Enfilade

From the University of York:

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

Organized by Claudine Van Hensbergen

Histories of British Art is the third and final conference organised as part of  Court, Country, City: British Art 1660-1735, a major research project run by the University of York and Tate Britain, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Held at the King’s Manor in York, this three-day conference includes a drinks reception at York City Art Gallery and a visit to Beningbrough Hall (built 1716) for a private viewing of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection of over a hundred artworks from the period.

Keynote speakers: Malcolm Baker, Diana Dethloff, Charles Ford, and David Solkin

Conference spaces are limited and we therefore encourage early booking to avoid disappointment. For any other queries please email email clare.bond@york.ac.uk

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P R O G R A M M E (more…)

From St Andrews:

Emblems of Nationhood: Britishness 1707–1901, A Multidisciplinary Conference
University of St Andrews, 10-12 August 2012

National identity is a central point of enquiry that is repeatedly called upon in contemporary social and political rhetoric. Our conference, Emblems of Nationhood, 1707–1901, will address the roots of this theme by discussing depictions of Britain and Britishness in literature, philosophy, and art between the Act of Union in 1707 and the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. Over the course of this multidisciplinary conference, we aim to explore how expressions of nationalism have moulded both critical perspectives on national identity and their creative products.

Discussing emblems of nationhood in 2012 is a fitting way to mark the twentieth anniversary of Linda Colley’s seminal account of Britishness, Britons: Forging the Nation, and coincides with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Several broad questions could potentially  be explored in the course of the conference: What did Britishness mean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and how was it represented and perceived? To what extent is nationalism tied with military events and empire building? How “British” was Britain before the launch of the Empire? How did concepts of nationalism enter the public consciousness, both within the British Isles and abroad? What is the impact of artistic and cultural depictions of Britain and Britishness in domestic and international contexts? How can these historical ideas of Britishness enhance our contemporary understanding of the concepts of nationalism and national identity?

Speakers include: Colin Kidd, Emma Major, Linda Colley, and Calum Colvin

Details on the full programme and registration are available at the conference website.

From the Royal Society’s website:

Curiously Drawn: Early Modern Science as a Visual Pursuit
Royal Society, London, 21-22 June 2012

Science produces some of the most intriguing and arresting images in modern culture, from wildlife photographs to scanning electron microscope images. Yet the historical links between scientific research and visual representation are not always apparent. This conference brings together historians of science and art in order to examine the relationship between science and visual culture in the first hundred years of the Royal Society. We hope that the meeting will demonstrate how art, artists, and print-makers enabled creativity and innovation in science, and the extent to which naturalists and natural philosophers, in turn, transformed visual resources and strategies into something of their own.

This meeting is supported by the AHRC as part of an international network on ‘Origins of science as a visual pursuit: the case of the early Royal Society’. Relevant printed books and manuscripts from the Royal Society’s collections will be on display during the meeting.

Registration details are available here»

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Thursday, 21 June

10:00  Registration and coffee
10:30  Sachiko Kusukawa (University of Cambridge), Welcome and Introduction
11:00  Paula Findlen (Stanford University), The Specimen and the Image: John Woodward, Agostino Scilla, and the Depiction of Fossils
12:00  Kim Sloan (The British Museum), Sir Hans Sloane’s Pictures: The Science of Connoisseurship or the Art of Collecting?
1:00  Lunch
2:00  Domenico Bertoloni-Meli (Indiana University, Bloomington), Disease in the Philosophical Transactions
3:00  Urs B. Leu (Zentralbibliothek Zürich), Swiss Mountains and English Scholars: Johann Jacob Scheuchzer’s Contributions to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
4:00 Tea
4:30  Scott Mandelbrote (University of Cambridge), Illustrating the History of the Earth
5:30  Opportunity to view the exhibition
6:00  Public lecture by John Barrow (FRS), Pictures, Images, and Visualization in Science

Friday June 22

9:30  Nathan Flis (Oxford University), Barlow’s Pursuits: Pictures of Birds and Beasts before the Era of Modern Scientific Illustration
10:30  Coffee
11:00  Lorraine Daston (Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin), Super-Vision: Weather Watching across Space and through Time at the Early Royal Society and Académie Royale des Sciences
12:00  Matthew Hunter (McGill University), Joshua Reynolds, the Royal Society, and the Temporally-Evolving Chemical Object in the British Enlightenment
1:00  Lunch
2:00  Michael Hunter (Birkbeck, University of London, Emeritus), Commentary
3:00  Further avenues of research

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Correction: An earlier version of this posting, following a preliminary programme, did not include the title for John Barrow’s talk, and Matthew Hunter’s presentation was described as ‘Commentary’.

Colour in the 17th and 18th Centuries: Connexions between Science, Art, and Technology
Technische Universität, Berlin, 28-30 June 2012

Organized by Magdalena Bushart, Reinhold Reith, and Friedrich Steinle

Knowledge of how to use, combine, analyse, and understand colour has always been widely distributed, if not dispersed. Painters and architects, dyers and printers, pigment producers and merchants, physicists and chemists, natural historians and physiologist, among others, have been dealing with colour, its properties, mixtures, harmonies, meanings and uses. For long periods, different communities that were concerned with colour and the knowledge about it did not interact? at least so it appears.

One of the first to come up with fundamental claims concerning colour in full generality was Newton whose 1704 Opticks indeed quickly became a common reference point for most of those who reflected on colour. Throughout the 18th century, however, the reactions to Newton remained wildly controversial, from unrestricted appraisal via indifference to open and fierce opposition. Several attempts to reconcile Newton’s account with practitioner’s knowledge remained unsuccessful, and this was still the case in early 19th century, when the physiology of colour perception opened yet another field of colour research. The central aim of the conference is to bring together scholars who are interested in how the various strands of colour use and knowledge were interwoven and connected.

Technische Universität Berlin, Architekturgebäude, Room A 053, Straße des 17. Juni 150/152, 10623 Berlin,

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P R O G R A M M E

Thursday, 28 June

12:00  Registration

13:00  Welcome

13:30  Sarah Lowengard (New York), Analogies, Adaptations and Disorientations in the Mechanization of Color-Printing

14:30  Coffee Break

15:00  PRACTICES Chair: Reinhold Reith (Salzburg)
• Ad Stijnman (Amsterdam) and Elizabeth Upper (Cambridge), Early Modern Colour Printing 1600-1700
• Susan Wager (New York), Coloring the Rococo: Intermedial Reproduction and the Invention of Color in Eighteenth-Century France
• Carole Blumenfeld (Rome), Colors for Paintings Sold at Market in Rome and Paris

17:00  Coffee Break

17:30  COLOURS IN NATURE Chair: Magdalena Bushart (Berlin)
• Karin Leonhard (Berlin), Painting the Rainbow: Colour in Nature versus Colour in Art
• Ulrike Kern (Los Angeles), Broken Colours: A Key Concept in Seventeenth-Century Colour Theory

18:50: Snacks

20:00  PUBLIC LECTURE — Jenny Balfour-Paul (Exeter), Indigo: Not Just a Colour

Friday, 29 June

9:15  Alan Shapiro (Minneapolis), Newton’s Theory of Color and Painters’ Primaries

10:15  Coffee Break

10:30  COLOUR AND NEWTONIANISM Chair: Friedrich Steinle (Berlin)
• Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis (Twente), Perception of Colours by Different Eyes
• Gerhard Wiesenfeldt (Melbourne), Practitioners’ Materials and Optical Theories: Colour in Dutch Eighteenth-Century Natural Philosophy
• Heiner Krellig (Berlin/ Venice), Algarotti, Newton, and the Advantage of Their Theory of Light for Painterly Practice

12:30  Lunch Break

14:00  NATURAL PHILOSOPHY BEFORE NEWTON Chair: Sven Dupré (Berlin)
• Tawrin Baker (Bloomington), Colour in Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy Textbooks
• David Brafman (Los Angeles), Broken Colours: A Key Concept in Seventeenth-Century Colour Theory

15:20  Coffee Break

15:40  PRACTICE AND SYSTEM Chair: Lissa Roberts (Twente)
• Sachiko Kusukawa (Cambridge), The Colour Chart of Richard Waller, FRS, 1686
• Bruno Belhoste (Paris), Dyeing at the Gobelins in the Eighteenth Century: The Challenge of Quémizet

17:00  Coffee Break

17:20  COLOURS AFTER NEWTON Chair: Sven Dupré (Berlin)
• Robin Rehm (Basel), ‘Beauty and Perfection of the Pure Colours’: Anton Raphael Mengs and the Singularity of Yellow, Red, Blue
• Olaf L. Müller (Berlin), Border Spectra in the Atmospheric Colours of Hokusai and Hiroshige?

Saturday, 30 June

9:15  Ulrike Boskamp (Berlin), Primary Colours in the Eighteenth Century: Concepts and Uses

10:15  Coffee Break

10:30  MEANINGS Chair: Regina Lee Blaszczyk (Philadelphia)
• Corinne Thépaut-Cabasset (London), Words of Fashion: Words of Colours in Parisian Textile Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
• Theresa M. Kelley (Madison, WI), Fugitive and Variable: Color, Material Practice, and Aesthetic Contingency
• Romana Filzmoser (Florence), Color Knowledge and Color Practice in English Cosmetic Treatises of the Seventeenth Century

12:30  Lunch Break

14:00  ARTISTS’ ACCOUNTS I Chair: Ulrich Heinen (Wuppertal)
• Audrey Adamczak (Paris), A Dry Coloured Powdery Medium: The Art of Making Pastel and the Artistic and Technical Literature in France Ancien Régime
• Matthias Vollmer (Berlin), Disegno versus Colorito: Science versus Illusion?

15:20  Coffee Break

15:40  ARTISTS’ ACCOUNTS II Chair: Ulrich Heinen (Wuppertal)
• Ioana Magureanu (Bucharest), Colour: From Damnation in the Scientific Discourse to Its Recovery in Art Theory
• Petra Schuster (Berlin), How Knowledge of Color Affected Value Judgments in Siglo de Oro Painting Technique Innovation: Carducho’s Diálogos de la Pintura (1633) in Comparison to Pacheco’s Arte de la Pintura (1649)

17:00  Coffee Break

17:20  BLUE! Chair: Lissa Roberts (Twente)
• Aida Yuen Wong (Boston), Kingfisher Blue in Ming China
• Francois Delamare (Paris) and Bernard Monasse (Paris), Dyeing with Berliner Blue: A Jointed French Venture

18:40  Closing Remarks

From Tate Britain (as noted at BARS) . . .

Contested Views: Visual Culture and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
Tate Britain, London, 19-20 July 2012

Joseph Mallord William Turner, “The Field of Waterloo,” exhibited 1818

In July 2012, in advance of commemoration of the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, Tate Britain will be hosting a two-day conference exploring the impact of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars on worldwide visual culture, from the outbreak of the pan-European conflict with France in 1792 to the present day. Centred on themed panels, plenary lectures and workshops, this cross-disciplinary conference will promote knowledge and understanding of the range of ways in which the ‘first total war’ has been mediated in visual cultures, not only in Britain and continental Europe but throughout the world. Confirmed plenary speakers: Mary Favret, Gillian
Russell, Susan Siegfried, Paul White.

From UCL (as noted at BARS) . . .

Activating Stilled Lives: The Aesthetics and Politics of Specimens on Display
UCL History of Art Department, London, 17-18 May 2012

Conference of the AHRC Research Network, ‘The Culture of Preservation’

The past twenty years saw an explosion of exhibitions fathoming the relations between art and science as well as numerous refurbishments of natural history or former colonial museums. Many of these displays and gallery transformations mobilised specimens, be it taxidermied animals or preserved human body parts. Objects were put into new contexts opening up their meanings, others disappeared in storage or travelled back to the countries where they were once collected. The conference will address the challenges institutions face when dealing with formerly living entities and consider the aesthetics and politics of their display. The idea is to discuss the use of specimens in temporary exhibitions, museums or university collections and the role curators, art and artists have been playing in the transformation of these spaces. We would also like to consider how preserved specimens have changed through the altering contexts in which they have been displayed: One could name the initial transformation of organisms into objects, the more recent re-definition of pathological specimens as human remains, or the dramatic rearrangements that took place when natural history, anthropology or anatomy collections (many dating from the nineteenth century) were updated – coinciding with a shift in audiences, from specialists to a broader public. Historical displays were often significantly altered, or even destroyed and replaced by „techy“ but at times also by sentimental, „post-modern“ installations still awaiting a critical assessment.

Beyond that, the question of preservation shall be considered in a more expanded sense, as this subject area offers a unique opportunity to reflect more broadly on issues of conservation and their ethics and to raise a variety of questions such as: How and why do various cultures preserve elements of what is considered as nature? How does this relate to environmental notions of conservation and extinction? Should flawed specimens be disposed of? Can museums as a whole be considered cultural preserves? Should we preserve the preserves? And last but not least: Do we really need to embalm everything?

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T H U R S D A Y ,  1 7  M A Y  2 0 1 2

UCL, JZ Young Lecture Theatre, Anatomy Building, Gower Street

2.30 Mechthild Fend & Petra Lange-Berndt: Exhibiting Preserves

Session One: Reassembling

Chair: Sam Alberti (Director of Museums and Archives, The Royal College of Surgeons of England)

3.00 Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Historian of Science, Berlin): Preparations Revisited

3.45 Rose Marie San Juan (Art Historian, London): Bones in Transit: the Re-Animation of Human Bone in Early Modern Cabinets of Display

4.30 John MacKenzie (Professor Emeritus of Imperial History, Lancaster): The Natural World and Imperial Legitimation: Hunting, Trophies, Taxidermy and Museums

5.15 Tea break

5.45 Robert Marbury (Artist / Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermy, Baltimore): Personal Computers as the New Wunderkammer and the Rise of Rogue Taxidermy

6.30 Reception at the Grant Museum of Zoology, University College of London (Rockefeller Building, University College London, 21 University Street, London WC1E 6DE)

F R I D A Y ,  1 8  M A Y  2 0 1 2

UCL, Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, Wilkins Building, South Wing, Gower Street (access via Gower Street / Main Quadrangle or Gordon Street)

Session Two: Handling

Chair: Mechthild Fend (Art Historian, London)

10.00 Petra Lange-Berndt (Art Historian, London): Subsculpture: Assembling a Museum of Attractions

10.45 Steve Baker (Artist and Art Historian, Norfolk): Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead

11.30 Tea Break

12.00 Angela Matyssek (Art Historian, Marburg / Maastricht): “Museumlives”: Mould, Decay and the History of the Object

12.45 Lunch break

Session Three: Displaying

Chair: Bergit Arends (Curator Contemporary Art, The Natural History Museum, London)

14.30 Panel discussion on “Curating Specimens” with Claude d’Anthenaise (Director, Musée de la chasse et de la nature, Paris), Christine Borland (Artist, Glasgow), Lisa O’Sullivan (Director, Center for the History of Medicine, New York Academy of Medicine), Johannes Vogel (Director, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin)

16.00 Tea break

16.30 Anke te Heesen (Historian of Science, Berlin): Displaying the Infinite Amount

17.15 Nélia Dias (Anthropologist, Lisbon): The Fate of Human Remains from the Musée de l’homme to the Musée du Quai Branly

18.00 Final discussion

Film Shows

A series of related films will be shown during the breaks. Details and links are available at Preserves on Film

The event is open and free for all, but please register with pandora.syperek.09@ucl.ac.uk

Abstracts of papers for the conference

From the Catesby Commemorative Trust:

Mark Catesby’s Third Centennial in America: Celebrating His Impact
Richmond, Washington, D.C., and Charleston, 4-9 November 2012

Attendees may purchase tickets for the Virginia, Washington, D.C. and Charleston days individually or as a package (ticket prices include tax-deductible contributions to the Catesby Commemorative Trust and hopefully other non-profits involved in the program). The following covers the program as it now stands and may be modified as appropriate. With the few exceptions noted, all locations and speakers are confirmed.

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Sunday, 4 November 2012 — Richmond

Accommodations at the four-star Omni Hotel

5:30 pm  Wilton House Museum

• Welcome by Laura Towers, President of NSCDA – VA
• Moderator: Robert Strohm, Executive Director, Wilton House Museum
• Introduction by Cynthia Neal, Producer/Director and showing of The Curious Mister Catesby (2008)
• The museum will display a concurrent exhibition of Catesby’s etchings (25 October 2012 — 3 February 2013)
• Cocktail reception

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Monday, 5 November 2012 — Richmond / Washington, D.C.

Wilton House Museum

9:00 am  Catesby’s Influences and Sources

• “Mark Catesby and His Botanical Forerunners,” Dr. Karen Reeds, Independent Scholar (scheduled)
• “William Dampier,” Diana and Michael Preston, authors of  A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier
• “Maria Sibylla Merian: Pioneering Naturalist, Artist, and Inspiration for Catesby,” Florence F. J. M. Pieters, Faculty of Biology, University of Amsterdam, and Dr. Kay Etheridge, Professor of Biology, Gettysburg College

10:30  Break

10:45  Catesby’s World

• “England,” Dr. Janet Browne, Chair, Aramont Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University
• “Virginia,” Dr. Sarah Meacham, Associate Professor of History, Virginia Commonwealth University
• “Carolina,” Dr. Suzanne Linder Hurley, Independent Scholar, Davidson, NC
• “Bahamas,” Dr. Robert Robertson, Curator of Malacology, Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences

1:00  Lunch at the Commonwealth Club

2:30  Tour of the Kent-Valentine House, which has a large collection of Catesby’s etchings

Richmond locations will include floral arrangements of plants illustrated by Catesby

3:00  Chartered coach transfer to four-star Hotel Monaco in Washington, D.C.

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Tuesday, 6 November 2012 — Washington, D.C.  

 9:30 am  Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Baird Auditorium, Museum of Natural History. Baird sessions open for free to the public

Welcome: Senior Smithsonian and GCA officials

Moderator: Dr. Nancy Gwinn, Director, Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Catesby’s Art     

• “Catesby’s Drawings,” Henrietta McBurney Ryan, Keeper of Fine and Decorative Arts, Eton College, formerly Deputy Keeper, Royal Library, Windsor Castle, and author of a forthcoming book on Catesby’s original paintings
• “The Natural History: Its Printing and Publication,” Leslie Overstreet, Curator, Natural History Rare Books, Smithsonian Institution Libraries
• “Catesby’s Etchings: His Compositional Interests and the Birth of Environmental Science,” Dr. Amy Meyers, Director, Yale Center for British Art

12:00  Ticket holders’ viewing of the Smithsonian’s first edition of The Natural History and other rare natural history books; lunch at the Metropolitan Club

1:30  Catesby’s Science

• “Ornithology (including bird migration),” Shepard Krech III, Professor Emeritus, Brown University
• “Botany,” Dr. Steven A. Harris, Druce Curator of the Oxford University Herbaria (scheduled – possibly given by his delegate)
• “Zoology (other than ornithology),” Dr. Aaron Bauer, Professor & Gerald M. Lemole Chair in Integrative Biology, Villanova University
• “Catesby’s Economic and Ethnobotany,” Dr. W. Hardy Eshbaugh, Professor of Botany Emeritus, Miami University, Oxford, OH

6:00  United States Botanic Garden, Washington, D.C.

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Wednesday, 7 November 2012 – Washington, D.C. / Charleston

 Personal transportation to Charleston, SC to be arranged by attendees

Accommodation at the five-star Sanctuary Hotel, on Kiawah Island

Customized Kiawah Island Nature Tours

Banquet dinner at Kiawah Island with keynote speaker, Sir Ghillean Prance, FRS, Director (retired) of the Royal (Kew) Botanic Gardens, previously Research Director and Vice-President of the New York Botanical Garden as well as President of the UK Linnean Society, and currently Scientific Director of the Eden Project

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Thursday, 8 November 2012 — Charleston

Coach transfers from Kiawah to Charleston, within town, and return to Kiawah

9:30 am  Addlestone Library Rare Book Collection, College of Charleston

• Welcome to Charleston: The Honorable Joseph P. Riley, Jr., Mayor of Charleston
• Introduction of speakers: John Cay III, Chairman of Friends of the Addlestone Library
• “Catesby The Explorer,” Dr. James L. Reveal, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland and Adjunct Professor of Plant Biology, Cornell University

10:30  Break

Catesby’s Impact on Natural History

• “Linnaeus and the Relevance of His Use of Catesby’s Botanical Work,” Dr. Charlie Jarvis, Botany Department, Natural History Museum, London
• “Linnaeus and His Use of Catesby’s Zoological Work,” Dr. Kraig Adler, Professor & Department Chair, Department of Neurology & Behavior, Cornell University
• “The Naturalists Who Came after Catesby,” Judith Magee, Special Collections Curator,  Library & Archives, Natural History Museum, London and author of Art and Nature: Three Centuries of Natural History Art from around the World

Opportunity to view a second edition Natural History, Alexander Wilson and Audubon double elephant folio (Leslie Overstreet will be available for all viewings of copies of the Natural History to point out their salient features; no two are exactly the same)

1:00  Gibbes Museum of Art

This section of the program honors the memory of Chris Hammond, long-term Director of the Trust to whom it owes much; truly a gentleman and a good friend.

Lunch in the museum garden; viewing the museum collections

3:00  The Charleston Library Society (founded in 1748)

• “The Bartram-Catesby Connection,” Joel T. Fry, Curator, Bartram’s Garden, Philadelphia
• “Catesby and Eighteenth-Century Gardening,” Mark Laird, Senior Lecturer, Department of Landscape Architecture, Harvard University
• Viewing of second and third editions of The Natural History

Visit to the Preservation Society of Charleston

6:00  Cocktail receptions at the historic Miles Brewton House and William Gibbes House

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Friday, 9 November 2012 – Charleston

Optional (currently being developed)

• Catesby-Country Immersion Tour at Middleton Place, including fresh-water swamp, salt marsh, rice fields, ruins of Catesby-era house, free flying demonstration by Charleston Center for Birds of Prey of raptors painted by Catesby plus viewing another first edition of Mark Catesby’s Natural History
• Boat tour of the ACE Basin (arrangements by KIGR)
• Tour of Colonial-Era Charleston Gardens (Preservation Society of Charleston) with an opportunity to see the Charleston Museum’s first edition Catesby’s and related materials
• Golf on Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course (site of the 2012 PGA)
• Kiawah Island Nature Tours

Notwithstanding the focus on literature, there are art historical offerings, including a talk by Pierre-Henri Biger on hand fans, “L’éventail, moyen de propagation des oeuvres littéraires ou théâtrales.” -CH

Colloquium: La Médiatisation du Littéraire
Bordeaux 3 University, 24-25 May 2012

“Médiatisation”  is a term of recent onset, which refers to a reality very contemporary to societies where mass dissemination of information is based on various and often sophisticated technical supports. Literature today, with his “rentrée littéraire,” its prizes schedule, its hypersensitive writers or its institutional celebrations, has become one of the media phenomena. This seems obvious in a world so marked by immediacy of information, constant renewal of astonishment and escalation of surprises, albeit artificial. Applying this term to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is therefore primarily a voluntary anachronism, intended to destabilize our vision of our literary past and to provoke a reassessment of the emphasis on literature in the public and social life of classical Europe.

This colloquium is organized by the centre Europe classique  (CLARE-Cultures Littératures Arts Représentations Esthétiques)

The programme is available here»