina.deutsch@uni-muenster.de.

From H-Material-Culture:

Special issue of the Journal of Festive Studies on “The Materiality of Festivity”
Articles due by 31 December 2019

In previous issues, the Journal of Festive Studies explored the emerging academic sub-field of festive studies (broadly defined) and the politics of carnival. For this issue, we follow Peter-Paul Verbeek’s advice and look at “the things themselves,” i.e. at the material culture in which carnivals and other festivities are rooted (Verbeek, 2005).

The 1996 inaugural editorial for the Journal of Material Culture defined Material Culture Studies as “interdisciplinary research in ways in which artifacts are implicated in the construction, maintenance and transformation of social identities” and as the “investigation of the relationship between people and things irrespective of time and place” (Editorial,1996). More recent studies have expanded the scope of the discipline to look at the agency of things (Latour, 2005), thus rejecting “any absolute ontological distinction between humans and things” (Roberts, 2017). The field has also seen a shift from the exclusive focus on consumption to an investigation of the production of objects and materials (Adamson, 2013 and 2018 and Smith, 2012). Other approaches include investigations of ways in which the exchange of objects shapes social life and experiences; how that process is negotiated intra-cultures (Appadurai, 1986); and the environmental impact of those objects and materials (Clarke-Hazlett, 1997, Ingold, 2012, and Morton, 2013). Furthermore, there has been a move to understand the materiality of things beyond finished manufactured products, or the raw matter of which these objects consist of, in all of its socio-historical and political implications (Lange-Berndt, 2015, Ingold, 2012, and Rosler et al., 2013). Scholars of festivities have also paid attention to the “things” that constitute the phenomena they investigate, whether by poetically capturing in photos and in text the embodiment of Caribbean history and identity in Trinidadian mas (Adonis Browne, 2018); by analyzing how banners and flags display identity through color in Belfast’s Orange Parade (Jarman, 2003); or by questioning why we consume (or abstain from consuming) certain foods during festivities (Avieli, 2009).

Building on such scholarship, and taking the material record of celebrations from all time periods and geographical areas as a starting point, this special issue of Journal of Festive Studies seeks to explore the following themes/questions:

• The things themselves: costumes, jewelry, makeup, musical instruments, the body itself, posters, flags and banners, float designs, paintings, sheet music, photographs, food, etc. What does the material record of festivities include?
• The preservation of that material culture: What are the politics of curating and what are the material constraints bearing on archival sites?
• Objects as part of a mise-en-scène of identity: How is identity created-recreated-negotiated through masking, costumes, makeup, etc.? How is gender and sexual normativity created/expressed/challenged through interactions with objects in celebrations?
• Imagining communities: What is the role of these objects/materials/artifacts in the creation of imagined communities during these celebrations? How do individuals and communities relive and reinvent traumatic pasts through rituals and the artifacts used to physically manifest them?
• The evolution and circulation of things: How does the material record of celebrations change over time, reflecting different socio-historical moments? How do geopolitical realities, global capitalism, and the flow of ideas and things affect the material record of celebrations?
• What role do these objects play in current debates on decoloniality and cultural appropriation?
• The environmental problems caused by the objects/materials used in festivities (such as the plastic pollution of Mardi Gras beads in the U.S. Gulf Coast) and the environmental solutions encountered by festival organizers and revelers (such as the ban on glitter in Sydney’s LGBTQ Mardi Gras.)

Contributors may also choose to focus on some of the methodological issues faced by scholars researching festivities across the globe and how does material culture feature in these processes. For instance, how does equipment affect the way the researcher interacts with their subject? What sorts of objects, outfits, and accouterments are used in the researcher’s “performance of self” during fieldwork and how might that affect their relation to the people and environment they are observing?

In line with the interdisciplinary nature of the Journal of Festive Studies, we welcome submissions of original research and analysis rooted in a variety of fields including (but not limited to): social and cultural history, anthropology, archeology, cultural geography, art history, architecture, decorative arts, technology, folklore, musicology, consumption studies, labor studies, museum studies, and design studies. In addition to traditional academic essays, we invite contributions that incorporate digital media such as visualizations, interactive timelines and maps, video and imagery.

Documents should be between 6,000 and 12,000 words and should be uploaded by December 31, 2019 to the journal’s website, along with the author’s bio and an abstract of c. 250 words. Please consult the author’s guidelines under “Submissions” on the website for further submission specifications, such as citation methods. Contact Isabel Machado (isabelmchd@gmail.com or machadoisabel) with any questions.

Works Cited

“Editorial.” Journal of Material Culture 1, no. 1 (March 1996): 5–14.
Adamson, Glenn. The Craft Reader. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2010.
Adamson, Glenn. The Invention of Craft. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2013.
Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theory, Culture & Society 7, no. 2–3 (June 1990): 295–310.
Avieli, Nir. “‘At Christmas We Don’t Like Pork, Just Like the MacCabees’: Festive Food and Religious Identity at the Protestant Christmas Picnic in Hoi An.” Journal of Material Culture 14, no. 2 (June 2009): 219–41
Bauer, Arnold J. Somos lo que compramos: historia de la cultura material en América Latina. México: Taurus, 2002.
Browne, Kevin Adonis. High Mas: Carnival and the Poetics of Caribbean Photography. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018.
Clarke-Hazlett, Christopher. “Interpreting Environmental History through Material Culture.” Material Culture Review / Revue de la culture matérielle, [S.l.], June 1997.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, and Eugene Rochberg-Halton. The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Ingold, Tim. “Toward an Ecology of Materials.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): 427–42.
Jarman, Neil. “Material of Culture, Fabric of identity.” In Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter, edited by Daniel Miller, 121–45. London: Routledge, 2003.
Lange-Berndt, Petra. Materiality. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2015.
Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Madison, D. Soyini. Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2012.
Roberts, Jennifer L. “Things: Material Turn, Transnational Turn.” American Art 31, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 64–69.
Rosler, Martha, Caroline Walker Bynum, Natasha Eaton, Michael Ann Holly, Amelia Jones, Michael Kelly, Robin Kelsey, Alisa LaGamma, Monika Wagner, Oliver Watson, and Tristan Weddigen. “Notes from the Field: Materiality.” The Art Bulletin 95, no. 1 (2013): 10–37.
Smith, Pamela H. “In the Workshop of History: Making, Writing, and Meaning.” West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 19, no. 1 (2012): 4–31.
Verbeek, Peter-Paul. What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. Penn State: Penn State University Press, 2005.

Next year’s RSA meeting takes place in Philadelphia, with a handful of panels welcoming late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century topics. I’ve noted a few of these below, and the larger list of sessions is available at the RSA blog. –CH

Renaissance Society of America
Philadelphia, 2–4 April 2020

Proposals due by July 2019 (specific dates vary)

Accommodations and meeting rooms have been booked at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown and the nearby Courtyard Philadelphia Downtown, both of them a short walk from the famed Reading Terminal Market and City Hall. The Philadelphia Historic District, which was the first World Heritage city in the US, is also within walking distance or accessible by a short cab, bus, or subway ride. The Library Company of Philadelphia houses collections on American society and culture dating from the seventeenth century. The majestic Philadelphia Museum of Art, originally chartered for the Centennial Exposition in 1876, with its main building on Fairmont Hill completed in 1928, has pay-as-you-wish evening hours on Wednesdays and evening hours on Fridays as well.

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Exhausted with Antiquity: A Symptom of Early Modern Invention
Organizers: Marisa Bass (Yale University) and Carolyn Yerkes (Princeton University)

Where and when did early modern artists, architects, and writers begin to show signs of fatigue with the models of the classical past, and what kinds of creative experiments developed in response? Renaissance scholarship has long since moved beyond an understanding of its period as one defined first and foremost by a revival of antiquity. Although the significance of antiquarianism and classicism to manifold developments in early modern art and culture remains incontrovertible, both of those projects also met with productive resistance.

We invite papers addressing works of art or literature that reveal an exhaustion with antiquity and a conscious attempt to develop alternative modes, forms, and principles of invention. Especially welcome are proposals for papers that consider competing notions of the past, the distinction between ‘antique’ and ‘modern’, the political and cultural implications of the choice to forgo classical models, and the reasons why antiquity may have come to be perceived as an exhausted source in the context of certain moments and localities.

To submit a paper proposal please provide the following by email to Marisa Bass (marisa.bass@yale.edu) and Carolyn Yerkes (yerkes@princeton.edu) by 22 July 2019:
• your name and institutional affiliation
• paper title (15-word maximum)
• abstract (150-word maximum)
• keywords
• curriculum vitae (up to 5 pages)
• PhD completion date (past or future)

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The Miniature and the Monumental in Early Modern Art, 1500–1700
Organizers: Isabelle Lecocq (Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, Brussels) and Elizabeth Rice Mattison (University of Toronto)

This panel aims to examine the role of scale and size in early modern art (ca. 1500–1700). This period witnessed increasingly ambitious projects: massive tomb complexes, immense palaces, and large programs of stained glass. Meanwhile, diminutive arts became increasingly popular: collectible statuettes, tiny prints, portrait miniatures, and small painted glass (commonly known as ’roundels’). Scale and size affected the production and reception of the arts across media in the face of shifts in patronage, organization of artists’ workshops, and dissemination of objects.

Questions this panel considers include: What is the difference between scale and size in early modern art? What is the relationship between scale and size and the circulation of objects, ideas, and materials? How does choice of medium affect the scale of a work? What happens to scale in translations of an iconography across media, and how does scale transform that iconography? How are the miniature and monumental connected, as in instances of microarchitectural projects such as sacrament houses, altarpiece cases, or reliquaries? How did artists working on simultaneously small and large scales adapt their style accordingly? What is the role of scale in new cultures of collecting and display?

This panel invites papers of any geographic focus that explore aspects of scale between 1500 and about 1700. Please send proposals including a paper title (15 words), abstract (150 words), keywords, PhD completion date (past or expected), and CV (max. 5 pages) to the organizers: Isabelle Lecocq (isabelle.lecocq@kikirpa.be) and Elizabeth Rice Mattison (elizabeth.mattison@mail.utoronto.ca) by 15 July 2019.

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Art Theory and Global Dissemination of Early Modern Spain and Colonial Spanish America
Organizers: Livia Stoenescu (Texas A&M University) and Luis Javier Cuesta Hernández (Universidad Iberoamericana)

Papers are sought for panel presentations on the impact of art theory and the global dissemination of works of art from Early Modern Spain and the Hispanic territories of the New World. Spain’s visual culture and literary arts thrived amid a time of political turmoil, instability, and economic crisis. The theoretical discourses generated by Spain, the Hispanic Kingdoms, and Viceroyalties prompted new conceptions of art and unprecedented claims to artistic originality while producing an intense circulation of artistic works around the world.

We invite papers that examine sacred allegories, historical painting, philosophical and literary texts from Golden Age Spain, as well as architectural settings, public processions, miraculous relics and the venerated saints that were held up as symbols of the city and/or the kingdom. The presentations comprising this panel will provide an in-depth perspective on the interrelated issues of Early Modern Spain and the Hispanic territories, and on understudied aspects of the interaction with the arts of Colonial Spanish America in a global context.

500–1,000-word abstracts are invited for consideration on topics including but not limited to the following:
• Spanish paintings distributed in Peru, New Spain, and the rest of the Americas and the impact of the imported art on the art of the colony from the late sixteenth century to mid-eighteenth century.
• the majolicas of Spanish America and global distribution
• early global trade and lavish consumption in the Spanish America
• art theory and the circulation of works of art at the Court, and in the cities of Valencia and Naples as independent art centers, as well as in other major regional centers such as Toledo, Seville, Madrid
• art theory and art dissemination in the main centers of Colonial Spanish America such as Mexico and Lima, and their interrelation with Early Modern Spain
• the status of painting as a liberal art and the painter as its noble practitioner on both the Spanish national art scene and in the Hispanic territories
• the large body of art theory in Early Modern and Baroque Spain: Carducho, Pacheco, Jusepe Martínez, Lázaro Díaz del Valle, and Antonio Palomino (1724).
• Italian Renaissance ideas and Palomino’s theory of 1715 that Spanish artists should attend the schools of Spain, rather than the osterie of Rome where they experience only bewilderment and disorientation
• art theoretical positions by major artists such as Diego de Velázquez, Alonso Cano, Francisco Ribalta, Jusepe de Ribera, Felipe Gómez de Valenica, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and others that mark the historical and political events of the Siglo de Oro
• Spanish Baroque artists engaging the Italian Renaissance art, culture, architecture, and art theoretical discourse
• materials and techniques of polychrome sculpture as well as the important centers, clientele, and art theorists associated with its production
• innovative art theoretical approaches to the integration of painting and carving that characterize the complex medium of polychrome sculpture as a devotional art form
• old practices of processional statues, altarpieces, stalls, and their reassessment by art theorists
• the true portrait, or the Veras Imagos, sculpted likeness that stood on the church altar
• the dissemination and circulation of drawings in Colonial Spanish America

Abstracts, one-page CV (not in prose!), and keywords should be sent by 1 July 2019 to Dr. Livia Stoenescu livias@tamu.edu and to Dr. Luis Javier Cuesta Hernández luis.cuesta@ibero.mx.

From The University of Chicago, Delhi:

Global Technology in Local Contexts: Lithography in Asia
The University of Chicago Center in Delhi, 16–17 March 2020

Proposals due by 15 August 2019

Organized by Ulrike Stark, Thibaut d’Hubert, and Abhijit Gupta

The year 2022 will mark the bicentenary of the arrival of lithography in India, a watershed moment in the history of printing in South Asia. In anticipation of this anniversary, the University of Chicago Center in Delhi will host a two-day workshop on 16–17 March 2020. We invite scholars working on various aspects of lithography in Asia to submit proposals for papers. We especially welcome proposals from scholars based in South Asia and from early career researchers.

The upcoming anniversary provides a timely moment to review the history of lithography in its technological, sociocultural, economic, and aesthetic dimensions, and from both local and transregional perspectives. Rather than focusing on India alone, the workshop aims to look at the rise of lithography across Asia, from Teheran to Shanghai, and to address the impact of a global technology that bridged traditional and modern practices of textual production from a variety of disciplinary lenses, languages, and local contexts. The workshop will bring together junior and senior scholars from the US, Europe, India and other Asian countries to discuss approaches to the study of lithography in light of recent interest in material cultures, entangled histories, and the circulation of knowledge and technologies. We will explore new lines of inquiry into the relationship between manuscript and print production and the competition between lithography and typography. Possible topics of discussion may include: the social history of lithography; lithography’s trajectory from the sphere of artistic book production to commercial mass printing, lithography as a religious technology, lithography as an art form, the democratizing effect of lithography, lithography and community formation, lithography and the rise of vernacular journalism, global flows of technology and expertise, missionary uses of lithography, lithography in graphic design and advertising.

The workshop will be free and open to invited guest participants. We are unable to cover travel costs for international presenting participants from outside South Asia, but will cover two nights of accommodation in Delhi as well as refreshments and meals for the duration of the workshop. For speakers based in South Asia, we will cover two nights of accommodation and travel expenses (domestic economy round-trip travel).

We invite proposals for papers of 30-minute duration. Proposals should be submitted no later than 15 August 2019 and must include:

1  An abstract of no more than 350 words outlining your research presentation
2  A current CV
3  A completed contact information form, available here.

Please email these materials to Shruti Brar at shrutibrar@uchicago.edu. Proposals may also be sent via mail to the following address:

University of Chicago Center
Attn: Shruti Brar
DLF Capitol Point
Baba Kharak Singh Marg
New Delhi, India 110001

Workshop Conveners
Professor Ulrike Stark, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
Professor Thibaut d’Hubert, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
Professor Abhijit Gupta, Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata

From ArtHist.net:

British, Continental, and American Furniture and Interiors
The Wallace Collection, London, 22 November 2019

Proposals due by 1 July 2019

Call for papers from PhD/Post-Doc students, junior museum/heritage curators and professionals

As part of the Furniture History Society’s programme of supporting researchers at an early stage in their careers, the Society organises a dedicated study day for emerging scholars to present on a variety of topics connected to the history, construction, design, conservation of furniture, and historical interiors. For our fifth of these conferences we particularly welcome papers on the transmission of design and manufacture as a result of immigration and emigration to and from, or within different countries. We thus invite investigation into the connections made between craftsmen, patrons and clients as well as networks of manufacture and retailing at any period. We hope to explore the rich and varied history of furniture that emerges from such an approach and develop a better understanding of how design, taste and fashion were created in the evolving modern world.

Interested speakers are requested to send an abstract of about 300 words outlining their proposed topic, research methodologies, and sources. They should also send a current Curriculum Vitae and arrange for one reference to be sent to the Jill Bace, FHS Grants Secretary, grants@furniturehistorysociety.org by 1 July 2019.

Some limited assistance with travel expenses may be available, and any requests should be included, with justification, with the applicant’s abstract. The Society is also happy to provide further details, outlining the aims and objectives of the seminar, to enable participants to apply to their own institution for funding.