Conference | Painting and Genre
From ArtHist.net and St Edmund Hall:
Painting and Genre
St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, 6 August 2026
Organized by Sofya Dmitrieva
Painting genres structure artistic practice, shape reception, and inform institutional frameworks. Yet as an analytical category, genre has long occupied a marginal position within art history.
This is not to suggest that the discipline has produced no genre theory. Influential studies, such as Wayne Franits’s Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution (Yale University Press, 2004), have addressed genre explicitly, and scholarship on individual genres, particularly portraiture and landscape, is vast. Questions related to genre, most notably the academic hierarchy of genres, have received sustained scholarly attention, from Jean Locquin to Christian Michel, Mark Ledbury, and Paul Duro. Indeed, one of the discipline’s foundational texts—Alois Riegl’s The Group Portraiture of Holland (1902)—is a genre study.
Art-historical approaches to genre have likewise been varied and innovative. To cite just a small selection of recent examples, Amy Freund has examined the hunting portrait from a sociohistorical perspective, linking it to the changing status of the sword nobility in the early eighteenth century (Art History, 2019); Susanna Caviglia has revisited history painting under Louis XV, relating it to contemporary political and cultural discourses on pleasure (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2020); and Stephanie O’Rourke has explored how late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century landscape painting registered practices of resource extraction (University of Chicago Press, 2025).
Still, despite this substantial body of scholarship, the study of genre has remained largely overshadowed by iconographic and formalist approaches. In contrast to literary and film studies, where genre theory occupies a central methodological position, art history has yet to develop a comparably sustained theoretical framework for the analysis of genre.
This one-day conference brings together contributions that place genre at the centre of the analysis of painting. It seeks to foreground genre not merely as a classificatory device but as a critical category through which artistic production, reception, and historiography can be re-examined. Attendance is free of charge, and no registration is required. A light lunch and refreshments will be provided.
p r o g r a m m e
13.45 Welcome and introduction by Sofya Dmitrieva
14.00 Panel 1 | Definitions
• Emma Barker (The Open University) — Defining Genre Painting
• Miles Fletcher (University of Cambridge) — Een Algemeen Schilder: Landscape, Technology, and the History of Depiction in England and the Low Countries, 1649–1702
15.00 Panel 2 | Institutions
• Anastasia Skoybedo (University of Cambridge) — Landscape Painting within the Soviet Hierarchy of Genres: The Case of the Leningrad Landscape School
• Alyse Muller (Columbia University) — The Genealogy of the Marine Genre in France
16.00 Coffee Break
17.00 Panel 3 | Taste
• Daniel Sobrino Ralston (National Gallery) — The Rise and Fall of a Genre in Second Empire Paris
• Vittoria Cervini (Royal Collection Trust) — From Carlton House to Buckingham Palace: Seventeenth-Century Genre Paintings in George IV’s Collection
18.00 Panel 4 | Reimaginings
• Tom Zille (Mucha Foundation) — Queering the Conversation Piece
• Sarah Hegenbart (Heidelberg University) — Towards Transcultural Pictorial Genres
Conference | Sculpture and Trompe l’œil in European Ceramics

From the conference programme:
Sculpture and Trompe l’œil in European Ceramics:
From Bernard Palissy to the Present Day
Second Edition of the Annual Conference on European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
Online, 12–13 July 2026
A combined effort of the Centre de Recherches Historiques sur les Maîtres Ébénistes and the Low Countries Sculpture Society, whose libraries and archives have merged and are housed in the Hôtel de la Roche (1750) at Mons, the Annual International Conference had its inaugural edition in July 2025. This edition, dedicated to European ceramics, aims to address issues relating to figurative sculpture in the round, to relief sculpture and to trompe l’oeil, all in the medium of ceramics. This includes the imitation of other materials, such as wood or precious stones, and the mimetic representation of animals and plants. Sculpture and trompe l’oeil are recurring themes but have been little studied in a comprehensive manner in European ceramic art, not even in Art Deco ceramics, which frequently use sculptural forms, both in tableware and in purely decorative pieces.
The term trompe l’oeil comes from the world of easel painting, and the conference will be an opportunity to define more precisely the use and usefulness of this term in the world of ceramics. Our conference proposes to study cases that can shed light on this practice, from the Renaissance to the present day, in terms of the rendering of forms, colours and textures. These cases may concern the production, consumption, collecting and display of these types of ceramics throughout Europe and North America, from the Renaissance to the present day. Issues of design history, collaborations between creators and producers, artists and artisans, as well as the relations with any other people involved in the production of these ceramics may be studied. The theme will draw, in particular but not exclusively, on the rich tradition of ceramics in the Low Countries, from Antwerp majolica, via Tournai porcelain and Bouffioulx stoneware, to contemporary productions.
The conference will take place without audience (apart from the speakers, moderators and a few benefactors), but it will be filmed and broadcast live on YouTube for free, on our dedicated channel, The Low Countries Sculpture Society. The conference proceedings will be published in 2027 in a new academic journal dedicated to European sculpture and decorative arts, based on our annual international conferences.
Scientific Committee
Jean-Dominique Augarde, Centre de Recherches Historiques sur les Maîtres Ebénistes, Paris / Mons
Yves De Leeuw, collector and exhibition curator
Bernard Dragesco, Dragesco-Cramoisan Gallery, Paris / Château de Barly
Errol Manners, historic ceramics specialist, London
Sylvie Millasseau-Wengraf, art historian, Switzerland
Tamara Préaud, formerly Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres, and president, The French Porcelain Society, London
Miriam E. Schefzyk, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Volker Seiberth, University of Heidelberg / The Low Countries Sculpture Society
Pier Terwen, art historian and conservator of sculpture and ceramics, Leiden
Organising Committee
Katia Berseneva, Ecole du Louvre, Paris / The Low Countries Sculpture Society
Guillaume Hambye, notary, Mons
Laurence Lenne, Galerie Art & Patrimoine, Ath
Léon Lock, The Low Countries Sculpture Society, Brussels / Mons
Grégory Maugé, Centre de Recherches Historiques sur les Maîtres Ébénistes, Paris / Mons
Thierry Naveaux, The Low Countries Sculpture Society, Brussels / Mons
Sébastien Tercelin de Joigny, Tercelin de Joigny Gallery, Mons / Seneffe
Jenny Tondreau, Collegiate church of Sainte-Waudru, Mons
s u n d a y , 1 2 j u l y
9.30 Léon Lock (The Low Countries Sculpture Society) — Introduction
10.05 Keynote Lecture
• Patricia Ferguson (London) — Artifice and Spectacle: the Conceit of a Lettuce as Large as Life for the European Table in the Mid-18th Century
11.00 Break
11.30 Session 1 | Trompe l’œil and Mimesis I
Moderator: Errol Manners
• Melody Hsu (McGill University, Montreal) — Book Flask: Trompe l’Œil and Deception in Early Modern Europe
• Mariette Boudgourd (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris) —Jardinières bûches, verres paysages et cendriers poissons. De nouvelles formes de la nature « genre Palissy » au XIXe siècle en France
12.45 Lunch break
14.00 Session 2 | Trompe l’œil and Mimesis, II
Moderator: Volker Seiberth
• Nadia Mariana Consiglieri, Universidad de Buenos Aires — Reptiles, amphibians and trompe l’œil in a Bernard Palissy ceramic piece from the Museum of Decorative Arts in Buenos Aires
• Carina-Nathalia Madonna Visconti-Paff (Sapienza Università di Roma) — The Illusion of Lustre: Trompe l’œil in Hungarian Zsolnay Ceramics, Eosin Imitations of Metals and Nature in the Art Nouveau Style
15.15 Break
15.45 Session 3 | The Sculptor and the Sculptural in Ceramics
Moderator: Bernard Dragesco
• Jean-Dominique Augarde (Centre de Recherches Historiques sur les Maîtres Ebénistes, Paris/Mons) — Piat Joseph Sauvage et le Salon de 1798
16.20 Keynote Lecture
• Errol Manners (historic ceramics specialist, London) — Louis-François Roubiliac and Chelsea Porcelain: A Reassessment
m o n d a y , 1 3 j u l y
9.30 Session 4 | Manufactures, Workshops, and Sculptors in Ceramics
Moderator: Sylvie Millasseau-Wengraf
• Valérie Montens (Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels) and
Elise Urbain Ruano (Domaine & Musée royal de Mariemont) — Entre virtuosité technique et langage décoratif : la sculpture en porcelaine à la manufacture d’Ixelles de 1830 à 1953
• Carys Wilkins et Claire Blakey (National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh) — European Ceramic Sculpture Rediscovered at National Museums Scotland
• Grégory Maugé (Centre de Recherches Historiques sur les Maîtres Ébénistes, Paris / Mons) and Léon Lock (The Low Countries Sculpture Society, Brussels / Mons) — La sculpture en céramique en Hainaut au XXe siècle
Conference | 2026 Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife
From Historic Deerfield:
Futurecasting, Futurekeeping: New Englanders Imagine Worlds to Come
2026 Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife
Online and in-person, Historic Deerfield, Deerfield, Massachusetts, 26–27 June 2026
In-person registration closes June 22 at noon. Virtual registration will stay open through the event. All registrants receive access to recordings of the event for one month.
In 2026, the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife will mark its 50th anniversary by looking both backwards and ahead. As this year’s seminar looks forward to its own future, we will contemplate ways residents of the region (broadly construed) have envisioned, foretold, and worked to shape various futures over the region’s long history. Events will include reflection on, and celebration of, the Seminar’s fifty years as a source of scholarship and publication on the everyday life, work, and culture of New England’s past.
f r i d a y , 2 6 j u n e

Ruthy Rogers (1778–1812), Needlework Picture, Marblehead, Massachusetts, ca. 1789, silk on linen, 27 × 23 cm (New York: American Folk Art Museum, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2005.8.53).
10.00 Optional Morning Activity
Tours at Bellamy House and remarks from the Director, Chicopee Falls, MA (Pre-registration is required: $12 per person)
12.00 Registration opens at Historic Deerfield
1.20 Virtual sign-in opens for online attendees
1.30 Welcome — Marla Miller (Distinguished Professor of History, UMass Amherst, and President, Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife)
1.45 Panel 1 | Planned Communities
Moderator: Christian Goodwillie (Director and Curator of Special Collections, Hamilton College, Burke Library)
• Carl Guarneri (Professor Emeritus of History, Saint Mary’s College of California, and Research Scholar, Colgate University) — Brook Farm: Boston ‘Combined Households’, and the Utopian Origins of Urban Communal Housing, 1846–1851
• CJ Martin (Visiting Assistant Professor, College of the Holy Cross) — Black Millerites
• Diana Lempel (Scholar/Practitioner of Folk History) — The Blessing of the Attic: Cambridge Co-operative Housekeeping Society and Family Memory Keeping
3.15 Break with refreshments
3.30 Tribute to Founders
3:45 Futurecasting: A Roundtable on the Past, Present, and Future of New England Studies
Sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Public History Program and Historic Northampton
Moderator: J. Ritchie Garrison (Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of Delaware)
• Emelie Gevalt (Deputy Director and Chief Curatorial and Program Officer, American Folk Art Museum)
• Thomas Guiler (Director of Museum Affairs, Oneida Community Mansion House)
• Philippe Halbert (Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts)
5.00 Reception
Sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society and the Boston University Program in American Studies
Join us for a celebratory reception marking the 50th anniversary of the Dublin Seminar. Enjoy heavy hors d’oeuvres and assorted beverages in the company of the Dublin Seminar membership and your colleagues for this festive occasion. (Pre-registration is $25)
7.00 Keynote Address
• Holly Jackson (Chair of American Studies and Professor of English, University of Massachusetts, Boston) — The Ends of the World in Antebellum New England
s a t u r d a y , 2 7 j u n e
8.30 Deerfield Community Center opens. In-person attendees may pick up name badges and information packets.
8:50 Virtual sign-in for online attendees
9.00 Panel 2 | Imagined Futures in Literature
Moderator: Barbara Matthews (Independent Historical Consultant)
• Megan Pickett (The Winchendon School) — ‘Where to Go Next’: Utopian Immediacy in Total Loss Farm
• Ella Koston (PhD student at Boston University’s American Studies Program) — Afrofuturist Vision: Pauline Hopkins
10.30 Break
10.45 Panel 3 | Imagined Futures in Material Culture
Moderator: Erika Gasser (Director of Academic Programs, Historic Deerfield)
• Elizabeth Eager (Assistant Professor, Southern Methodist University) — Futurity Imagined through Women’s Needlework
• Victoria Kenyon (Curatorial Track doctoral candidate, Art History, University of Delaware) — Magical Flowers: Fortune-Telling Objects from New England
• Brece Honeycutt (Independent Scholar/Multimedia Artist) — Building Harmony / Constructing Color
12.15 Lunch (buffet provided at the Deerfield Inn)
1.45 Panel 4 | Limits of Progressivism: Sexual Politics
Moderator: Erica Lome (Curator of Collections, Historic New England)
• Hunter Moskowitz (Researcher at American Ancestors, Boston) — Factory as Utopia: Imaginations of Sexuality in Early Lowell
• Catherine Terelak (Interpreter at Historic New England’s Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House) — An Intentional Community: Gloucester’s Dabsville
• Stephen Paterwic (Trustee of the Shaker Library and Museum, Sabbathday Lake, Maine) — Shakers and the Second Gathering
3.15 Break
3.30 Panel 5 | Forecasting Future Ecologies
Moderator: Nan Wolverton (Vice President for Academic and Public Programs, American Antiquarian Society)
• Meghan Freeman (Fellowship and Internship Program Director, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University) — Bird Day, Now and Forever: Mabel Osgood Wright and the Future of New England Bird-Life
• Li-hsin Hsu (Professor of English, National Chengchi University, Taiwan) — Silk Culture, Utopian Experiment, and Anthropocene Imagination in Mid-19th-Century New England
• Dan McKanan (Emerson Senior Lecturer, Harvard Divinity School) — Imagining the Future Forest
5.00 Closing Remarks — John Davis (President, Historic Deerfield, Inc)
Conference | Theatricality and Garden Art
From ArtHist.net:
Theatralität und Gartenkunst: Vom 17. bis ins frühe 19. Jahrhundert
Weimar, 25–27 June 2026
Internationale und interdisziplinäre Tagung vom 25. bis 27. Juni 2026 im Vortragssaal des Goethe- und Schiller-Archivs und Festsaal des Goethe-Nationalmuseums, Weimar
Veranstaltungen im Rahmen der Tagung
• Goethes und Schröters Die Fischerin. Eine Promenade in Tiefurt, 26. Juni 2026, 16 Uhr (Park Tiefurt bei Weimar)
• Konzert: Kammermusik aus der Epoche der Empfindsamkeit, am Freitag 26. Juni 2026, 19.30 Uhr, Festsaal im Goethe-Nationalmuseum in Weimar
In Kooperation mit der Klassik Stiftung Weimar und der Goethe-Gesellschaft Weimar. Gefördert durch Daimler und Benz-Stiftung und DFG
Organisation und Kontakt
Anna Axtner-Borsutzky, a.axtner-borsutzky@lmu.de
Helena Langewitz, helena.langewitz@uni-mainz.de
d o n n e r s t a g , 2 5 j u n i
13.30 Anna Axtner-Borsutzky und Helena Langewitz — Begrüßung
13.45 Gartenanlagen von Versailles bis Wörlitz
Moderation: Astrid Dröse und Anna Axtner-Borsutzky
• Stefan Schweizer (Düsseldorf) — Zur Praxis des Wassertheaters. Von der Villa Aldobrandini über das Wassertheater in Versailles bis zur Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel
• Hendrik Ziegler (Marburg) — Versailles in Wörlitz. Barocke Theatralität im Garten der Aufklärung
• Natalie Gutgesell (Lichtenfels/Berlin) — Zum Luisenkloster in Weimar
16.30 Franziska Rieland (Klassik Stiftung) — Der Tiefurter und der Herzogliche Park in Weimar: schöner Effekt, dichterische Vision und inszenierte Natur — Mit Führung im Ilmpark
f r e i t a g , 2 6 j u n i
9.30 Gartenanlagen von Weimar und Umgebung
Moderation: Helena Langewitz und Klaus Pietschmann
• Anna Axtner-Borsutzky (München) — Kulissen aus Kisten und Worten. Gartentheorie und -praxis auf der Bühne um 1800
• Anna Ananieva (Weimar) — Gartenräume als Spielräume. August von Kotzebue und die Theatralität des Gartens um 1800
• Antonia Weiss (Amsterdam) — The Right to Look: Gender in the Visual Regime of Berlin‘s Tiergarten, 1740–1830
• Jana Kittelmann (Dessau-Wörlitz) — Vulkane, Venus, Warnaltar. Zur Inszenierung von Natur und Kunst in den Wörlitzer Anlagen
13.00 Mittagspause und tagungsinterner Transfer nach Tiefurt
15.00 Angelika Schneider (Klassik Stiftung Weimar) — Führung in Tiefurt
16.00 Promenade mit Goethes und Corona Schroeters Die Fischerin im Park
19.30 Musikalische Abendveranstaltung im Goethe-Nationalmuseum
Moderation: Helena Langewitz und Anna Axtner-Borsutzky
• „Gewitternacht“ — Konzert mit Gunta Smirnova (Gesang) und Mikayel Balyan (Klavier)
s a m s t a g , 2 7 j u n i
9.30 Musik, Theater, Virtual Reality
Moderation: Sunna Kroy und Amelie Fenske
• Joachim Kremer (Stuttgart) — Außerhalb des Protokolls? Garten und Natur bei Hasse, Paisiello und Haydn
• Helena Langewitz (Mainz) — Deutsche Gärten auf der Opernbühne? Zur Konstruktion national konnotierter Gartenszenen in Günther von Schwarzburg (1776) und Rosamunde (1780)
• Esma Cerkovnik (Zürich) — Gärten der Täuschung. Zur Gartenszenerie in der Musik um 1800
• Alisa Winkens (Stuttgart) — Schauplatz Gartentheater. Molières Bühne für La Princesse d‘Élide (1664) in Versailles und in Virtual Reality
• Leonie Matt (Mainz) — Zwischen Théâtre d‘eau, Théâtre de fleurs und Théâtre pour jouer la Comédie. Theatrale Gartenschauplätze in der Gartentheorie des frühen 18. Jahrhunderts
• Hartmut Troll (Bundesgärten AT) — Theatrum terrae. Aspekte der Gartenkunst der Aufklärung am Beispiel der Schlossgärten Schwetzingen und Schönbrunn
Colloquium | Visualizing Antiquity: The Copy of the Copy
From ArtHist.net:
Visualizing Antiquity: On the Episteme of Early Modern Drawings and Prints V:
The Copy of the Copy … of the Copy: Techniques of Pictorial Reception of
Antiquity in the Early Modern Period
Online and in-person, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 3 July 2026
Organized by Elisabeth Décultot, Arnold Nesselrath, Cristina Ruggero, and Timo Strauch

Various early modern depictions of Harpocrates (the Greek form of the Egyptian child-god Horus).
In virtually all areas of human creativity, the outcomes—whether intentional or not—are subject to the principle of repetition. Likewise, in the history of acquisition of knowledge about antiquity, what has once been recorded in writing or in images regularly becomes the starting point for reproduction. The information gathered at the beginning of the line of transmission is henceforth copied and disseminated for as long as there is a need for it, with the copies themselves often becoming multipliers through replication. In this context, copies by no means function merely as duplicates in a subordinate hierarchical relationship to the ‘original’. In chains of transmission that are usually preserved only in fragments, and often in the absence of the lost ‘original’, copies are rather a standard of transmission and thus offer crucial insights into historical processes, illustrate methodological strategies and promote epistemic understanding by making visible the continuous engagement with ancient models. The fifth colloquium in the series, Visualizing Antiquity: On the Episteme of Early Modern Drawings and Prints focuses on diverse processes of copying in the graphic arts and examines the role of copies as powerful resources of knowledge in the context of the preservation, transmission and creative transformation of concepts of antiquity.
Admission is free, with the required registration available here. Online access will be available here.
p r o g r a m m e
12.30 Welcome and Introduction — Elisabeth Décultot (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg) and Cristina Ruggero (BBAW)
12.45 On the Theories of Copies
Chair: Elisabeth Décultot (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg)
• Arianna Farina (Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples), Reproducing Art: the Copy as an Epistemic Device
1.15 Antiquities in Academic Contexts
Chair: Tommaso Gristina (Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome)
• Lorenzo Giammattei (Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome), Learning Antiquity through Copies: Vincenzo Camuccini and the Transmission of Classical Models in Private Roman Academies
• Susanne Müller-Bechtel (Munich/Würzburg), Das akademische Aktstudium – ein wichtiger Multiplikator der bildlichen Antikenrezeption
Coffee Break
2.45 (Mis-)Interpretations of Antiquity
Chair: Timo Strauch (BBAW)
• Anna Carrarini (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich), Copy or Creature? Die druckgraphische Verfremdung der Kapitolinischen Wölfin
• Ana Sofia Pinto (Marta Rocha Moreira / CENP, FAUP, Porto), Around the ‘tripode’: The Roman Meal, Revisited
• Norbert Franken (Berlin), Fallstudien: Stiche und Zeichnungen verschollener Altertümer im kritischen Vergleich
Coffee Break
4.45 Antique Architecture in Copy Chains in Drawing and Print
Chair: Arnold Nesselrath (Rome)
• Elena Efimova (Lomonossow University, Moscow), Les copies des dessins de la Renaissance par les maîtres du cercle de Cassiano dal Pozzo dans un album du XVIIe siècle à Saint-Pétersbourg
• Ruggero De Blasi (Università degli Studi di Genova, Genoa), Representing Obelisks in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Roman Prints: Practices of Copying and Reconfiguration
• Ana Šverko (Cvito Fisković Centre and University, Split), The Copy of a Transformed Original. The Temple of Jupiter in Split and a Case of Graphic Transmission
6.15 Closing Discussion
Symposium | Imagining Britain

Thomas Gainsborough, Landscape with Sheep and Cattle on the Bank of a Stream, 1780–84, synthetic black chalk with stumping on wove paper, all four corners cut (London: Courtauld Gallery, Robert Clermont Witt, bequest, 1952).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Upcoming at the Courtauld:
Imagining Britain: Postgraduate and Early Career Research in British and Irish Art
Courtauld, Vernon Square Campus, London, 9 June 2026
Organized by Claire Ó Nualláin and Clara Shaw
A decade on from the inaugural provocation of British Art Studies Volume I, published in November 2015, in which art historians responded to the statement, “There’s No Such Thing as British Art,” a significant aspect of British art studies has involved reflection on the nature and boundaries of the field itself.
The expansion of the field’s geographic and intellectual perspectives has opened new avenues for further research. For instance, scholars have recognised the possibilities afforded to the study of British art when it is brought into dialogue with the arts of regions which have been marginalised in its discussion, including Ireland and former colonial territories. This introspection has instigated a re-examination of British collections, with major rehangs including at Tate Britain, encouraging fresh perspectives on canonical works of art and the emergence of lesser-known artists and histories from the archive. In 2025, the Courtauld Institute of Art announced the opening of the Manton Centre for British Art, a major new initiative in the field, and providing new contexts in which to explore the definition, scope and even relevance of the concept of ‘British’ art.
Centred around themes of a national taste, the construction of landscapes, visualisations of empire, and the fabrication of a ‘national’ identity, this symposium provides an interdisciplinary, cross-period forum for fruitful discussions by PhD and early career researchers on the role of visual and material culture in reinforcing, challenging and complicating the notion of ‘British.’
This symposium event is organised by Claire Ó Nualláin and Clara Shaw, supported by the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership and the Manton Centre for British Art.
p r o g r a m m e
9.30 Registration
10.00 Opening remarks
10.10 Session 1 | Cultivating Taste
Chaired by Jelena Sofronijevic
• Isobel Muir — ‘Art for the People’? An Examination of the Response to the ‘Modern Painters of To-Day’ exhibitions of 1942, curated by Lillian Browse
• Nam Huh — Whose Britain? Diasporic Moving-Image, Archives, and Contemporary Histories
• Ella Nixon — The Arts Council Collection: Redefining British Art in the 1980s
11.20 Tea and Coffee break
11.35 Session 2 | Constructing Spaces
Chaired by Jack Englehardt
• Grace Fannon — Performing Britain in John Speed’s The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine
• Eleanor Stephenson — Visualising Britishness in Industrial Landscapes of Wales
• Méabh Scahill — Germinating ‘Britain’ in Ireland?: Centring Ireland in Decimus Burton and Richard Turner’s Botanic Architecture
12.45 Lunch break
13.45 Session 3 | Conceptualising Empire
Chaired by Alisha Ma
• Abigail Spencer — The Maternal Image and the Visual Culture of Slavery, c.1788–1814
• Sarah Hutcheson — ‘Whose rich productions we so justly prize’: Naturalizing Catarina de Bragança in the Ceiling Paintings at Windsor Castle, 1678–88
• Shaheen Alikhan — Elephant and Castle: African Forts and Heraldry in the Shaping of British National Identity
14.55 Tea and coffee break
15.10 Session 4 | Creating Identities
Chaired by Emma Davis
• Christina Childs — Free Unions Locked Up: The Paradox of Resistance and the Special Branch Confiscation of a British Surrealist Journal
• Ed Kettleborough — Sunset on Stability: Class, Nation, and Masculinity in the Early Work of Derek Boshier
• Amber Butchart — Fabric of Britain: Textiles, Affect, and the Propaganda of National Identity
16.20 Closing remarks
16.30 Wine reception
Study Days | Framing the Drawing – Drawing the Frame
This week at the Bibliotheca Hertziana:
Gernsheim Study Days: Framing the Drawing – Drawing the Frame
Online and in-person, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome, 13–15 May 2026
Organized by Tatjana Bartsch, Ariella Minden, and Johannes Röll
The 2026 Gernsheim Study Days will explore the relationship between early modern drawings, frames, and framing. Papers will consider both how the symbolic connotations associated with the frame in the early modern period functioned as part of artists’ generative creative processes as a cultural technique as well as the role that the physical act of framing drawings played within histories of collecting and reception. With this focus on the medium of drawing, this conference seeks to uncover new ways to think about the myriad semiotic potentials of the frame in the making and study of early modern art. Please follow the event online at https://vimeo.com/event/5864584
w e d n e s d a y , 1 3 m a y
14.00 Welcome and Opening Remarks
• Tatjana Bartsch (BHMPI) and Ariella Minden (University of St Andrews)
14.30 Section 1
Chair: Ariella Minden
• Reinier Baarsen (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam), Who Drew Frames?
• Furio Rinaldi (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), Leonardo’s Border Lines
15.50 Coffee Break
16.10 Section 2
Chair: Silvia Massa (Kunstmuseum Basel)
• Elizabeth Merrill (Ghent University), Copy, Snip, Cut, Collage: Drawing Practices in the Workshop of Lambert Lombard
• Ludovico Maria Durante (Roma, Sovrintendenza Capitolina), Abitare la soglia: La cariatide come cornice incarnata nei disegni di Cherubino Alberti e Federico Zuccari
• Helen Barr (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main), Cornice / senza cornice / fuori cornice: Il libro de’ disegni di Francesco Morandini
t h u r s d a y , 1 4 m a y
10.00 Section 3
Chair: Francesca Borgo (BHMPI)
• Laura Moretti (University of St Andrews), Framing the Disegno: Vincenzo Borghini’s Cultural Techniques and the Construction of the Vasarian Libro
• Vera Hendriks (The Hague, RKD — Netherlands Institute for Art History), Framing Authorship: Drawn Borders and Inscribed Frames in Eighteenth-Century Dutch Artists’ Portraits
11.20 Coffee Break
11.40 Section 4
Chair: Tatjana Bartsch
• Gudula Metze (Kupferstich-Kabinett – Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden), Creative Collecting: A Group of Baroque Drawn Frames at the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett
• Elisabeth Oy-Marra (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz), Le scritture ai margini: Sebastiano Resta e la doppia incorniciatura dei disegni
13.00 Lunch Break
14.00 Section 5
Chair: Anna Magnago Lampugnani (BHMPI)
• Thomas Pöpper (Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau, Angewandte Kunst Schneeberg), Passage, Access, Depth: Mounting as Framing–The Window Mount in Albrecht Dürer and Michelangelo
• Giovanni Santucci (Università di Pisa), Mounting, Borders, and Meaning in the Talman Collection
15.20 Coffee Break
15.40 Section 6
Chair: Giorgio Marini (Roma, Istituto Centrale per la Grafica)
• Christoph Orth (Klassik Stiftung Weimar), Framing the Face: On the Role of Drawings in Lavater’s Ideas on Physiognomy
• Kristel Smentek (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), A Persian Muraqqa and Pierre-Jean Mariette’s Mounted Drawings
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no streaming
10.00–13.00 Roundtable
Chair: Johannes Röll (BHMPI)
Conference | England in Thüringen
From ArtHist.net:
England in Thüringen: Kunst — Sport — Gärten — Architektur
Schlosskapelle Reinhardsbrunn, Friedrichroda, 7–9 May 2026
Die Tagung England in Thüringen: Kunst — Sport — Gärten — Architektur widmet sich den vielfältigen kulturellen Nahtstellen zwischen Großbritannien und Thüringen vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert.
Ihr historisches Fundament liegt in den dynastischen Allianzen des Thüringer Adels mit dem englischen Königshaus: 1736 heiratete Augusta von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg den englischen Prinzen Friedrich Ludwig von Wales. Ihr Sohn bestieg als Georg III. den britischen Thron.
Adelheid von Sachsen-Meiningen wurde 1818 durch ihre Ehe mit dem späteren König Wilhelm IV. Königin von Großbritannien und Irland. Über Königin Victoria und ihren Ehemann Prinz Albert von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha wirkten diese Verbindungen im 19. Jahrhundert prägend nach. Mit deren Sohn Alfred und dem Enkel Carl Eduard regierten später “Engländer” das Herzogtum Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha. Im Unterschied zu den dynastischen Beziehungen sind die kulturellen Impulse, die mit diesen ein-hergingen, nur wenig erforscht. Umso lohnender erscheint es, diese zum ersten Mal in dieser Form in Thüringen, und zudem mit Schloss Reinhardsbrunn an einem historisch höchst bedeutungsvollen Tagungsort, zu beleuchten.
Die wissenschaftlichen Beiträge decken ein breites thematisches Spektrum ab und zeigen, wie nachhaltig der Kulturtransfer die Region prägte und welche neuen Perspektiven sich dadurch auch für die Zukunft entwickeln lassen.
Anmeldung und Information: angelika.eder@friedenstein-stiftung.de
Veranstalter
Friedenstein Stiftung Gotha, gefördert durch das Thüringer Ministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur sowie den Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Institute e.V. – ASKI aus Mitteln des Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien
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14.45 Begrüßung
• Tobias Pfeifer-Helke, Stiftungsdirektor der Friedenstein Stiftung
Grußworte
• Christian Tischner, Thüringer Minister für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur
• S.E. Andrew Mitchell, CMG, Britischer Botschafter in Deutschland
• S.H. Prinz Hubertus von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha
15.15 Eröffnungsvortrag
• Benedikt Stuchtey (Marburg) — Eminent Victorians und der Kulturtransfer zwischen Empire und Thüringen
16.15 Kaffeepause
16.30 Sektion 1 | Gärten: Ästhetik und Technik
Moderation: Angelika Eder
• Ute Däberitz (Waltershausen/Berlin) — „Durch wilde Waldparthien gebahnter Weg im englischen Geschmacke“ – Herzog Ernst II. von Sachsen-Gotha Altenburg (1745–1804) und Reinhardsbrunn als südlicher Teil des Englischen Gartens von Gotha.
• Hiram Kümper (Mannheim) — Englische Agrarinnovationen in Thüringen zwischen Skepsis und „Agromanie“, ca. 1750–1830
• Franziska Bartl (Chemnitz) — England in Coburg. Das Beispiel der englischen Musterfarmen Callenberg und Ernstfarm
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9.15 Sektion 2 | Objekte und Begegnungen: Britische Spuren in Thüringen
Moderation: Ute Däberitz
• Kerstin Volker-Saad (Gotha) — Prinzgemahl Albert von Großbritannien und Herzog Ernst II. von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha – die brüderliche Passion für außereuropäische Artefakte
• Steffen Arndt (Gotha) — „And if I was not what I am – this would have been my real home“. Die Besuche Queen Victorias und Prinz Alberts in Coburg und Gotha
10.45 Kaffeepause
11.00 Sektion 3 | Erziehung und Identitätsbildung
Moderation: Elisa Schmidt-Winkler
• Stefan A. Eick (Gotha) — „Der Apfel fällt nicht weit vom Stamm“. Beerbohm-Tree et al. – Britische Schüler an der Salzmannschule Schnepfenthal, 1784–1934
• Angelika Eder (Gotha) — „Try to be a good German”. Der junge Carl Eduard von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha zwischen England und Thüringen.
12.15 Mittagspause
13.30 Erste Möglichkeit einer Führung durch Schloss oder Park Reinhardsbrunn
14.15 Sektion 4 | Sport
Moderation: Claudia Fenske
• Sonja Fielitz (Marburg) — Sport und Mord: Pferdekrimis von Ascot bis Gotha-Boxberg
• Manuel Schwarz (Weißenfels) — “…diese Land wird sein eine sehr gute Tennisplatz for my grandmother.” – Herzog Carl Eduard und der Sport
15.30 Kaffeepause
15.45 Zweite Möglichkeit einer Führung durch Schloss oder Park Reinhardsbrunn
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9.15 Sektion 5 | Greiz und Weimar
Moderation: Timo Trümper
• Ulf Häder (Greiz) — Englischer Hochadel in Ostthüringen. Die Graphik-Sammlung Elizabeths von Großbritannien und Irland (1770–1840) im Greizer Sommerpalais
• Adam Eaker (New York) — “Die höchst interessante Engländerin”: Die Gore-Schwestern und die Weimarer Anglophilie
• Hermann Mildenberger (Weimar) — Carl Ruland (1834–1907). Ein Connaisseur zwischen Windsor und Weimar.
11.15 Kaffeepause
11.45 Sektion 6 | Meiningen
Moderation: Sonja Fielitz
• Daniela Roberts (Würzburg) — Gothic Revival in Thüringen. Jeffry Wyatvilles Entwürfe für Fürst Bernhard II
• Doris Fischer (Rudolstadt) — Die Umgestaltung von Schloss Altenstein durch Herzog Georg II. von Sachsen-Meiningen und Albert Neumeister 1888–90
• Florian Beck M.A. (Meiningen) — Beinahe fünfzig Jahre – Die Shakespeare-Rezeption am Meininger Hoftheater unter Herzog Georg II
Conference | Thinking through Tea

Arthur Devis, A Couple, Traditionally Identified as Mr. and Mrs. Hill, detail, 1750–51, oil on canvas
(New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1981.25.226).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From YCBA:
Thinking through Tea: Art, Resistance, and
Global Entanglements in the Age of American Independence
Online and in-person, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 7–8 May 2026
Marking the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, this program reconsiders American resistance not as a singular political rupture, but as a material and visual process shaped through objects, images, and everyday rituals. Rather than treating independence as an abstract ideal, it asks how freedom was experienced, negotiated, resisted, and contested through practices often far from the political stage yet deeply enmeshed in global systems of extraction and exploitation. From drinking tea and sweetening foodstuffs with sugar, to furnishing interiors with tropical woods, wearing imported or locally adapted textiles, or handling silver objects, these material acts encoded both refinement and refusal.
Across multiple sessions held over two days, the program brings objects to the center of inquiry, examining how global goods circulating through colonial households acquired new meanings. Turning to the present moment, the program questions how museums have inherited, framed, and sometimes obscured these histories. The conversations will invite reflection on the ethical responsibilities of collecting institutions as stewards of objects that bear the uneven legacies of revolution, extraction, and empire.
Join the livestream, beginning at 5.30pm ET on Thursday, May 7, and at 10am on Friday, May 8. Registration, available here, is recommended but not required.
The event is made possible through the support and partnership of the Lunder Institute for American Art, the Colby College Museum of Art.
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5:30 Roundtable 1 | Ritual, Tradition, and Fashion
This roundtable examines how everyday rituals—tea drinking, fashionable dress, and interior furnishing—became charged sites of negotiation in the decades surrounding the American Revolution. Far from being peripheral to political life, these practices were central arenas in which identity, allegiance, and resistance were actively produced and contested. Treating tea and related goods as both commodities and ritual objects, the session explores how colonial communities engaged global materials through practices of adaptation, refusal, and diplomacy. It considers how imported fashions and customs from Africa, the Caribbean, India, and England were reworked into hybrid practices that signaled loyalty, dissent, or strategic ambivalence, and in doing so challenged imperial norms.
Moderator: Mark Peterson, Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History, Yale University
Speakers
• Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Associate Professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies, Princeton University
• Catherine E. Kelly, Professor of History and Executive Director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, William & Mary
• Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, Professor of History and Associate Dean, Graduate Studies, University of California, Davis
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10.15 Roundtable 2 | Trade, Movement, and Empire
How did the movement of commodities (and the people who cultivated, transported, taxed, and consumed them) create new traditions, dependencies, and inequalities? Rather than treating American independence as a self-contained national event, this session situates it within global networks of trade, labor, and extraction, in order to think through the networks that both enabled revolutionary protest and reproduced new inequalities.
Moderator: Romita Ray, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Art History, Syracuse University, College of Arts and Sciences
Speakers
• Zara Anishanslin, Associate Professor of History and Art History | Director, Museum Studies & Public Engagement, University of Delaware
• John Stuart Gordon, Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts, Yale University Art Gallery
• Jennifer L. Anderson, Associate Professor of History, Stony Brook University
11.30 Break
11.45 Roundtable 3 | The Art of Refusal and Everyday Resistance
What does resistance look like when it happens quietly, domestically, and collectively, through everyday objects, plant commodities, and rituals rather than overt political action? By beginning with domestic refusal—such as tea boycotts and the political meaning of American tea silver—this session reframes revolutionary resistance as embedded in everyday material practice, much of it undertaken by women.
Moderator: Jennifer Van Horn, Professor, Joint Appointment with History, Director of Graduate Studies, Art History, North American Art and Material Culture, University of Delaware
Speakers
• Yota Batsaki, Executive Director and Principal Investigator, Plant Humanities Initiative, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC
• Catherine Molineux, Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
1.00 Lunch Break
2.15 Roundtable 4 | The Afterlives of Curating Resistance
The closing roundtable reflects on institutional and curatorial responsibilities. As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of independence, this session asks how American museums should curate objects of resistance that are inseparable from empire, enslavement, and extraction. What does responsible commemoration look like in material terms? How should we bring out these stories that might not be visible in the archive?
Moderator: Stephanie Sparling Williams, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art
Speakers
• Stéphanie Delamaire, Curator of European and American Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Erica Lome, Curator of Collections, Historic New England
3.45 Closing Reception
Conference | A History of Textile Cleanliness
From ArtHist.net, with registration available at the University of Bern:
A History of Textile Cleanliness: Washing and Perfuming Fabrics
from the Medieval to the Modern Period
University of Bern / Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg, 27–29 May 2026
Organized by Moïra Dato and Érika Wicky
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University of Bern, Hauptgebaüde, Kuppelraum
13.00 Arrival and coffee
13.30 Introduction by Moïra Dato and Érika Wicky
14.15 Panel 1 | Cultural and Social Attitudes to Cleaning and Textile Care
Moderation: Torsten Korte (Universität Bern)
• Isabella Campagnol (Istituto Marangoni) — Doing the Laundry in 18th-Century Venice: Washing in a City on Water, but without Water
• Marie Charvet (Nantes Université) — Whiteness vs Preservation: Laundresses and Housewives in 19th-Century Urban France Public Washhouses
15.30 Coffee Break
16.00 Panel 2 | The Scent of Cleanliness
Moderation: Érika Wicky
• Océane Fontaine Cioffi (Université de Tours) — The Scent of Clean: Perfuming Linen between Health, Sensuality, and Material Care in 16th-Century Europe
• Pauline Devriese (Universiteit Gent/Modemuseum Hasselt) — The Scent of Dress: Tracing the Separation of Scent and Dress in Daily Hygiene and Health Practices from the 16th to 18th Centuries in Western Europe
• Lucille Lefrang (Université Grenoble Alpes) and Olivier David (Institut Lavoisier/Paris Saclay) — The Contemporary ‘Toxic’ Smell of Clean: The Example of Galaxolide
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Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg
10.00 Panel 3 | Techniques and Practices of Textile Cleaning
Moderation: Jean-Alexandre Perras (Sorbonne Université / Cellf)
• Vendy Hoppe (University of Manchester/The Delmas Foundation) — Too Precious to Wash? The Care and Cleaning of Velvets in Early Modern Europe
• Audrey Colonel-Coquet (Université Grenoble-Alpes/LARHRA) — The Cleanliness of Gloves in the 19th Century: From Home Cleaning to Washable Gloves
• Eloïse Richard (Université de Genève) — Behind the White Coat: Cleaning and Sterilizing Hospital Textiles in the Early 20th Century
12.00 Lunch
13.30 Visit of the conservation workshop and storage of the Abegg-Stiftung
14.30 Panel 4 | Cleaning in Textile Conservation
Moderation: Regula Schorta (Abegg-Stiftung)
• Bettina Niekamp (Abegg-Stiftung) — Textile Cleanliness: Some Case Studies of Conservation/Restoration Treatments of Soiled Linen Damasks, Burial Textiles, Tapestries, and Liturgical Textiles
• Johanna Nilsson (Göteborg University), Jan Pettersson (Göteborg University), and Karin Tetteris (Armémuseum) — Traces of Environment and Humans: Interdisciplinary Studies of Dirt on Historical Textiles
• Anna Robinson (University of Lincoln) — In the Usual Fashion: Learning from and Deciphering 19th-Century Laundering Instructions
16.15 Coffee break
16.30 Visit of the permanent and temporary exhibition of the Abegg-Stiftung
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University of Bern, Hauptgebaüde, Kuppelraum
9,00 Panel 5 | The Actors and Knowledge of Cleaning
Moderation: Raphaël Morera (CNRS/EHESS)
• Olga Arenga (Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata) — From Soap to Scent: Garment Care and Daily Labor in the Barberini Archive
• Sara van Dijk (Rijksmuseum) and Danielle van den Heuvel (Universiteit Utrecht) — White and Bright: Washing Linens in the Dutch Republic
• Santosh Kumar Rai (University of Delhi) — From Flowers to Chemicals: Textile Cleanliness and Changes in the Handloom Industry of Colonial North India
• Monica Klasing Chen (Universität Heidelberg) — Virtue or Science: Washing and Caring for Textiles in Early-Modern and Modern China
11.00 Coffee break
11.30 Panel 6 | Religious Rituals and Practices of Cleanliness
Moderation: Corinne Mühlemann (Universität Bern)
• Juliette Calvarin (Humbold-Universität zu Berlin) — ‘Lynin cloth of witlé coloure’: Veronica’s Veil, Linen Vestments, and the Laundress
• Patricia Blessing (Stanford University) — Textile Cleanliness in Islamic Law: From Hadith to Ottoman Fatwas
12.30 Lunch
14.00 Panel 7 | Dirt and the Absence of Cleaning
Moderation: Sasha Rossman (Universität Bern)
• Sylvia Houghteling (Bryn Mawr College) — The Soil of Dyes: Ground, Water, and Scent in the Making of Early Modern South Asian Textiles
• Léon Rochard (Sorbonne-Université) — ‘The world is like this cloth, misleading and fake’: Clean, Dirty Textiles, and the Question of Representation in the 17th-Century Netherlands
• Alison Matthews David (Toronto Metropolitan University) — Offenders: Cleanliness and the Scent of Crime
• Julia Guarneri (University of Cambridge) — Dry Clean Only: Dealing with Unwashable Clothing in the 20th-Century United States
16.00 Final discussion and closing remarks
Scientific Committee
• Olivier David (Institut Lavoisier / Paris-Saclay)
• Raphaël Morera (CNRS-EHESS)
• Corinne Mühlemann (Universität Bern)
• Helen Wyld (National Museum Scotland)



















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