Conference on Philippe de La Hire
From the INHA website:
Colloque: Philippe de La Hire entre Architecture et Sciences
Paris, 24 — 26 June 2010
Philippe de La Hire (1640-1718), destiné à la peinture par son père Laurent de La Hyre (1606-1656), se tourna, à partir de 1664, vers le domaine scientifique en manifestant des intérêts très diversifiés puisque, cartographe du royaume avec Picard (1678-82), il pratiqua aussi la géométrie, l’hydraulique, la gnomonique, la mécanique et l’astronomie.
Entré à l’Académie royale des sciences en 1678, il fut nommé professeur à l’Académie royale d’architecture en 1687, sans jamais avoir fait oeuvre d’architecture, et fut très actif dans les deux institutions. Ce savant universel figure dans toutes les biographies d’hommes de sciences et son activité de peintre a été récemment remise à jour par Madeleine Pinault-Sorensen. Mais son rôle de professeur à l’Académie d’architecture a été encore peu étudié.
Ce colloque réunissant historiens des sciences, historiens de l’architecture et historiens de l’art permettra de mieux mesurer la place de cet homme dans les champs variés dans lesquels il se distingua et de le confronter à ses contemporains Picard, Cassini et Mariotte. Il mettra aussi en exergue les liens profonds qui unissent l’architecture et les sciences à la fin du XVIIe siècle et dans les premières années du XVIIIe siècle.
Cette manifestation est organisée avec le soutien du laboratoire Géométrie-Structure- Architecture de l’Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture Paris-Malaquais, de l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art, de l’Académie d’architecture, du département d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie de l’université de Nantes, du Max Planck Institute for the History of Science et de l’Association Edoardo Benvenuto.
PDF file of the conference program
Upcoming Conference in Paris: Used Things
Recycling, Waste and Luxury: The Afterlife of Used Things in the Long 18th Century
Université Paris Diderot, UFR Charles V – 10, rue Charles V 75004 Paris, 22-23 June 2010
Organized by Ariane Fennetaux, Amélie Junqua, and Sophie Vasset
Tuesday, 22 June
9:00 Registration and coffee
9:15 Ariane Fennetaux and Amélie Junqua, Introduction
9:45-11:15 Knowledge, Science and Recycling – Claire Gallien
- Simon Werrett (University of Washington), Remaking natural knowledge: recycling in the history of science and medicine
- Sophie Vasset (Université Paris-Diderot), Recycling cases in 18th-century medical treatises
11:30-13:00 Recycling 18th-Century Parisian Walls – Charlotte Guichard
- Allan Potofsky (Université Paris-Diderot), Revolutionary recycling and civic architecture: the conseil des bâtiments civils and the Use and Abuse of the Past in France, 1795-1815
- Noémie Etienne (Université de Genève), Du mur au musée: transformations matérielles et symboliques des peintures à Paris autour de 1775
14:30-16:00 Material Recycling (I) – Amélie Junqua
- Geoffrey Day (Winchester College), Recycling in the library
- David Humphrey (Royal College of Art, London), A portal to change and innovation: recycling and the 18th-century English jewelry trade
16:30-18:00 Material Recycling (II) – Ariane Fennetaux
- Sara Pennell (Roehampton University), ‘…for a crack or flaw despis’d’ : understanding ceramic ‘semi-durability’ in the first half of the long 18th century
- Fiona McDonald (University College London), Weaving and wool: materiality through woollen blankets in 18th-century Aotearoa/New Zealand
Wednesday, 23 June
9:15-10:45 Waste – Robert Mankin
- Tim Cooper (University of Exeter), Critical perspectives from Marxism on the uses of waste and recycling in the long 18th century
- Sabine Barles (Université St Denis Paris 8), La valorisation des excréta urbains en France à la fin du 18ème siècle
11:15-12:45 Royal Recyclings – Natacha Coquery
- Corinne Thépaut-Cabasset (Château de Versailles), Le grand livre des pierreries du roi: gestion, entretien et recyclage des bijoux pendant le règne de Louis XIV
- Olivia Fryman (Historic Royal Palaces and Kingston University), ‘Cleaning and new beautifying’: strategies of repair and reuse in the English Royal Wardrobe, 1689-1760
14:15-15:45 Commerce and Recycling (I) – Jon Stobart
- Arlene Leis (University of York), Repetition, recycling and imitation: images of high art in Sarah Sophia Banks’s collection of trade cards
- Natacha Coquery (Université de Nantes), La diffusion sociale des biens à Paris au 18ème siècle: la boutique, carrefour entre le luxe, le demi-luxe et l’occasion
16:15-18:30 Commerce and Recycling (II) – Sara Pennell
- Barbara Lasic (Victoria and Albert Museum), Recycling and re-fashioning the grand-siècle in Paris and London, 1789-1814
- Ilja Van Damme (University of Antwerp), The decline and the fall of the second hand guild in the Southern Netherlands: material culture, institutional change and the labour market, 1650-1850
- Jon Stobart (Northampton University), Luxury and country house sales in England, c.1750-1830
Exhibition and Conference on Louise Élisabeth of France
Fuochi di gioia e lacrime d’argento: An Exhibition Commemorating Louise Élisabeth of France
on the 250th Anniversary of Her Death
Palazzo Bossi Bocchi, Parma, 11 April — 16 May 2010
Louis-Michel Van Loo, "Louise Élisabeth, Duchess of Parma"
The oldest daughter of King Louis XV, Louise Élisabeth of France (1727-1759) was married in 1739 to Prince Philip of Spain (son of Philip V) at the age of 12 (she gave birth to her first child at 14). Following the War of the Austrian Succession, Philip and Élisabeth became Duke and Duchess of Parma. The exhibition includes a posthumous portrait of Élisabeth painted by Jean-Marc Nattier (now in a private collection), along with the more familiar portrait by Louis-Michel van Loo and a selection of prints and drawings from the Cariparma Foundation.
In addition to the exhibition, in September Parma will host an international conference dedicated to Louise Élisabeth and the first decade of Bourbon rule in Parma from 1749 to 1759. Organized by Professors Charles Mambriani (University of Parma) and Gianfranco Fiaccadori (University of Milan), the conference will explore the deep historical, artistic, and cultural ties between Parma and France.
Happy (Belated) Birthday, Dr. Sloane!
In the midst of the disruptions from the volcanic ash cloud, I failed to note the birthday of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), who would have turned 350 years this past Friday (April 16). The physician was an important naturalist, bibliophile, and collector. As outlined in his will, the bequest of his vast collections to the nation provided the foundation of the British Museum. To mark the anniversary, a series of events have been organized at the British Museum, London’s Natural History Museum, and the Old Operating Theatre Museum, as well as in the Northern Ireland village of Killyleagh, where Sloane was born. Although most events took place last week, in June a major conference will be held at the British Library (see below for the schedule). For whatever it’s worth, I have a hunch that Sloane would have been thrilled to have his birthday marked by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull -C.H.
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In addition, the Sloane Printed Books Catalogue, is an outstanding new online resource. As noted on the BL’s website:
Sloane’s library of approximately 40,000 volumes, now dispersed within the collections of the British Library and other research libraries, is being identified. Bibliographical descriptions are enhanced with information about pre-Sloane provenance, annotations and other copy-specific information. The information accumulated is being made available through a web-accessible database, the Sloane Printed Books Catalogue, maintained by the British Library. The work of this project will form a significant research resource for medical, scientific and intellectual historians of the period.
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From Books to Bezoars: An International Conference Celebrating the 350th Anniversary of the Birth of Sir Hans Sloane, Physician, Naturalist and Collector
British Library, London, 7-8 June 2010
MONDAY, JUNE 7
9:30 Registration
10:00 Plenary Session
- James Delbourgo (Rutgers University), Collecting Sir Hans Sloane
10:45 Coffee
11:05 Sloane’s Origins, Life and Work
- Mark Purcell (National Trust), “Settled in the north of Ireland”, or Where did Sloane come from?
- Pratik Chakrabarti (University of Kent), The Voyages of Hans Sloane: A colonial history of gentlemanly science
- Lisa Smith (University of Saskatchewan), Sir Hans Sloane: Physician of the family
12:15 Lunch
1:10 Specimens and Classification
- Charlie Jarvis, Mark Spencer, and Rob Huxley (Natural History Museum), Sloane’s plant specimens at the Natural History Museum
- Savithri Preetha Nair (Independent Scholar), Botanising on the Coromandel coast in the seventeenth century
- Jill Cook (British Museum), Sloane, elephants and climate change
3:00 Tea
3:20 Sloane and the West Indies
- James Robertson (University of the West Indies), Knowledgeable readers- Jamaican critiques of Hans Sloane’s botany
- Julie Chun Kim (Fordham University), The African and Amerindian sources of Atlantic medicine
- Wendy Churchill (University of New Brunswick), Hans Sloane’s perspectives on the medical knowledge and health practices of non-Europeans
- Tracy-Ann Smith and Katherine Hann (Natural History Museum), Sloane, slavery and the natural world: New perspectives from community programming
6:30 Reception in the Enlightenment Gallery of the British Museum
TUESDAY, JUNE 8
10:00 Plenary Session
- Kim Sloan (British Museum), Sir Hans Sloane’s ‘Paper Museum’
10:45 Coffee
11:05 The Culture of Collecting
- Kathryn James (Beinecke Library, Yale), Hans Sloane and the public performance of natural history
- Barbara Benedict (Trinity College, Hartford), Sloane’s Ranges: Shifts in Sir Hans Sloane’s literary representation in the eighteenth century
- Eric Jorink (Huygens Instituut), Sloane and the Dutch connection
12:15 Lunch
1:15 Catalogues, Books, and Manuscripts
- Alison Walker, The Sloane Printed Books Project
- Marjorie Caygill (British Museum), Sloane’s catalogues in the British Museum
- Arnold Hunt, Sloane as a manuscript collector
2:20 Tea
2:50 Sloane’s Book Collections
- John Goldfinch (British Library), A rediscovered volume of printed and mss fragments from Sloane’s library
- Julianne Simpson (Wellcome Library), The dispersal of Sir Hans Sloane’s library: A case study from the Medical Society of London collection
- Stephen Parkin (British Library), Sloane’s Italian books
- Will Poole (New College, Oxford), Sloane’s books at the Bodleian Library
4:20 Concluding Remarks
Conference on the Eighteenth-Century Illustrated Book
‘Adorn’d with Cuts’: The Illustrated Book in the Long Eighteenth Century
Chawton House Library, Chawton, Hampshire, 14 May 2010
Over 400 years old, Chawton House once belonged to the brother of Jane Austen. The novelist herself lived nearby from 1807 until 1817, just before her death. The Chawtwon House Library sponsors a series of academic events and fellowships.
Growing interest among scholars from a range of disciplines has opened up debate about the partnership of image and text in the eighteenth century and its place in the flourishing print culture of the period. This one-day conference at Chawton House Library draws together different approaches to book illustration in order to consider the production, purpose and interpretation of images in books of this date. A number of the library’s most intriguing illustrated texts will be on display for the duration of the event. Speakers will include:
- John Feather, who will consider text and image in the eighteenth century from the perspective of the historian of the book
- Brian Alderson, who will examine continuity and change in Aesopic imagery prior to Thomas Bewick’s engravings to The Select Fables of Aesop in 1818
- Ann Lewis, who will discuss text and image in illustrated editions of Rousseau’s Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse
To register for the conference, please contact Chawton House Library, info@chawton.net.
What Will Art Historical Research Look Like in the Future?
The Future of Art Bibliography in the 21st Century
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 20 April 2010
The Getty Research Institute has received a grant from the Kress Foundation to convene an international task force of art librarians, scholars, and information specialists from Europe and the United States to discuss the question of the future of art bibliography. Recent events, including discussions of art library closures, scant funding resources for ongoing support of art libraries and projects internationally, and the cessation of the Getty’s support for the continuation of BHA provide the catalyst to review current practices, take stock of changes, and seriously consider developing more sustainable and collaborative ways of supporting the bibliography of art history in the future.
The organizers of the task force (Kathleen Salomon, Getty Research Institute; Rüdiger Hoyer, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, and Jan Simane, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and Chair of the Art Libraries Section of IFLA) wish to extend an invitation to the art historical community to participate in a discussion on this topic to be held on Tuesday, April 20th in New York. The meeting will be from 1:00-5:30 p.m. at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (courtesy of Kenneth Soehner). Two panels presenting “thoughts from the field” will be followed by open discussion. The issues that come forward in the open meeting will help to lay the groundwork for the subsequent meeting of the smaller task force that will address what is and is not feasible for art bibliography in the future. The outcomes of the meeting and next steps will be posted and shared with the wider art historical community. If you would like to attend the open meeting, please note that seating is limited and must be reserved ahead of time. Please RSVP to Diane Lazar at dlazar@getty.edu by April 12th.
If you are unable to attend this meeting, note that there will be a recap and discussion session at ARLIS in Boston on Sunday April 25th, from 2:30-3:30, as well as at the IFLA Art Libraries Section meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, in August.
SAH Conference in Chicago
The 2010 Society of Architectural Historians conference takes place in Chicago, 21-25 April. Registration is open online. The following sessions suggest something of what’s available for the long eighteenth century:
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Architectural Drawing from Antiquity through Early Modernity: The Ideas of Architecture
Friday, 2:00-4:30, Wolf Point
Chair: John Senseney (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
- Robert Bork (University of Iowa), “Drawing, Geometry, and the Procedural Logic to Gothic Design”
- Ann C. Huppert (University of Washington, Seattle), “The Centrality of Drawing in Baldassarre Peruzzi’s Design Process”
- Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto (University of Maryland, College Park), “The Role of Drawing in the Evolution of Garden Design”
- Anthony Gerbino (Worcester College, University of Oxford), “The Estate Survey and the Formal Garden: Cartography and Landscape in 17th-century France”
- Heather Hyde Minor (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), “G.B. Piranesi’s Notebooks and the Ideas of Architecture”
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Taking the Measure of New Colonial Architectural History
Friday, 2:00-4:30, Sauganash West
Chair: Barbara Burlison Mooney (University of Iowa)
- Pierre-Édouard Latouche (Canadian Centre for Architecture), “The Many Great and Small Rebuildings of Montreal between 1650 and 1750”
- Jeroen van den Hurk (University of Kentucky), “New Netherlandic Architecture: Evidence from Building Contracts”
- Daphne Degazon Hobson (Charlestown, Nevis), “Subsistence and Luxury: A Report from the British Caribbean in 1706”
- Mark Reinberger (University of Georgia), “Englishness and Gentility: A View from the Mid-Atlantic”
- Carl Lounsbury (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation), “Regionalism in Early American Ecclesiastical Architecture”
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Alpenreisen und Wüstenwanderungen: Envisioning Landscapes of Early Modernity
Saturday, 9:00-11:30, Western Stage
Chairs: Nicole Huber and Ralph Stern (University of Washington, Seattle)
- Jennifer Ferng (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), “Unearthing Prosperity: the Art of Mining, Governance, and Perceptions of Landscape in Early Modern France”
- Kristoffer Neville (University of California Riverside), “Landscape versus Architecture in Early-Modern Scandinavia”
- Jeremy Kargon (Morgan State University), “From Building Toward Landscape: Erich Mendelsohn and a Reconstitution of Geographical Forms”
- Mari Hvattum (Oslo School of Architecture and Design), “‘Goats, Englishmen, and Art Lovers’: A.O. Vinje and the Making of the Modern Mountainscape”
Conference for Walpole and Delany Exhibitions in London
From the Paul Mellon Centre:
Curious Specimens: Enlightenment Objects, Collections, Narratives
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 15-17 April 2010
A conference organized by Birkbeck, University of London; the Victoria & Albert Museum; the Yale Center for British Art; the Lewis Walpole Library. Supported by the Paul Mellon Centre.
Miniature cabinet from Strawberry Hill, rosewood 1743 (London: V&A)
This conference brings together academic and museum scholars to present and discuss new perspectives on eighteenth-century practices of collecting, using as its focus two exhibitions, Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill (V&A, 6 March-4 July 2010) and Mrs Delany and her Circle (Sir John Soane’s Museum, 19 February-1 May 2010). Horace Walpole (1717-1797) was a central figure in eighteenth-century social and cultural life and the most important collector of English historical artifacts and objects, including manuscripts, rare books, ceramics, portrait miniatures, prints, paintings, antiquities, armour and other curiosities, which he arranged in his Gothic villa at Strawberry Hill. Mary Delany (1700-1788) is best known for her cut-paper collages of botanically accurate flowers and floral embroidery designs, which connect the world of natural history with court culture and in particular the collections of the Duchess of Portland. This conference will address eighteenth-century pre occupations with the ordering of both the natural world and material culture, which required new ways of thinking about the classification of objects. Papers will examine issues of collecting, collectors and their circles; the creation of artisanal productions as forms of collecting; and intersections and tensions between antiquarian, aesthetic, and scientific cultures of collecting.
Thursday, 15 April — Lincoln Inns Fields
5:00 Keynote Lecture (at the Royal College of Surgeons)
- Pamela Smith (Columbia): ‘Curious Modes of Production: Making Objects in the Early Modern World’
6:30 Reception at Sir John Soane’s Museum and viewing of Mrs Delany exhibition
Friday 16 April — Victoria & Albert Museum
10:00 Registration
10:30 Welcome from Directors/Organizers
10:45 Panel 1: Walpole and Delaney
- Michael Snodin (V&A)
- Alicia Weisberg Roberts (The Walters Art Museum)
12:00 Panel 2: Collectors, Predisciplinarity, Divisions of Knowledge I
- Elizabeth Eger (KCL): ‘Quills and Other Feathers: Elizabeth Montagu and the Matter of Friendship’
- Janice Neri (Boise State University, Idaho): ‘Paper Kingdoms: Mary Delany, the Duchess of Portland, and the Consequences of Collage’
1:30 Lunch
2:30 Panel 3: Collectors, Predisciplinarity, Divisions of Knowledge II
- Stacey Sloboda (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale): ‘Material Displays: Porcelain and Natural History in the Duchess of Portland’s Museum’
- Adriano Aymonino (Independent Scholar, London): ‘A Mirror of the Enlightenment: The Collections of Elizabeth Seymour Percy, first Duchess of Northumberland’’
- Craig Hanson (Calvin College, Michigan): ‘Collecting Virtue: The Patronage and Acquisitions of Dr Richard Mead in Early Georgian London’
4:15 Tea
4:45 Plenary Lecture
- Stephen Bann (University of Bristol), ‘Curiosity Future and Past: Siting Horace Walpole’
6:00 Reception and viewing of Strawberry Hill exhibition
Saturday 17 April — Strawberry Hill
10:00 Welcome: Michael Snodin
10:30 Keynote Lecture
- Malcolm Baker (U. California Riverside): ‘Walpole and Sculpture’
12:00 Panel 4: Aesthetic and/or Antiquarian Collecting
- Cynthia Roman (Lewis Walpole Library, Yale): ‘Collecting Copies, Surrogates, and Misattributions’
- Rosemary Sweet (Leicester): ‘Contrary to my System and my Humour: Horace Walpole and Antiquarian Collecting in the 18th Century’
- George Haggerty (U. California, Riverside): ‘Eccentric Collectors: Walpole, Beckford, and the Erotics of Things’
1:30 Lunch
2:30 Visits to Strawberry Hill (every 15 minutes, 1 hour per visit)
4:00 Tea
4:30 Roundtable Discussion: Museums, Collecting, Predisciplinarity
- Malcolm Baker, Tim Knox, Kim Sloan, Michael Snodin
Conference on Classics in the Eighteenth Century
Classics and the Classical in the Eighteenth Century
King’s College , The Strand, London,
15-16 July 2010
Conference Presentations:
- Michael Silk (King’s College London) “Classical, Neo-classical, and Romantic: The Point of No Return”
- Paul Davis (University College London), “Volcanic Classicism”
- Jonathan Sacks (Concordia, Canada), “The Time of Decline ”
- Joshua Billings (Oxford), “Sophocles and the German Spirit”
- Katherine Harloe (Reading), “Winckelmann’s Early Reception and the Invention of Altertumswissenschaft ”
- Matthew Bell (KCL), “Goethe and the Classics”
- Sebastian Matzner (KCL), “The Collapse of a Classical Tradition? An Archaeological Investigation into ‘The End of Rhetoric’ around 1800: Gottsched, Kant, Schlegel”
- Crystal Bennes (KCL), “Lucan and Problems of Genre in 18th-Century France”
- Michael Hardy (KCL) and Katherine East (Royal Holloway), “Ciceronian Rhetoric in Georgian England”
- Matthew Hiscock (UCL), “Classics for the Radical Fringe: Republicans and Dissenters at the end of the 18th Century”
- Suzanne Aspden (Oxford), “Making Musical Classics in 18th-Century London”
- Ismene Lada-Richards (KCL), “Thinking with Ancient Pantomime in 18th-Century England and France”
To register, please contact William Fitzgerald (william.fitzgerald@kcl.ac.uk)
Indian Portraiture in London
The Indian Portrait, 1560-1860
National Potrait Gallery, London, 11 March – 20 June 2010
"Kunwar Anop Singh of Devgarh Riding with a Falcon" Devgarh, Mewar, Rajasthan attributed to Bakhta, ca. 1776 © Museum Rietberg Zurich.
This exhibition, the first of its kind in the UK, tells the story of the Indian portrait over three centuries, exploring the fascinating ways in which Indian artists have approached the depiction of the human form and the changing role of portraiture in Indian history. Bringing together 60 stunning works from international collections, the exhibition will celebrate the beauty, power and humanity of these works of art. The exhibition begins with works from the Mughal Court, including some of the earliest realistic portraits made for the Emperors Humayun (r.1530–56) and Akbar (r.1556–1605) and the magnificent court portraits made for their successors Jahangir (r.1605–27) and Shah Jahan (r.1628–58), as well as studies of Mughal courtiers, holy men and servants. The distinctive regional styles from Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills are also shown alongside the European–influenced works produced by Indian artists under British rule. These paintings are a record of a rich and complex history, embracing influences from Iran and Europe as well as local Hindu and Muslim traditions, showing that the Indian portrait can stand shoulder to shoulder with outstanding examples of portraiture from around the world.
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Two-Day Conference: Portraiture in South Asia
National Portrait Gallery and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 21-22 May 2010
This conference will assess the character of portraiture, visual and literary representations of the individual in South Asia from 1500 to 1900. Though widespread in Europe, studies of portraiture in Asia are more unusual because of the common perception that it is largely a Western phenomenon. Speakers include Ebba Koch, Chris Pinney, J.P. Losty and Crispin Branfoot. First day at the National Portrait Gallery, second day at SOAS. Tickets: £50/£40 concessions and £20 students.
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Press coverage of the exhibition can be found at the London Times and the BBC. Kathryn Hadley provides a useful summary at History Today.
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