Enfilade

From H-ArtHist:

Das Japanische Palais in Dresden: Vom Porzellanschloss Augusts des
Starken zum Museumsschloss des frühen Bildungsbürgertums
Dresden, 9–10 October 2015

Proposals due by 26 April 2015

Tagung an der TU Dresden, Fritz-Thyssen-Projekt zur Baugeschichte des Japanischen Palais

Die Tagung hat das Japanische Palais in Dresden-Neustadt zum Gegenstand, das heute etwas abseitig gelegen kaum in seinem wahren Wert wahrgenommen wird. Es handelt sich bei diesem Bau um eines der Hauptwerke des Dresdner Barocks und stellte in seiner ursprünglichen Planung ein absolutes Unikat in der europäischen Architektur des 18. Jahrhunderts dar. 1729 bis 1734 zu großen Teilen aufgeführt, sollte es die reiche Sammlung Augusts des Starken an ostasiatischem Porzellan und die neu geschaffenen, kostbaren Porzellanstücke der Meißner Manufaktur aufnehmen und so Sachsens Glanz eindrücklich präsentieren. Das heutige Schattendasein des Bauwerks liegt wohl auch darin begründet, dass der Tod Augusts des Starken seine Fertigstellung vereitelte und somit das Gebäude nie auf spätere Schlossbauten ausstrahlen konnte.

An der Planung des Japanischen Palais war der König selbst rege beteiligt: Vielfältige regionale, überregionale und internationale Inspirationen und Gedankenansätze flossen hier zusammen und ließen ein einzigartiges Bauwerk entstehen. So ist neben vorbildhaften Bauten, Konzepten und zeremoniellen Eigenheiten auch nach den Erfahrungen der Architekten sowie den politischen Rahmenbedingungen zu fragen.

Nach dem Paradigmenwechsel des späten 18. Jahrhunderts hin zu einer Kultur der Aufklärung und des breiter zugänglichen Wissens sind die Umbauten der Jahre 1786 und 1835 insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund des sich entwickelnden europäischen Bibliotheks- und Museumswesens sowie des Bildungsbürgertums zu würdigen. Die nicht unbedeutenden Zeugnisse der Semperschen Neugestaltung werfen nicht zuletzt auch Fragen zu dessen Italienforschungen und seiner Polychromieschrift auf.

Geplant ist ein anderthalb tägiges Tagungsprogramm mit einer Exkursion ins Japanische Palais und in die Dresdner Porzellansammlung. Sie sind eingeladen, sich mit einem Beitrag an der Tagung zu beteiligen. Die Vorträge sollten die Länge von 20 Minuten nicht überschreiten. Bitte senden Sie bis zum 26. April 2015 einen Vortragsvorschlag von maximal 400 Wörtern sowie einen Kurzlebenslauf, ggf. mit den wichtigsten Publikationen. Die finalen Einladungen ergehen Ende Mai.

Zu den möglichen Themen zählen:

Block 1 – Barock

Europäischer Schlossbau
• Vorbildhaftigkeit bedeutender europäischer Residenzschlösser (v. a. Versailles, Stockholm, Berlin, Escorial)
• Architekten am sächsischen Hof (v. a. Zacharias Longuelune, Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann und Jean de Bodt)
• Galerie- und profane Zentralbauten in Europa
• Kapellen und Paradeschlafzimmer in barocken Residenzschlössern

Politik
• Sachsen und Habsburg
• Sachsen und Preußen: Konkurrenz und Vorbildhaftigkeit

Städtebau
• Integration von Schlossbauten in bestehende und neu zu schaffende Strukturen
• Achsbildung im Schlossgelände und der Umgebung
• Der Alterswert bestehender Residenzen versus repräsentative Neubauten

Porzellan und Chinoiserie
• Porzellansammlungen an den europäischen Fürstenhöfen
• Porzellan als Prestigegut und seine räumliche Präsentation
• Asien in der europäischen Wahrnehmung

Gartenbaugeschichte
• Gartenkultur in Sachsen, Frankreich und Holland
• Einbeziehung natürlicher Gegebenheiten in die Planungen

Block 2 – Klassizismus und Historismus

Bibliotheken
• Vorbildhafte Architekturen im 18. Jh.
• Von der privaten Sammlung zur öffentlichen Bibliothek

Gottfried Semper
• Antikensammlungen in Europa
• Die Polychromieschrift und Italienforschungen Gottfried Sempers
• Begriff des Gesamtkunstwerks bei Semper

Rahmenbedingungen: Seitens der Tagung werden die Kosten für die Anfahrt und die Unterkunft getragen. Eine Publikation der Tagungsbeiträge ist nicht vorgesehen.

Organisatoren: Dr. Stefan Hertzig (stefan.hertzig@mailbox.tu-dresden.de); Dr. Kristina Friedrichs (kristina.friedrichs@mailbox.tu-dresden.de).

From The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art:

Animating the Georgian London Town House
London, 17 March 2016

Proposals due by 8 May 2015

Organised by The Paul Mellon Centre, The National Gallery, and Birkbeck College, University of London

Eighteenth-century country houses loom large in the British national consciousness. Yet, for every great country house from this period, there was usually also a town house. Wilton is much visited and discussed, but we know so much less about its counterpart in London: Pembroke House. Chatsworth has officially been recognised as one of the country’s favourite national treasures, but most of its visitors know little of Devonshire House, which the family once owned in the capital. In part, this is because town houses were often leased, rather than being passed down through generations as country estates were. But, most crucially, many London town houses, including both Pembroke House and Devonshire House, no longer exist, having been demolished in the early twentieth century.

Following on from the Animating the Eighteenth-Century Country House conference in March 2015, this related event will seek to resurrect the lost town houses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, exploring the position they once occupied in the lives of families and the nation as a whole. Some—such as Spencer House—have survived; others have left fragmentary traces; others have been completely destroyed and can only be  recreated on the basis of inventories and descriptive accounts. There is much still to be uncovered about the collections of paintings, sculpture and decorative arts which these buildings once housed as well as about their furnishing, their architecture and gardens, and what refashioning occurred over time.

What was the significance of the town house for families such as the Devonshires and Pembrokes? How much time did they spend in London, relative to their sojourns in the country, and was one home considered more important? How did this vary between families? How did owners arrange their possessions between their houses? London town houses were often the setting for elite socialising, so is it the case that they would house their owners’ most impressive works of art? Was Joshua Reynolds right to bemoan in 1787, on learning that the Duke of Rutland was to keep Poussin’s Seven Sacraments at Belvoir Castle, that ‘the great works of art which this nation possesses are not (as in other nations) collected together in the capital, but dispersed about the country’? When and why were items moved between town and country, and are there discernable patterns over the period? Were London town houses opened to the public in the same way as country houses, and what did visitors say about what they encountered?
As well as mapping the relationship between the town house and the country house, this conference will also explore the geography of London: the location of these properties (especially within the West End), the most important estates (such as the Bedford or Grosvenor estates), and the reputations which various areas accrued. How did these houses position their owners in the complex social and political milieu of Georgian London, and what roles did they play in the lives and activities of those who owned, leased and inhabited them? How was this different for men and for women? And what was the significance of owning a town house freehold, leasehold—or just renting one for a season?

Proposals for contributions are welcomed from art historians and historians working on all aspects of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century town houses, including architecture, painting, sculpture, the decorative arts and garden history. Abstracts for 25-minute conference papers should be no longer than 300 words in length, and should be accompanied by a short biography (of no more than 100 words) detailing any work or recent publications of particular relevance. Please send abstracts and biographies by FRIDAY 8th MAY 2015 to Ella Fleming at the Paul Mellon Centre: efleming@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk.

From H-ArtHist:

Travellers to Faraway Countries and the Musical Imagination on the Move, 1500–1900
Università del Salento, Lecce, 28–29 September 2015

Proposals due by 30 April 2015

International Musicological Society-Study Group on Musical Iconography

By the early sixteenth century, European encounters with faraway cultures had led to a new awareness of the cultural ‘other’ and of non-European musical cultures, which found its expression in the writings of travelers and scholars, in the imagination of visual artists, and in the rendering of ‘exotic’ features in musical compositions. Some of the images associated with this emerging awareness, may have been the result of firsthand experiences or eyewitness participation. Others, by contrast, represented mostly secondhand impressions, which despite pretensions of authenticity, partook in visual or auditory imaginary journeys whose details in many cases could have been triggered by learned traditions of literary culture. Quite often, depictions were far removed from the ‘original’; they were idealized and filtered through European sensibilities and according to models of the classical world; as such, iconographical patterns, once crystallized, could have been transmitted from author to author through centuries, thus further removing the received image from the original (if such original ever existed). Ultimately, the firsthand experience of distant cultures made possible the rise of a new sensitivity towards indigenous strands of music to be (re-) interpreted according to the patterns of colonialist imagination. In this context, a better understanding of the ‘constructedness’ of images is crucial for musical iconography.

We invite paper proposals for a two-day conference, which address the following topics, among others:
• Images of music in illustrated chronicles and travel accounts related to America, Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe (‘Grand Tour’)
• Visual references to foreign (exotic, oriental), indigenous (ethnic) and bucolic (pastoral) music in music treatises, emblematic literature, paintings, drawings, engravings, pictorial cycles to be found within aristocratic palaces and residences etc.
• Italian music and dance as viewed through the eyes of transalpine travellers and scholars
• Italian music (and related imagery) as a source of inspiration for composers
• Transmission, reception and circulation of pictorial topoi to be found in music historiography
• Processes of ‘othering’ vs. ‘assimilating’, ‘artistic’ vs. ‘ethnological’ approaches
• Exotic strands in the decoration of musical instruments

Abstracts of no more than 300 words for 20-minute papers in English or Italian may be sent by 30 April 2015 to daniela.castaldo@unisalento.it

Scientific Committee
Daniela Castaldo (Local Organizer, Università del Salento)
Gabriela Currie (University of Minnesota)
Dinko Fabris (IMS President, Università della Basilicata)
Nicoletta Guidobaldi (Università di Bologna-Ravenna)
Björn R. Tammen (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna)

From the Call for Papers:

Objects in Motion: Material Culture in Transition
CRASSH, University of Cambridge, 18–20 June 2015

Proposals due by 15 March 2015

Proposals for papers and for visual and performing art are welcome for the three-day interdisciplinary conference Objects in Motion: Material Culture in Transition. The conference is supported by and will be held at the Centre for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge on 18–20 June 2015. The deadline for all proposals is 15 March 2015, and registration is expected to open in April 2015.

Objects in Motion will bring together diverse scholars, curators, writers, and artists to discuss material culture in transition. Material objects are produced within specific contexts—geographical, cultural, and temporal. This is true for things as diverse as the Great Sphinx built in Egypt at least 4500 years ago, the Lindisfarne Gospels illuminated in 8th-century Northumbria, a wooden ceremonial mask carved in 19th-century Nigeria, or a mobile phone made in 21st-century China.

What happens when objects such as these transition into other contexts? How are differences in use and meaning negotiated? Sometimes later reinterpretations and reincarnations (including ‘fakes’ and reproductions) incorporate elements of the objects’ original use and meaning, and other times they diverge entirely. This can affect not only the objects themselves but also the knowledge and experiences embedded within or produced by them—as with books, musical recordings, and technologies.

Scholars, curators, writers, and artists from all disciplines are welcome to propose relevant talks. Visual artists (including photographers) are also welcome to propose artwork on the theme to be displayed in the Alison Richard Building. Proposals for performing arts may be made as well, within the constraints of space and time stated below. The papers and art, selected by both CFP and invitation, will be complemented by events at local museums.

These diverse contributions will help to shed light on material culture dynamics which remain highly relevant even today despite the growth of multinational corporations, global communication, and increasing standardisation. They will also foster productive dialogue on different disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to studying and responding to these dynamics.

Guidelines for proposing a paper
Proposals for talks should be emailed to the convenor Dr. Alexi Baker (ab933@cam.ac.uk) by 15 March 2015. They should include a title, an abstract of up to 250 words, a brief biography, contact information, and any institutional affiliations. Scholars at all stages of their careers including independent scholars are encouraged to apply, as are artists and writers who would like offer talks reflecting on the conference theme.

Guidelines for proposing visual or performing arts
Proposals for visual or performing arts which reflect upon the conference theme should be emailed to the convenor Dr. Alexi Baker (ab933@cam.ac.uk) by 15 March 2015. The visual artwork will hang in the ground floor seminar rooms of the Alison Richard Building from the time of the conference until at least October 2015, and must be fitted to the available space and hanging facilities. The artist(s) must be able to transport their works to the Alison Richard Building themselves and to install them with limited assistance from staff. Each piece will need to come fitted with string or hooks on the back so that they can be attached to the hanging rails in the seminar rooms with nylon string. (The type of rails in use can be seen here. Small labels may also be affixed near the artworks using white-tack. Proposals for performing arts will be considered as well as long as they can be staged within the limited space of a seminar room, and have a running time of less than one hour. Possibilities could include for example recitations, musical performances, or self-contained dramatic performances. Proposals for visual or performing arts should consist of:
•    Contact information and any institutional affiliations
•    Title of the installation or performance
•    Description of up to 250 words
•    CV and (if available) website of the artist
•    Examples of the work of the artist
•    Detailed installation or staging requirements

From H-ArtHist:

Les Acteurs de la Rocaille
Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), Paris, 1–3 October 2015

Proposals due by 29 April 2015

L’étude des arts décoratifs fédère aujourd’hui une large communauté de chercheurs et engage, par-delà l’histoire artistique des objets et des décors, des spécialités et des compétences variées (littérature, critique, esthétique, sociologie, visual studies, gender studies). Dans la perspective des travaux d’envergure menés sur la production rocaille de certains grands ornemanistes (Jacques de Lajoüe, Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, François Boucher), le colloque Les acteurs de la rocaille entend opérer un retour à l’objet tout en mettant à profit les récentes conclusions énoncées dans le domaine des sciences humaines.

Marquant le 300e anniversaire du début de la Régence, dont la rocaille fut l’une des expressions majeures, il explorera cet art libre et inventif dans le domaine du décor, des arts décoratifs et de l’architecture. L’objectif visé sera de mieux comprendre le rôle historique de chacun des acteurs de la rocaille tout au long du XVIIIe siècle, depuis sa conception jusqu’à sa diffusion, à Paris, en province et dans le reste de l’Europe.

Les propositions préciseront le nom de l’intervenant, ses coordonnées institutionnelles, le titre de la communication proposée, et un résumé de 500 mots maximum. Elles seront envoyées avant le 30 avril 2015 à l’adresse suivante: lesacteursdelarocaille@gmail.com. Un retour sur l’examen des candidatures sera donné à la fin du mois de mai 2015. Le colloque se tiendra à Institut national d’histoire de l’art les 1er, 2 et 3 octobre 2015.

Organisation scientifique: Michaël Decrossas (INHA), Alexia Lebeurre (Université Bordeaux Montaigne), Marie-Pauline Martin (Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS TELEMME UMR 7303), Claire Ollagnier (Labex – CAP / INHA, Ghamu).

◊  ◊  ◊  ◊  ◊

Note (added 22 March 2015) — Also see the call for papers for Reconsidering the Rococo: 18th to 21st Centuries / Penser le Rococo (XVIIIe–XXIe Siècle) at the University of Lausanne (5–6 November 2015).

From the Call for Papers:

Women in the Global Eighteenth Century
Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey, 5–6 November 2015

Proposals due by 15 May 2015

Plenary lecture by Dr. Lynn Festa, Associate Professor of English, Rutgers University

Maria Sibylla Merian, Plate 1 from Dissertation in Insect Generations and Metamorphosis in Surinam, 1719 (National Museum of Women in the Arts).

In The Global Eighteenth Century, Felicity Nussbaum and her contributors urged scholars to see the eighteenth century as ‘wide’: a period with a geographical as well as temporal sweep. Such a perspective, Nussbaum contended, would require different, more complex narratives of the people, events, systems, and discourses of the age. In the spirit of our namesake Aphra Behn, whose poetry, drama, plays, and translations reflect a complex awareness of a widening world, The Aphra Behn Society for Women in the Arts, 1660–1830 takes up the challenge posed by The Global Eighteenth Century to invite papers exploring any aspect of women and the arts in this ‘global eighteenth century’. How does a wider, potentially global, lens change the view of people, places, and things both familiar and strange, domestic and imperial, Us and Other? How does gender affect those views?

The Aphra Behn Society for Women and the Arts invites papers addressing the intersection of gender and the global eighteenth century from a wide variety of disciplines, including but not limited to Literature, History, Art History, Music History, Modern Languages, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Women and Gender Studies. We welcome papers
on this topic from all sub-fields of these disciplines.

Papers might address the following topics:
•    Investigations or representations of ‘difference’ in literature and the sister arts
•    Representations of social and political authority
•    The arts, women, and empire
•    Women and the construction of literary, artistic, domestic, public, national, imperial, and colonial spaces
•    Women and travel writing
•    Women and diaspora
•    Women and the metropole
•    Women and indigenous knowledge
•    Women, genre (textual, visual, musical, etc.), and space/place
•    Notions of performance and gender
•    Notions of gender and race, class, religion, or other markers, perhaps under pressure in a widening context
•    Gender and encountering the Other
•    Women, modernity, and post-colonial situations
•    Women and the colonial or post-colonial Enlightenment

As always, we also welcome abstracts for papers not related to the conference theme. Please upload 1–2 page abstracts or panels to the conference website by May 15, 2015. Conference registration includes all conference events, including the a luncheon, the concluding banquet, a performance by Seton Hall students, and a reception with the rare books librarians and university archivists to view highlights of the university’s collection. The Aphra Behn Society also sponsors a graduate student travel award ($150) and a graduate student essay prize ($150 and the possibility of publication in ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830). For more information, please see the conference website or contact the conference organizers, Dr. Kirsten Schultz at Kirsten.schultz@shu.edu or Dr. Karen Gevirtz at Karen.gevirtz@shu.edu.

Sponsored by the Aphra Behn Society for Women in the Arts, 1660–1830, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Women and Gender Studies Program at Seton Hall University.

From H-ArtHist:

Entering the City: Spaces, Transports, Perceptions, and Representations
Brussels, 15–16 October 2015

Proposals due by 15 March 2015

Organized in Brussels on 15 and 16 October 2015, the international conference, Entering the City: Spaces, Transports, Perceptions, and Representations from the 18th Century to the Present, is an initiative of the MICM-arc research project (micmarc.ulb.ac.be) based at the Université libre de Bruxelles. The conference will provide a forum for exploring the ways and means of entry into the urban space and the resulting impressions and representations of that experience, one closely related to the themes of mobility, culture and metropolitan identity at the heart of the MICM-arc research project.

Enclosed by fortified walls, ancient and medieval cities were delineated by clear boundaries. Access via land routes was clearly marked by city gates. Historians have extensively studied the controlling function of such thresholds as well as their symbolic dimensions. The growth and industrialization of urban centers changed the way in which they were approached from the exterior. In the 19th century, new modes of transportation and suburban sprawl rendered old city gates obsolete and radically changed the ways in which cities were accessed. Today, roundabouts and off-ramps seem to have replaced those gates, and the infrastructure that lines the routes connecting one town to another makes it difficult if not impossible to perceive their boundaries. Moreover, an increasing part (if not the majority) of entrances into urban space are no longer the result of a gradual progression along a traditional route but often pass through the intermediate zones of train stations and airports that lead to urban zones without further transition. These changes affect travelers and the experience of travel. Beyond analyzing the entry-points to the city, it is also necessary to envisage the symbolic, subjective dimension of passing from one space to another, to study the perceptions and representations associated with entering the city.

The aim of the conference is to reflect upon the manners in which the city is entered, in terms of the evolution of peripheries, modes of transport, the urban planning of the spaces involved and the experience of entering the city itself. The organizers envisage a resolutely interdisciplinary exchange involving the participation of historians, geographers, architects and urban planners, sociologists, and art historians. Papers will permit comparisons between different historical periods and different urban centers, with special attention being given to the case of Brussels. The period in question extends from the 18th century to the present day and embraces a range of models from the pre-industrial town to the post-industrial metropolis.

1) The first focus of the conference is devoted to the spaces through which both occasional and regular travelers move to access the city, as well as the means of transport involved. The slow and steady arrival with a defined point of entry defined by the transportation and origin of the journey of the 18th and early 19th centuries was supplanted and upended by new and varied manners of entering the city: more rapid, sometimes underground or through the air, centralized through train stations, relegated to the peripheral zones in the case of airports, or allowing travelers to avoid central zones in the case of ring roads. Of particular interest in the present context are approaches that theorize the act of entering the city, the notion of city limits, questions of accessibility, the spatial forms of urban entrances, and particular means of transportation. More particular points of inquiry might include:
• Is it possible to create typology of city entrances (spaces, infrastructures, landscapes)? Can one speak of the homogenization of these paces via the existence of a particular sort of dominant architecture, or are should such entrances be understood as attempts by various municipalities to distinguish themselves from their neighbors?
• What sort of skyline has presented itself to the traveler at the city entrance at different points in history? Are there models of city planning specifically adapted to these functional and symbolic zones?
• How are the entrances to cities built, designed, and landscaped? What sort of infrastructure (hotels, museums, markets, businesses) and functions (economic, touristic, cultural, healthcare, etc.) are grouped around the urban transport infrastructure found at a city’s points of entry? What forms do these infrastructures take? What aspects are rendered visible or invisible? What symbolism is implied by architectural choices? What considerations are made in conjunction with spaces of mobility and consumer activities?
• What public and private forces model the entrances to cities? Take for example, the neighborhoods surrounding train stations dominated by hotels and hotel-related businesses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

2) A second area of focus of the conference will be devoted to perceptions of entering the urban space. The spaces that mark arrival in the urban space and their appearance, be it infrastructure or landscape, affect the way in which the city is first perceived, shaping experience and memory. The arrival by boat in Venice cemented the city’s reputation as a town built on water, just as architectures of iron and glass of the 19th-century train stations defined the typology of the new modern metropolis.  Choices of materials and architectural gestures continue to define present day ambitions embodied in the new train stations and airports of the present day. Before arriving at a destination, the conditions in which it is approached (speed, view, sounds, smells) offers a unique impression of the city. As a result a particular panorama or a neighborhood can be disproportionately influential upon first impressions without necessarily being representative of the larger urban area which remains to be discovered. The starting point of the journey, be it a small or large town, a foreign country, perhaps a suburb, and the frequency of the route traveled (for work or tourism, as an immigrant or asylum seeker), both have an impact upon the perception of one’s first encounter with a city. In moving from one city to another, the traveler leaves one point of reference and encounters new environments and experiences through mobility that affects the vision of each city that is visited.  Questions evoked by the perception of the arrival in a city might include:
• What marks the entrance into a city and how is it perceivable or staged through physical boundaries, signs, and monuments? What might the absence of evident dramatization reveal? How has the appearance of city entrances evolved with the evolution of the city itself?
• How does the time passed in entering a city and eventual stops along the way allow for perception of its age, architecture, social structures, topography, in a word, its identity?
• How do means of transportation affect the perception of one’s entrance into a city?
• How does one know one has arrived? What factors upon leaving a train, plane, parking lot constitute thresholds or symbols of arrival?
• How are our perceptions of arrival in a city influenced by the place from which we come or the frequency with which we make the journey? What characterizes the experience of a tourist compared to that of a commuter or regular resident?

3) The third area of focus deals with representations of arrival in the urban space. A mix of experience, previous knowledge (through travel guides or the description of others), personal sensations all contribute to the representation of arrivals in the urban space, which in turn can be studied from a historic, artistic or symbolic point of view. The arrival in a city often provides the starting point for fictional plots or the articulation of their form and is a literary topos in and of itself from the Bildungsroman to contemporary novels. The act of entering the urban space often represents the hopes of the traveler and is associated with the expectations they have for a city in which they will grow and develop as they perceive it for the first time. The expectations created by travel guides and the accounts of other travelers are complemented by representations in art and literature and are juxtaposed with new perceptions as the traveler enters the city. Capturing and transforming memories, filtering and accumulating perceptions, diverse forms of literature and art frequently deal with the entrance into the city. Questions related to this inquiry involving representation of urban spaces in both their anticipation and the actual experience of entering a city include:
• How do travel guides of the past and present describe the entry points of the city?
• How do new modes of communication lead travelers to forge an impression of a destination before they arrive?
• What forms has the entrance into the urban space taken in literature? How have these forms developed over the past three centuries? Is there a recurring dramaturgy that unifies their treatment?
• How have sites of modernity linked to movement inspired avant-gardes? Do they remain a pertinent field of artistic exploration?
• Are there current creative projects linked to the notion of entering a city?
• It is not unusual for municipalities to situate artworks that influence traveler’s perceptions at the entry points of their territory and other zones of mobility. Is this a contemporary trend or the conjugation of a historical practice?

The questions proposed here in connection to the three zones of inquiry are far from exhaustive and represent a few suggested starting points for further reflection. The received propositions will be selected according to their pertinence, originality and capacity to encourage exchange through complementary reflection. Please send your title and proposed abstract, in English or French (a maximum of 2500 characters), before 15 March 2015 to micmarc@ulb.ac.be. Final selection will be made at the end of March 2015 and the results will be communicated in early April. You may also direct questions regarding this call to micmarc@ulb.ac.be.

Sixth Annual Feminist Art History Conference
American University in Washington, D.C., 6–8 November 2015

Proposals due by March 2015

This annual conference builds on the legacy of feminist art-historical scholarship and pedagogy initiated by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard at American University. To further the inclusive spirit of their groundbreaking anthologies, we invite papers on subjects spanning the chronological spectrum, from the ancient world through the present, to foster a broad dialogue on feminist art-historical practice. Papers may address such topics as: artists, movements, and works of art and architecture; cultural institutions and critical discourses; practices of collecting, patronage, and display; the gendering of objects, spaces, and media; the reception of images; and issues of power, agency, gender, and sexuality within visual cultures. Submissions on under-represented art-historical fields, geographic areas or national traditions, and issues of race and ethnicity are encouraged.

To be considered for participation, please provide a single document in Microsoft Word. It should consist of a one-page, single-spaced proposal of unpublished work, up to 500 words in length for a 20-minute presentation, followed by a curriculum vitae of no more than two pages. Please title the document “[last name]-proposal”.  Submit materials with the subject line “[last name]-proposal” to: fahc6papers@gmail.com. Submission Deadline: May 15, 2015. Invitations to participate will be sent by July 1. Send general queries to: fahc2015queries@gmail.com.

Keynote speaker: Professor Amelia Jones, University of Southern California: “The Curating of Feminist Art (or is it the Feminist Curating of Art?)”

Sponsored by the Art History Program and the Department of Art, College of Arts and Sciences, American University. Organizing committee: Juliet Bellow, Norma Broude, Kim Butler Wingfield, Mary D. Garrard, Helen Langa, Andrea Pearson, and Ying-chen Peng

From the Call for Papers:

Fancy‒Fantaisie‒Capriccio: Diversions and Distractions in the Eighteenth Century
Toulouse, 3–4 December 2015

Proposals due by 31 March 2015

Keynote speaker: Professor Martin Postle, Deputy Director of Studies, Paul Mellon Centre for British Art

In conjunction with the exhibition of paintings, Fantasy Figures, to be held at the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, the Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès and the University of Exeter are pleased to announce a call for papers for an interdisciplinary colloquium.

Associated with the imagination and not reason, fancy (fantaisie) in the eighteenth century was a sort of whimsical distraction from the everyday. For Voltaire it was ‘a singular desire, a passing whim’ (‘un désir singulier, un goût passager’), while for Samuel Johnson it was ‘something that pleases or entertains without real use or value’. Together with its near-synonym caprice (capriccio), fancy was part of a rich semantic network, connecting wit, pleasure, erotic desire, spontaneity, improvisation, surprise, deviation from norms, the trivial and inconsequential. Unpredictable and quirky, it offered many outlets for artistic creativity.

Papers are invited that investigate the expressive freedom of fancy (fantaisie, capriccio) in European culture during the eighteenth century—in figure and landscape painting, architecture and garden design, philosophy and fiction, theatre and music. Topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

• Tensions between fancy/capriccio and reason
• Fancy’s relationship to the imagination
• Fancy as a precursor of the Gothic and the fantastic
• The fancy picture or tête de fantaisie
• Capriccio in landscape, architectural painting, engraving
• Fancy in conjunction with a space, place or decorative schema
• Fantasia in musical composition or musical theatre
• Anecdote, imagination and desire in fiction
• The role of fancy in the discourse of love and seduction
• Creativity as a deviation from norms and rules

The colloquium will incorporate a guided visit of the fantasy figures exhibition with the curators. It is hoped that a volume of published essays will arise from the event. Participants should be prepared to meet their own travel and accommodation expenses. Refreshments will be provided on the day. Proposals (maximum 250 words in English or French) should be submitted to Professor Melissa Percival, University of Exeter, M.H.Percival@exeter.ac.uk by the 31 March 2015.