Call for Articles | Tales from the Crypt: Museum Storage and Meaning
From H-ArtHist:
Collected Essays | Tales from the Crypt: Museum Storage and Meaning
Abstracts due by 15 May 2015 / Final papers due by 15 October 2015
Museums are about display. But are they really? In spite of recent curatorial attempts to exhibit ‘visible storage’, prevailing debates in the history of museums and collecting are mainly centred around questions of exhibiting, display and spectatorship. This kind of discourse, however, distorts the museum in many ways: it ignores the fact that museums do not just consist of exhibition halls but of vast hidden spaces; it leaves millions of objects out of our museum histories; and lastly, it presents the museum as an organized and stable space, in which only museological ‘results’ are visible not the intermediate stage of their coming into being. Display seems to be about the structured, purposeful, strategic gathering of things according to a system, the features of which are clearly defined. What remains out of sight is the fact that the majority of museum objects lie in storage. As a result, not only a vast physical but also important epistemological and semantic aspect of museums and their collections are eliminated from our discussions. The binary between ‘display’ and ‘backstage’ of museums has previously evoked the assumption that the exhibition area functions as a kind of theatre with objects ‘perform’ on stage, while in the back they are processed from their existence as a mere ‘thing’ to a proper artefact. But there is much more to say about museum storage. Backstage areas of museums are not simply areas where potential display objects are kept. They perform functions and fulfill intentions that, when studied, reveal deep purposes of the museum that go well beyond a mere history of display. A history of storage is a thus history of things that are not shown, but also not written about. The understanding of museums and the intellectual histories they encode undergoes a radical shift when we consider what a museum shows alongside the (usually much larger) range of things it stores. These issues may and will be discussed very differently in various parts of the world, which is what this volume intends to address.
Seeking a variety of historical contributions (e.g. with specific case studies), theoretical and philosophical intervention as well as reflections on practical issues, we wish to explore these ‘tales from the crypt’ along the lines of the following themes:
• Storage and canonization
• The politics of collecting
• Power and censorship
• The economic and epistemic value of museum objects
• Ethics and moral aspects of preservation
• Disposal, sale, and de-accessioning
• The (scholarly) uses, necessities and functions of storage
• Curated and un-curated storage
• Visible storage, off-side storage, deep storage, ‘non-museological’ storage
• The politics of displayability
• Storage, the archive and data mining
• Architecture, real estate and the physical spaces of storage
• Issues of access to storage
• Economic aspects of storage
• Storage and digitization
The volume will partly present the results of a workshop (Victoria & Albert Museum, October 2014), organized under the aegis of the India-Europe Advanced Research Network on Museum History that invited a small group of scholars to respond to museum storage—concept and practice—in India and Europe. It is this cross-cultural approach that we wish to take with the volume. We therefore welcome contributions addressing a broad variety of material and theories across all continents. A report of the IEARN workshop can be found here.
Abstracts (max. 300 words) for papers (max. 8000 words) should be sent to mirjam.brusius@history.ox.ac.uk and kavising@gmail.com by May 15, 2015. Authors will be notified in June. The deadline for final papers will be October 15, 2015.
Concept by Mirjam Brusius and Kavita Singh for the Research Group on Museums and History, March 2014 and 2015
Call for Papers | CAA in Washington, D.C., 2016
The Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., from across the Tidal Basin of the Potomac River
(Wikimedia Commons, Rdsmith4, 2005)
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The following selection of panels may be of interest for scholars of the eighteenth century, though readers are encouraged to consult the full Call for Papers. HECAA members are asked to pay special attention to the session on pastels chaired by Iris Moon and Esther Bell and the one on Eros and Enlightenment chaired by Nina Dubin and Hérica Valladares. -CH
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104th Annual Conference of the College Art Association
Washington, D.C., 3–6 February 2016
Proposals due by 8 May 2015
The 2016 Call for Participation for the 104th Annual Conference, taking place February 3–6 in Washington, D.C., describes many of next year’s sessions. CAA and the session chairs invite your participation: please follow the instructions in the booklet to submit a proposal for a paper or presentation. This publication also includes a call for Poster Session proposals.
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Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture
Pastel: The Moment of a Medium in the Eighteenth Century
Iris Moon, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Esther Bell, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, imoon.moon@gmail.com and esthersusanbell@gmail.com.
This panel explores pastel as the “medium of the moment” in the long eighteenth century in order to pose questions about the temporality of artistic media and how materially unstable works of art shaped the period’s aesthetic discourse. Described by Denis Diderot as “precious powder that will fly from its support, half of it scattered in the air and half clinging to Saturn’s long feathers,” the volatile matter of pastel provoked a sense of physical movement that transformed the viewing process into a charged moment of encounter. We invite considerations on the making and unmaking of pastel practitioners, the critical language around the medium developed by connoisseurs and collectors, and inquiries that situate pastel’s distinctive properties within debates on color and line, touch and sight, viewer and object.
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American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Eros and Enlightenment
Nina Dubin, University of Illinois at Chicago, dubin@uic.edu; and Hérica Valladares, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, herica.valladares@gmail.com
What would it mean to consider the eighteenth century through the lens of its evolving discourse on love? The explosion of a novel-reading public; the Enlightenment’s often nervous inquiry into love’s place among the ‘moral sentiments’ and its status in relation to the equally unstable category of friendship; the expansion of epistolary culture and the attendant vogue for love letter pictures; the libertine conceptualization of love as a ‘commerce’; homoeroticism as a cultural leitmotif; the ubiquitous presence of Cupid, even in such unexpected contexts as financial literature; the fixation on ancient notions of eros, from Ovid’s persistently popular Ars Amatoria to the unearthed remains of erotic frescoes: these and other phenomena suggest that love played a central yet complicated role in period self-imaginings, in ways that iconographic accounts of the era’s visual arts have perhaps not fully registered. This ASECS-sponsored panel seeks papers on all aspects of visual and material culture that expand, challenge, and enliven our understanding of eros in the eighteenth century (due date is 31 May).
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The Modernities of French Art and Its History, 1780 to the Present
Natalie Adamson, University of St Andrews; and Richard Taws, University College London, na14@st-andrews.ac.uk and r.taws@ ucl.ac.uk.
From now-canonical studies that helped lay the methodological foundations of art history as a discipline to the extraordinary popularity of French art and ideas outside of the academy, the history of French art has become an influential tradition that has often been presented as synonymous with modernism itself. This session proposes a critical interrogation of the diverse histories of French art since 1780 to the present day. We welcome papers that look outside of, challenge, or run counter to hegemonic narratives. What critical possibilities (if any) remain for the study of French art’s modernities? We encourage approaches that interrelate the histories of specific images, objects, or narratives with reflection on the writing of those histories, or on broader historiographical tendencies, so that a set of fresh perspectives may emerge on this enduring yet highly mutable relationship between art history and modern France.
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Taking Stock: Future Direction(s) in the Study of Collecting
Christina M. Anderson, University of Oxford, cm.anderson@usa.net.
The study of collecting is at a crossroads. “Collection” has often meant “art collection,” overlooking the broader range of objects and behaviors involved. Fascination with the Wunderkammer has centered attention on European models, even when objects themselves were not European. The rise of museum studies, furthermore, has shifted attention away from the individual practice of collecting to institutional concerns about conservation and deaccession. Recent approaches to collecting, intended to broaden its study, include cross-cultural encounters, the circulation of knowledge, the cultural biographies and social lives of things, the art market, and the collecting practices of particular social groups. This panel explores the current and future states of the field through case studies that utilize innovative and forward- looking methodologies. Presentations may, for example, challenge the dominance of traditional sources such as inventories and biographies; present new interpretations or applications of terms like “connoisseurship”; or explore potential insights offered by the study of synesthesia or semiotics.
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Landscape into History
John Beardsley, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection; Jennifer Raab, Yale University, beardsleyj@doaks.org and jennifer.raab@yale.edu.
Art history and landscape studies have a common origin and shared scholarly trajectories, yet the extent of their reciprocal influence is by no means certain. This session will look both forward and back, exploring the fluctuating and sometimes problematic historical connections between art history and landscape studies while investigating the potential for more productive interchange between the two disciplines in the future. In what ways could the close attention paid by landscape historians to environment, physical and social experience, spatial analysis, and mapping enhance the methods of art history? How might art-historical emphases on materiality, viewing, cultural context, and artistic process contribute to landscape studies? What models do landscape studies have to offer that could address pressing ecological issues while also engaging with questions of representation and aesthetics? Papers should consider this not just as a theoretical challenge but as one to be worked through by a discussion of specific landscapes.
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Beyond Featherwork: Mexican Visual Identity between Conquest and Independence
Aliza M. Benjamin and Bradley J. Cavallo, Temple University, tua63451@temple.edu and tuc70074@temple.edu.
Colonial Mexican society of ca. 1650–1800 produced a sophisticated aesthetic that blurred distinctions between Old and New World visual identities. Such criollismo transformed indigenous traditions into something independent yet reminiscent of European preferences, a process of incorporation that rarely produced clearly enunciated cases of syncretism. More often, the characteristic signs of the original cultural traces remained present but indistinct, negotiations of the cognitive dissonance experienced by a people acutely aware of their foundation in both Aztec and Spanish pasts. This session examines the multicultural fusion of European and indigenous art-making traditions surviving in the evidence of postconquest, pre-Independence architecture and movable art objects. We invite papers of methodological diversity that illustrate how artists, patrons, and audiences instantiated the era’s newly developing cultural identity within Mexican society or projected it outward as part of the transmission of knowledge about material production and aesthetic processes that developed across the network of transatlantic trade routes.
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The Art of Animal Activism: Critical Parameters
Alan C. Braddock, College of William and Mary; and Keri Cronin, Brock University, acbraddock@wm.edu and keri.cronin@ brocku.ca.
Today nonhuman animals figure more prominently in cultural, ethical, and scientific inquiry than ever before, thanks to recent research that has forced a significant reassessment of human exceptionalism, or speciesism. Lately some art historians have begun to consider these issues as well. All of this has taken place amid growing popular fascination with animals and backlash against their egregious, often concealed abuse in factory farming, entertainment, laboratories, and other areas. Animals have become subjects of vision, imagination, and activism—but also exploitation— like never before. This session examines the critical parameters of animal activism and advocacy in art since the eighteenth century. Papers should address important landmarks and historical contours of such art, assessing creative techniques used to advance particular goals. Consideration of why the discipline of art history has been slow to map this tradition and challenges involved in visualizing the interests of other beings are also encouraged.
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Afrotropes
Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson, Northwestern University, h-copeland@northwestern.edu and krista-thompson@ northwestern.edu.
This session focuses on the aesthetic, historical, and theoretical terrain opened up by the “afrotrope.” This neologism refers to those visual forms that have emerged within and become central to the formation of African diasporic culture and identity in the modern era, from the slave ship icon produced by the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1788) to the “I AM A MAN” signs famously held up by striking Memphis sanitation workers (1968). The recurrence of such afrotropes makes palpable how subjects have appropriated widely available representational means only to undo their formal contours or to break apart their significatory logic. The afrotrope thus offers a vital heuristic through which to understand how visual motifs take on flesh over time and to reckon with what remains unknown or cast out of the visual field. We solicit papers that not only identify key afrotropes but also theorize how they elucidate new models of temporality, authorship, and cultural transmission.
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The Meaning of Marginalia in Early Modern Art and Theory, 1500–1800
Stephanie S. Dickey, Queen’s University, dickeys@queensu.ca.
This session seeks case studies exploring the practice of ann tation in early modern art and art criticism. The concern is not with printed marginalia (an established literary form) but with handwritten notes, a record of individual response bridging the published and the private. Artists annotated their own drawings and those of others they acquired. Connoisseurs jotted comments and sketches in the margins of treatises and sale catalogues. Familiar cases range from the postille added by Federico Zuccaro, Annibale Carracci, and other readers to copies of Vasari’s Vite (ca. 1568–1620) to Rembrandt’s inscribed drawing of Raphael’s Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione auctioned in Amsterdam (1639) and Gabriel de Saint-Aubin’s sketches in Basan’s catalogue of the Mariette collection (ca. 1778), but there is much more to discover. How can marginalia contribute to our understanding of specific artists and art lovers: their activities, ideas, networks? How do such notes trace fluctuations in market value or trends in taste and art theory?
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Taking Stock: Early Modern Art Now
Hanneke Grootenboer, University of Oxford; and Amy Knight Powell, University of California, Irvine, hanneke.grootenboer@ rsa.ox.ac.uk and amy.powell@uci.edu.
The relatively recent shift from the period terms “Renaissance” and “Baroque” to the more capacious “early modern” has coincided with an interrogation of the field’s relevance to the present. The new nomenclature insists that early modernity and our own (post-post) modernity share something. Investigation of precisely what they share has been among the most significant undertakings in the field over the past few decades. Far from being a turn away from history, this project of redefinition, at its best, has sought to recuperate the concept of history, wresting it from restrictive forms of historicism. It is now time to take stock of this work. We are particularly interested in projects that move beyond traditional historical paradigms, consider the relationship between history and theory, question modernism’s art-historical narrative, or demonstrate the critical and philosophical potential of early modern works of art.
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Museum Committee
New Studies in Museum, Gallery, and Exhibition History
Antoniette M. Guglielmo, Getty Leadership Institute; and Anne Manning, The Baltimore Museum of Art, toniguglielmo@yahoo.com and AManning@artbma.org
In support of the scholarly mission of the CAA to serve institutions in which art is exhibited, collected, studied, and interpreted, the Museum Committee offers this session for international scholarship addressing the history of museums, galleries, exhibitions, and related topics. This session also presents an opportunity to assess the demand for future sessions on new and emerging scholarship on this topic. We invite papers that explore the history of institutions and exhibitions, the work of individual pioneers in the formation of museums and galleries, and the evolution and professionalization of museum practices. Studies of associated social and cultural phenomena including the history of collecting and philanthropy are encouraged. We also welcome investigations of related entities such as commercial galleries and auction houses, in addition to historiographies of these topics and research questions associated with them. Submissions may be case studies or comparative analyses.
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Copy That: Painted Replicas and Repetitions before the Age of Appropriation
Valerie Hellstein, Willem de Kooning Foundation, vhellstein@gmail.com.
Marcel Duchamp’s Boîtes-en-valise, which contained “authorized ‘original’ copies” of his previous works, makes a farce out of the modern myth of authenticity. We now recognize the critique of originality inherent in the reproducibility and multiplicity of certain media, but what of painting? Artists from Jacques-Louis David and Gilbert Stuart to Henri Matisse and Clyfford Still have copied and made variations of their own paintings. Originals, copies, imitations, replicas, variants, versions all circulate in art-historical discourse, carrying different meaning, significance, and value depending on the time period and area of study. This panel seeks papers on art from any era up to the rise of postmodernity that explore autograph replicas of paintings. In what ways might such an inquiry change ingrained notions of painting? In what ways do the art market and other factors contribute to the production of such copies? How have countries or cultures handled autograph replicas and repetitions differently?
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Design Studies Forum
Design on Display: Staging Objects in the Museum and Beyond
Anca Lasc, Pratt Institute; and Paula Lupkin, University of North Texas, alasc@pratt.edu and Paula.Lupkin@unt.edu.
The theory and practice of object display has a long history, from cathedral crypts and early modern cabinets of curiosities to nineteenth- and twentieth-century museums, universal exhibitions, theme parks, chambers of horror, and department stores. Historians, curators, artists, entrepreneurs, and designers engage in complex experiential, pedagogical, and technological challenges involved in the design of environments for education, entertainment, and consumption. This panel explores evolving practices of presentation and display including but not limited to exhibition, retail and interior design, historical house museums, period rooms, and art installations. Seeking to chart a history of display design, we invite papers that examine the cross-fertilization of ideas and practices related to the display of objects in different historical contexts and spatial layouts. What does the history and theory of presentation and display teach us about the design of interior environments, and what emergent trends might shape the future of display?
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American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies
Polychrome Sculpture in Iberia and the Americas, 1200–1800
Ilenia Colón Mendoza, University of Central Florida, Ilenia. ColonMendoza@ucf.edu.
This panel focuses on aspects of polychrome sculpture produced in Iberia and Colonial Latin America from 1200 to 1800 that are specifically related to writing and literature. Of interest is the production and technique of polychrome sculpture in wood, wax, and mixed media through the study of treatises and their relationship to the production of sculpture. Research related to primary-source documentation of contracts and patronage is also welcome. Papers may address how mystical writings and liturgical practices influenced image making and how these images were understood in the context of religious pageantry and procession. Contemporary accounts describing sculpture in literature and plays that reveal the social and cultural status of sculpture are also relevant.
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Connoisseurship—or Connoisseurs?
Catherine B. Scallen, Case Western Reserve University, cbs2@case. edu
Connoisseurship is a practice in the history of art that has been theorized, valorized, vilified, rejected, and renewed. Several sessions at the annual CAA conference over the past twenty years have been devoted to its study. But is it appropriate to discuss connoisseurship as an objectifiable practice when it can be argued that by its very nature it is an individualized pursuit? The problematic nature of group connoisseurship, entered into so optimistically in the 1960s by the Rembrandt Research Project, was demonstrated by the many critiques of the results of this group, its internal discord, and its subsequent reorganization under the leadership of one connoisseur, Ernst van de Wetering. In this session we will consider whether connoisseurship as a practice is best understood through the study of individual connoisseurs, whose connoisseurship can be problematized in light of their relationships with other art-world participants, such as art dealers, museum professionals, private collectors, and art critics.
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The Mystery of Masonry Brought to Light: Freemasonry and Art from the Eighteenth Century until Now
Reva Wolf, State University of New York at New Paltz, wolfr@newpaltz.edu.
Recent studies by the historians Margaret Jacob, Paul Kléber Monad, and others have drawn attention to the significance of Freemasonry, with its unique blend of reason and mystery, in eighteenth-century thought and politics. Art held an important, if as yet underappreciated, position in the evolution of Freemasonry, the very name of which reflects the fundamental place of architecture in its vision. To what effect were the arts enlisted to present Freemasonry’s promotion of constitutional government or to portray its cryptic symbols? Of what consequence were the satires that mocked Freemasonry (including by Hogarth, himself a Freemason)? What impact did Freemasonry’s advocacy of religious tolerance have on art (was Goya a Freemason?)? Proposals are invited for papers exploring the role of art, and of individual artists, in the rise, development, self-image, and/or criticism of Freemasonry, whether in Europe, the Americas, or elsewhere.
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Note (added 2 April 2015) — The original version of this posting did not include the session on Eros and Enlightenment.
Call for Papers | Altarpieces in the Ibero-American Context
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From the conference website:
O Retábulo no espaço Iberoamericano: forma, função e iconografia
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, UNL, Lisbon, 26–27 November 2015
Proposals due by 30 April 2015
O Instituto de História da Arte da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa encontra-se a organizar o I Simpósio de História da Arte—O Retábulo no espaço Iberoamericano: Forma, função e iconografia, que terá lugar na Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, a 26 e 27 de Novembro de 2015.
O Simpósio O Retábulo no espaço Iberoamericano: forma, função e iconografia pretende divulgar a recente investigação desenvolvida em Portugal, Espanha, Brasil, México, Uruguai, Perú e Colômbia. Neste encontro de carácter científico, a eleição das três vertentes de análise—forma, função e iconografia—constituirá o mote para a abordagem histórico-artística da arte retabular. Quem eram os artistas ou oficinas capazes de idealizar as imponentes ‘máquinas’ retabulares que adornam todo o espaço iberoamericano? Quais foram os principais mecenas e agentes do mercado artístico intervenientes na execução das obras? Que materiais estavam disponíveis para a conceção dos retábulos? Que leituras podemos construir perante a complexidade dos seus programas iconográficos? Por conseguinte, o debate contemplará a caracterização da dimensão arquitetónica, ornamental e simbólica do retábulo, procurando salientar as especificidades autóctones e as divergências sócio-culturais, a fim de aferir as transferências artísticas operadas durante o período compreendido entre os séculos XVI–XVIII. (more…)
Plans for a Reader on Eighteenth-Century Book Illustration
Dear Colleagues,
We—Christina Ionescu and Leigh Dillard—are engaged in the planning stages of a reader on eighteenth-century book illustration that would encompass various traditions (English, French, German, Spanish, etc.). In order to best position the reader, we would be most grateful if those of you who work on book illustration (and perhaps also teach courses on the subject) could provide some feedback on our preliminary ideas. You could write to us directly (cionescu@mta.ca and Leigh.Dillard@ung.edu).
1) Would you use such a reader in a course? What type of course would you consider using it in? Would your library be interested in purchasing it?
2) Would you be interested in contributing a chapter? The deadline for submission of chapters will likely be December 2016.
3) Do you have any suggestions about its contents? Any specific texts that you believe should be included? Any translations of seminal texts that we should commission?
This is what is currently on our list:
• Relevant excerpts from nineteenth-century texts (Dibdin, the Goncourt brothers, etc.)
• Reprints and translations of key chapters from important 1980s/1990s studies on eighteenth-century book illustration (Edward Hodnett, Philip Stewart, etc.)
• Theoretical approaches to book illustration as it pertains to the chosen time frame (e.g. book illustration and word and image, book illustration and book history)
• The mechanics of book illustration (etching, woodcut, copperplate engraving, frontispieces, colour plates, etc.)
• Illustrators (Stothard, Marillier, Chodowiecki, Gravelot, Hogarth, Cochin, etc.)
• Genres (illustrated travelogues, gothic novels, sentimental fiction, erotica, etc.)
• Examples of eighteenth-century illustrated bestsellers (The Sentimental Journey, La Nouvelle Héloïse, etc.)
• Overviews by geographical region (illustration in England, France, Spain, etc.)
Many thanks,
Christina and Leigh
Christina Ionescu (Associate Professor of French, Mount Allison University)
Leigh Dillard (Assistant Professor of English, University North Georgia)
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Note (added 14 December 2016) — The call for proposals was advertised on the SHARP listserv.
Proposals are invited for the first installment in a multi-volume collection, titled A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Literary Illustration. The first volume is designed for students and established researchers seeking an introduction to approaches in this field; it can also be used for book illustration scholars seeking to extend their theoretical and methodological tool kit. Contributions should provide an introduction to pertinent theoretical terms and concepts, a practical demonstration, and suggestions for further reading. When possible, examples should be chosen from more than one national tradition. We invite proposals on the following topics to fill gaps in our existing commitments:
• Book illustration and consumer culture
• Book illustration and post-colonial theory
• Book illustration and fashion studies/costume studies
• Book illustration and visual rhetoric
• Book illustration and art history
• Book illustration and literary history
Please send 300–500 word proposals to Christina Ionescu (cionescu@mta.ca) and Leigh Dillard (leigh.dillard@ung.edu) by January 20, 2017. The deadline for the submission of completed chapters will be December 15, 2017.
Call for Papers | Printmaking in Scotland in the 18th Century
From H-ArtHist:
Printmaking in Scotland in the 18th Century
University of St Andrews, 4 December 2015
Proposals due by 1 June 2015
This conference will explore the rich world of printmaking and its development in Scotland in the 18th century. While a good deal of research exists on printmaking in England there is very little on the relationships between artists, printmakers, publishers and collectors in Scotland.
Besides contributions on the work of individual artists, we seek in particular to explore the development of a market for prints. We invite papers on all aspects of the subject, but we are especially interested in contributions that will address the following questions:
• Who were the engravers and etchers, the teachers, publishers, dealers, collectors of prints and suppliers of materials?
• How was the print trade between Scotland, London, and the Continent supported?
• Were there printmakers working outside Edinburgh and Glasgow?
• Where could artists see the work of other printmakers?
• What kind of prints were they making: landscapes and prospects, antiquities, portraits, satires, drawing manuals, book illustrations and book plates, trade cards?
• In what ways did prints contribute to the ‘discovery’ of Scotland, the Jacobite cause?
To submit a proposal for a 20-minute presentation, please send an abstract not exceeding 300 words and a one-page CV to avg1@st-andrews.ac.uk. A selection of papers will be edited for publication by the conference organisers. For further details, contact: Ann Gunn, School of Art History, University of St Andrews: avg1@st-andrews.ac.uk.
Call for Papers | The Japanese Palace in Dresden
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).
Call for Papers | Animating the Georgian London Town House
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.
Call for Papers | Travellers and the Musical Imagination, 1500–1900
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)
Call for Papers | Objects in Motion: Material Culture in Transition
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
Call for Papers | Les Acteurs de la Rocaille
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).
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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).
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