Call for Applications | Chinese Object Study Workshops, 2025
From ArtHist.net:
Materials and Methods in Chinese Calligraphy
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, 9–13 June 2025
On Jewelness: Buddhist Materiality in Sino-Himalayan Art, 1400–1800s
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 18–22 August 2025
Applications due by 3 March 2025
An essential element in the training of art historians and curators is object-based learning in an immersive and supportive museum environment. This hands-on experience is critically important to scholars’ developing skills in close observation, connoisseurship, and art historical and conservation analysis. The China Objects Study Workshop—currently administered by the National Museum of Asian Art and starting 2025 the University of Michigan Museum of Art—is designed to cultivate a sensitivity to the importance of objects and a holistic understanding of art that can only be achieved through in-person examination. The workshops, occurring twice yearly, provide selected graduate students in the field of pre modern Chinese art history with an immersive experience in the study of objects through a week-long intensive session at rotating North American museums. During the week the students also develop insights into museum operations and practices as well as working relationships that can advance scholarly exchange and enduring professional connections.
The program is funded by the Kingfisher Foundation and administered by the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The program is open to graduate students enrolled in, or accepted to, a PhD program in the field of Chinese art history at a North American or European university. Graduate students from other art history–related programs and/or who are working closely with Chinese art objects are welcome to apply as well. Applicants may be of any nationality and may apply for more than one workshop. Housing, most meals, and a transportation stipend will be provided for each participant.
Students are welcome to apply for both workshops in a single application, addressing their background and interest in each workshop in separate application statements. One recommendation letter for the two workshop topics is sufficient. The application deadline is March 3, and decisions will be announced by March 31. To apply, please visit the link here.
The two following workshops are offered in 2025:
Materials and Methods in Chinese Calligraphy
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, 9–13 June 2025
This workshop aims to engage participants in an immersive study of the materials, tools, and techniques used in writing and researching calligraphy. Participants will closely examine a rich collection of Chinese calligraphy from the Lo Chia-Lun Collection of Chinese Calligraphy at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, MI, alongside pieces from the museum’s longstanding collection of Chinese art. The workshop will cover all aspects of calligraphy as an art object as well as the writing process and methods. This includes materials and techniques for writing and mounting, seal placement, and para-matter and content (such as frontispiece, signature, colophon, etc.). Through the practice of close looking and group discussion in front of the pieces, the workshop helps participants understand the formation of styles and modes of display and reception. In doing so, the workshop encourages participants to master the skills necessary for researching any given piece of calligraphy within a historical context and to explore new possibilities for establishing research methodologies that expand the study of Chinese art history as a holistic field.
Workshop Leaders
• Lihong Liu, University of Michigan
• Qianshen Bai, Zhejiang University
• Natsu Oyobe, University of Michigan Museum of Art
On Jewelness: Buddhist Materiality in Sino-Himalayan Art, 1400–1800s
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 18–22 August 2025
Jewels are a ubiquitous presence in Buddhist literary and material culture. From the Three Jewels of Buddhism to the visual and material instantiation of the wish-fulfilling jewel, the frequent appearance of jewels as metaphor and material inspires cross-disciplinary inquiries into Buddhist world-making. How might a close study of objects shed new light on jewelness in Buddhist discourse and visual culture? This workshop explores the theme of jewelness through a selection of Sino-Himalayan objects in the collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Drawing on Buddhist objects from the 14th to the 19th centuries that highlight the connection between China and the Himalayas, the workshop will offer students the hands-on opportunity to study a range of media. They include stone carvings, glazed ceramics, glass, bronze images, precious stone inlays, illuminated manuscripts, relics and reliquaries, sculptures in dry lacquer and wood, as well as pigments and painted representations. Topics to be explored include luster, luminescence, and translucency; related ritual and technological processes; history of transcultural exchanges; broader aesthetics of opulence and splendor in Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism; and the dialectics of transparency and opacity, concealment and revelation.
Workshop Leaders
• Wen-shing Chou, Hunter College & The Graduate Center, CUNY
• Ellen Huang, ArtCenter College of Design
• Jeffrey S. Durham, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
Burlington Magazine Scholarship | French 18th-Century Art
From The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine Scholarship | French 18th-Century Fine and Decorative Art
Applications due by 30 March 2025
Applicants must be studying, or intending to study, for an MA, PhD, post-doctoral or independent research in the field of French 18th-century fine and decorative arts within the 12-month period the funding is given. The start date of successful applications should be at the beginning of the academic year (generally September). Earlier start dates will be considered for independent scholars or post-doctoral research. The funding is open to UK and international applicants. Research funded by this scholarship may lead to the submission of articles for publication in the Magazine: as such, the panel are looking for object related research, of the kind that the Burlington publishes.
To apply, please send your CV, description of project/research (no longer than 2 pages of A4), budget, proof of Institution you are attending/will attend to: scholarship@burlington.org.uk. Applications must be sent in PDF or Word document (.docx) format. Applications can only be submitted via email by 30 March 2025. The successful applicant will be notified by 31 May 2025.
Call for Applications | Baroque Summer Course: Death
From ArtHist.net:
Baroque — Death / Barock — Tod
24th Baroque Summer Course, Bibliothek Werner Oechslin, Einsiedeln, Switzerland, 22–26 June 2025
Organized by Anja Buschow Oechslin, Axel Christoph Gampp, and Werner Oechslin
Applications due by 23 February 2025
Death is omnipresent. No one can escape it; it is among us and goes about its business as it sees fit. If one takes seriously the “memento mori” that we encounter in droves on tombstones and that is addressed to us, the (still) living, then one can see that this commingling of life and death is of central importance to human culture and has always had a significant impact on its art forms.
This ubiquity and omnipresence of death was summed up in the long-popular Dance of Death: “we all die” according to the biblical saying “Omnes Morimur.” Patritius Wasserburger put this into verse for Count Sporck as “Zuschrift an das sämmtlich-menschliche Geschlecht” (“Letter to the whole human race”):
“You popes! Cardinals!
You bishops! You abbots!
You lappeted gentlemen!
You canons! You prelates!
All manner of priests,
Of high dignity, and also of lower rank. […]”
He records them all, even the “drunkards”:
“Oh you brothers of the wet stream!
Guzzle, dance, sing songs!
You are wild and tipsy, jolly: bluster, sleep around, shack up, rave!
Go on, twirl, feast, roister!
But: woe for eternity.”
Michael Heinrich Rentz illustrated this in his dramatic images and emphasized the direct partnership—and equality—of man and death. The series of images, first printed in 1753, was realized as a perfect baroque book, “full of meaning, instruction, and spirit.” And we are already amid the exuberant baroque pleasure in shaping and designing. Baroque rhetoric, with its astute precepts of “argutezza” or even “cavillatio,” takes particular pleasure in the boundaries, in the contact between life and death. Nothing is alien to this and the desire to transcend such boundaries fires the imagination. In 1774, the Archbishop and Elector of Mainz, who had been blessed with the “temporal right of sovereignty,” was mourned accordingly: “The tombstones may restrict his generous hands, but his heart allows no limits to be set, such as to work immortally in faithfulness to God, thus in love for his needy people.” After the “passing away,” as if only a small disturbance had occurred, it is all about the “denatus”; he has merely changed his condition—for the better, of course.
Glorification of human deeds in light of the future life after death, as the motto of the Duke of Brauschweig, Johann Friedrich, says: EX DURIS GLORIA. The separation through death is followed by reflection and the gain of a “better life.” Death is given this powerful, dialectical function of the historical continuation of “lived reality” by virtue of idealization. It challenges all the arts and the artifices of rhetoric, which “mediate” in all possible tones of a “heroic poem” in an “Imitatio Epica,” whether allegory, or panegyric or in the “Epicedium” particularly assigned to funeral ceremonies.
Those who focus so much on the afterlife, as was the case in the Baroque ecclesiastical world in the most pronounced way, have before their eyes all the glory that is emulated in this world with the greatest artistic effort in order to convey it to people and their sensory perceptions. This is what led someone like Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger to recommend: “He who cannot reach God in his spirit should seek him in images, he will not be led astray.” To “draw God down into his sphere” was the motto and it fit best precisely where the scene is changed, as it were, with death. Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling saw it correctly: “This symbolic view is the church as a living work of art.” And there is more, something fundamental, hidden behind this paradigm of human destiny and the conditions of privileged human existence. Marsilio Ficino states this in the first sentences of his “Cristiana religione” (1474/5). If man could not distinguish between good and bad in the “lume dell’intellecto,” he would be the most miserable creature, as he, unlike other living creatures, also has to dress himself. And at the beginning of “Platonica Theologia” (1482), he formulates its essence: “Si animus non esset immortalis: nullum animal esset infelicius homine.”
Art draws its deeper justification from this and declares that no effort is too great for it, especially when it comes to the furnishings for funeral ceremonies, when entire church interiors are covered with allegorical scenes and high catafalques are erected. The unsurpassable dialectic of life and death calls for the greatest artistic invention, which is particularly desirable in “baroque” times and results in works of art that would give even someone like Wölfflin a headache. When Rudolf Wittkower opened the Guarini Congress in Turin in 1968, he had a whole repertoire of “unorthodox” forms at hand: “Paradossi ed apparenti contraddizioni, volute incongruenze”; it is much more than just “varietà” and—in the tradition of Nicholas of Cusa—also encompasses mathematics: “Famose (!) compenetrazioni di spazi diversi.” He observes the juxtaposition of “morbidi moduli ornamentali manieristici” and “forme cristalline di estrema austerità.” They are “prodigi strutturali.” And Wittkower’s insight was: “intelletto” and “emozione” are not separate, but belong together, just as—in art—life and death appear intertwined and death, if man takes his divinely inspired, spiritual life seriously, is ultimately only a gateway to another world. It is understandable that a cemetery is then described as “the Elysian Fields.” There are no limits to the imagination and to art.
The course is open to doctoral candidates as well as junior and senior scholars who wish to address the topic with short papers (20 minutes) and through mutual conversation. As usual, the course has an interdisciplinary orientation. We hope for lively participation from the disciplines of art and architectural history, but also from scholars of history, theology, theatre and other relevant fields. Papers may be presented in German, French, Italian or English; at least a passive knowledge of German is a requirement for participation. The Foundation assumes the hotel costs for course participants, as well as several group dinners. Travel costs cannot be reimbursed. Please send applications with brief abstracts and brief CVs by email to: anja.buschow@bibliothek-oechslin.ch. The deadline is 23 February 2025.
Concept / Organization: Dr. Anja Buschow Oechslin (Einsiedeln), Prof. Dr. Axel Christoph Gampp (Uni Basel, Fachhochschule Bern), Prof. Dr. Werner Oechslin (Einsiedeln)
Preservation Long Island Receives Curatorial Internship Grant
From the press release (18 November 2024). . .
High chest of drawers, Queens County, New York, 1740–70, walnut, tulip poplar, pine (Preservation Long Island purchase, 1961.13.1).
The Decorative Arts Trust is thrilled to announce that Preservation Long Island (PLI) is the recipient of the 2025–27 Curatorial Internship Grant. Headquartered in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, PLI was founded in 1948 as the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities. PLI advances the importance of historic preservation in the region through advocacy, education, and stewardship. Their program areas include interpreting historic sites, collecting art and material culture pertaining to Long Island history, creating publications and exhibitions, and providing direct support and technical assistance to individuals and groups engaged in local preservation efforts.
In 2026, PLI will celebrate the United States Semiquincentennial as well as the 50th anniversary of their landmark furniture publication, Long Island is My Nation: The Decorative Arts and Craftsmen, 1640–1830. PLI’s Peggy N. Gerry Curatorial Fellow will collaborate with Chief Curator & Director of Collections Lauren Brincat on a series of objectives aimed at cataloging Long Island furniture in public and private collections across the region, reexamining these objects from new perspectives, and enhancing their accessibility to 21st-century researchers and the public. The Fellow will take a leading role in a new initiative building upon previous scholarship towards the creation of a collaborative Long Island furniture digital database, an exhibition, and an accompanying catalogue. Also, the Fellow will coordinate and participate in a Long Island furniture symposium in summer 2025. PLI will post the Peggy N. Gerry Curatorial Fellow position on their website at preservationlongisland.org in spring 2025. For more information about Curatorial Internship Grants, visit decorativeartstrust.org/cig.
SAAM Fellowships for American Art History
From the Smithsonian American Art Museum:
The Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery invite applications for its 2025–26 research fellowships, awarded through the Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program (SIFP). Residencies are available at the graduate, doctoral, postdoctoral, and senior levels. The deadline to apply is October 15.
Scholars from any discipline who are researching topics relating to U.S. art, craft, and visual culture are encouraged to apply, as are those who foreground new perspectives, materials, and methodologies. Fellowships are residential and support full-time research. SAAM is devoted to advancing inclusive excellence in art history and encourages candidates who identify as members of historically underrepresented groups to apply.
The stipend for a twelve-month SIFP fellowship is $45,000 for predoctoral scholars and $57,000 for postdoctoral and senior scholars, with a supplemental research allowance of up to $5,000. Applicants who need less time to complete their research may apply for as few as three months with a prorated stipend. Residencies should take place between 1 June 2025 and 31 August 2026.
SIFP graduate student fellowships are available for ten-week summer terms and carry a stipend of $10,000.
To learn more and apply, click here. With additional questions or for research consultation, email SAAMFellowships@si.edu.
Call for Articles | Sequitur (Fall 2024): Beyond the Veil
From:
Sequitur 11.1 (Fall 2024): Beyond the Veil
Submissions and proposals due by 27 September 2024, for January 2025 publication
Arnold Böcklin, Island of the Dead, 1880, oil on wood, 29 × 48 inches (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 26.90).
The editors of SEQUITUR, the graduate student journal published by the Department of History of Art & Architecture at Boston University, invite current and recent MA, MFA, and PhD students to submit content on the theme of Beyond the Veil for our Fall 2024 issue. This issue invites an exploration of the unseen, the unknown, and the realms that lie out of reach of ordinary or earthly perception. What other worlds exist beyond death, within our minds, under the surface, or in the shadows?
Artists have used every medium at their disposal to imagine what these other worlds might look like, going so far as to employ symbolism, abstraction, and surrealism to grapple with the otherworldly. Ritualistic items, religious artifacts, and funerary objects serve as tangible links to the spiritual and the supernatural. On a larger scale, architectural elements like arches, portals, and windows invite us into holy spaces to seek sanctuary or guide transitions from life to death and back again. In this issue, we aim to gather scholarship that focuses on topics beyond the ordinary that consider the myriad ways in which humanity has envisioned and sought access to the mystical, the transcendent, and the liminal.
Possible subjects may include, but are not limited to:
• Otherworlds: the in-between, separation, the unearthly, seen and unseen, obfuscated, hidden, neither here nor there, out of time, secret spaces
• Transience: the beyond, travel, thresholds, liminal spaces, parallels, interstices, passages, portals, doorways, interfaces, windows, brinks
• Death & resurrection: mourning, memory, farewell, remembrance, burial, necropolis, underworld, afterlife, psychopomp, crossing, sanctuary, heaven, ascension, ceremony, rite, rite of passage, religion, holy, sacrament, celebration, life
• The supernatural: spiritualism, phantasmagoria, spectral, ethereal, occult, fantasy, superstition, internment, surreal
SEQUITUR welcomes submissions from graduate students in the disciplines of art history, architecture, archaeology, fine arts, material culture, visual culture, literary studies, queer and gender studies, disability studies, memory studies, and environmental studies, among others. We encourage submissions that take advantage of the digital format of the journal.
Founded in 2014, SEQUITUR is an online biannual scholarly journal dedicated to addressing events, issues, and ideas in art and architectural history. Edited by graduate students at Boston University, the journal engages with and expands current conversations in the field by promoting the perspectives of graduate students from around the world. It seeks to contribute to existing scholarship by focusing on valuable but often overlooked parts of art and architectural history. Previous issues can be found here.
We invite full submissions in the following categories:
Feature essays (1,500 words)
Content should present original material that falls within the stipulated word limit (1,500 words). Please adhere to the formatting guidelines available here.
Visual and creative essays (250 words, up to 10 works)
We invite MArch and MFA students to showcase a selection of original work in or reproduced in a digital format. We welcome various kinds of creative projects that take advantage of the online format of the journal, such as works that include sound or video. Submissions should consist of a 250-word artist statement and up to 10 works in JPEG, HTML, or MP4 format. All image submissions must be numbered and captioned and should be of good quality and high resolution.
We invite proposals for the following categories (abstracts should be no more than 200 words):
Exhibition reviews (500 words)
We are especially interested in exhibitions currently on display or very recently closed. We typically prioritize reviews of exhibitions in the Massachusetts and New England area.
Book or exhibition catalog reviews (500 words)
We are especially interested in reviews of recently published books and catalogs (1–3 years old).
Interviews (750 words)
Please include documentation of the interviewee’s affirmation that they will participate in an interview with you. Plan to provide either a full written transcript or a recording of the interview (video or audio).
Research spotlights (750 words)
Short summaries of ongoing research written in a more casual format than a feature essay or formal paper. For research spotlights, we typically, but not universally, prioritize doctoral candidates who plan to use this platform to share ongoing dissertation research or work of a comparable scale.
To submit, please send the following materials to sequitur@bu.edu by 27 September 2024:
• Your proposal or submission
• Recent CV
• Brief (50-word) bio
• Your contact information in the body of the email: name, institution and program, year in program, and email
• Subject line: ‘SEQUITUR Fall 2024’ and the type of submission/proposal
Please adhere to the formatting guidelines available here. Text must be in the form of a Word document, and images should be sent as .jpeg files. While we welcome as many images as possible, at least one must be very high resolution and large format. All other creative media should be sent as weblinks, HTML, or MP4 files if submitting video or other multimedia work. Please note that authors are responsible for obtaining all image copyright releases before publication. Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their submission or proposal the week of 7 October 2024 for publication in January 2025. Please contact the editors (sequitur@bu.edu) with any questions.
Fellowship | PhD Position in Architectural History, Trinity College Dublin
From the Call for Applicants, with apologies for the short notice. –CH
PhD Position in Architectural History: Stone in 18th-Century Architecture
Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Trinity College Dublin, starting September 2024
Applications due by 17 July 2024
Applicants are sought for a funded four-year PhD at Trinity College Dublin, commencing in September 2024, on a topic relating to the ERC advanced grant research project STONE-WORK, led by Professor Christine Casey in the Department of History of Art and Architecture. The successful applicant will be based in the School of Histories and Humanities and enrolled in the Structured PhD Programme. The award comprises the student’s PhD tuition fees and an annual stipend of €25,000.
STONE-WORK challenges the perception of architecture as a primarily conceptual activity by shifting focus from individual to collective achievement. Despite the emphatic materiality of architecture, its history remains dominated by a sequential model which privileges the agency of individuals and ideas. STONE-WORK’s fundamental premise is that architecture results from a cumulative sequence of actions involving an array of actors, great and small. Revealing stone’s hidden trajectory from quarry to wall, floor, column, and chimneypiece will probe the nexus of skills, techniques, and support mechanisms developed by communities in its sourcing, supplying, and fashioning, and the impact of these processes upon building activity. This cross-disciplinary research, combining the history of architecture and craft with geology aims to produce a holistic analysis of architecture and stone production.
The project pursues four main objectives:
• Transform knowledge of interdependence in architectural production.
• Develop a cross-disciplinary interface between geology, craft, and architectural history for the analysis of building stone.
• Reconstruct the trade and labour networks of Anglo-Irish stone production to determine how quarrying and stone-working affected the use of stone in eighteenth-century architecture.
• Discover the qualitative standards in materials and techniques which underpinned the handling of stone in eighteenth-century architectural production.
The PhD dissertation will explore the agency of the consumer and maker in the eighteenth-century stone industry by focusing on the chimney-piece industry in Britain and Ireland. This is an under-studied topic rich in surviving data both material and archival.
We are seeking applicants with the following qualifications:
Essential
• A first-class (or equivalent) undergraduate degree or a master’s degree with distinction in the History of Art or History of Architecture
• Excellent communicative competence in English
• Excellent research and organisational skills
• Knowledge of classical architecture in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland
Desirable
• Demonstrable experience of using archives and working knowledge of eighteenth-century architecture
• Willingness to contribute to the activities of the STONE-WORK research project
Applications for the award must include
• A personal statement (max. 2 pages), including your motivation for applying for this PhD student position
• A curriculum vitae with educational history, including two academic references
• Transcripts of degree results
Prospective students should send these documents to Melanie Hayes at pghishum@tcd.ie by the deadline on the 17th July 2024. The successful candidate will then make a formal application to TCD via the my.tcd.ie portal and be issued with a formal offer in the same manner as other incoming PhD students. Applications will not be considered complete without academic references. Applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application by early August. If the successful candidate does not have English as a first language, s/he will also be required to submit evidence of English language competence at this stage.
Trinity College Dublin is committed to policies, procedures, and practices which do not discriminate on grounds such as gender, civil status, family status, age, disability, race, religious belief, sexual orientation, or membership of the travelling community. On that basis we encourage and welcome talented people from all backgrounds to join our staff and student body. Trinity’s Diversity Statement can be viewed in full here.
Dr Melanie Hayes, Trinity College Dublin, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland, HAYESM7@tcd.ie.
U of Buckingham | MA in French and British Decorative Arts
From the University of Buckingham:
MA in French and British Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors
University of Buckingham (study based in London), starting September 2024
Bursary applications due by 19 July 2024
Applications are invited for a bursary on the University of Buckingham’s MA in Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors starting September 2024. Generously funded by the Leche Trust, the bursary, worth £8,500, will cover just under 78% of the full-time course fees for UK students and just over 50% of the fees for international students. The deadline for bursary applications is Friday, 19 July, 10am GMT. To be eligible for the bursary, students will need to have applied for and been offered a place on the course.
This unique MA in French and British Decorative Arts and Interiors, taught in collaboration with the curatorial and conservation teams at the Wallace Collection, focuses on the development of interiors and decorative arts in England and France in the ‘long’ eighteenth century (c.1660–c.1830) and their subsequent rediscovery and reinterpretation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A key element of the course is the emphasis on the first-hand study of furniture, silver, and ceramics, where possible in the context of historic interiors. Based in central London, it draws upon the outstanding collections of the nearby Wallace Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum as well as the expertise of leading specialists who participate in the teaching.
Bursary priority will be given to applicants
• with excellent academic qualifications, seeking, or currently pursuing careers in museums, the built heritage or conservation,
• in need of financial assistance,
• have a strong interest in the decorative arts and historic buildings,
• or, for those wishing to go on to pursue academic research in the decorative arts and historic interiors.
The bursary is also open to part-time students commencing their studies in 2024 and for whom the funding would be spread over two years. Find out more here. You also may contact Dr Lindsay Macnaughton lindsay.macnaughton@buckingham.ac.uk and the Admissions Office admissions@buckingham.ac.uk.
AHRC Studentship | The Status of Prints at the British Library
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From Birkbeck:
Re-evaluating the Status of Prints at the British Library
AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Studentship, The British Library and Birkbeck, University of London
Applications due by 29 April 2024
Birkbeck, University of London, and the British Library are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative Doctoral Studentship from 1 October 2024 under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme. The focus of this project is on identifying, researching, and analysing the provenance, changing status, and visibility of about 500 books of prints in the British Library’s collection, using an 1812 unpublished finding list as a starting point. This project will be jointly supervised by Kate Retford at Birkbeck (Professor of History of Art, School of Historical Studies) and Felicity Myrone at the British Library (Lead Curator, Western Prints and Drawings). The student will spend time with both Birkbeck and the British Library and will become part of the wider cohort of AHRC CDP funded PhD students across the UK.
More information and directions for applying are available here»
Image: Giovanni Piranesi, Illustration of an aviary, from Le Antichità romane, opera di Giambatista Piranesi, etc. (London: British Library, c13091-59; shelfmark: 744.f.2 26).
Graduate Seminar | Drawing in 18th-C. London
Stacey Sloboda and Meredith Gamer | Drawing in 18th-C. London: Academies and Entrepreneurs
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Friday, 19 April 2024, 10.00–4.00
Applications due by 1 March 2024
Thomas Gainsborough, A Boy with a Book and a Spade, 1748, graphite with smudging on laid paper; squared for transfer with a numbered grid, 189 × 143mm (New York: The Morgan Library & Museum, III, 59b).
Drawing was at the center of a range of artistic developments in the eighteenth-century London art world. It flourished with the development of drawing academies that culminated in the establishment of the Royal Academy in 1768. It also played a key role in the careers of entrepreneurs such as John Vanderbank, William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough, and Thomas Chippendale as the commercial market for printed images increased dramatically in this period. New opportunities for graphic expression encouraged artists and amateurs alike to pursue drawing as a polite and learned activity, and sketching became an increasingly innovative artistic practice. The Morgan Library & Museum has substantive holdings of drawings by British artists from this period, and this seminar offers a chance to study them as a group. Participants in this graduate seminar will engage in lively sessions addressing topics such as drawing academy practice and the use of models, the function of drawings in the studio and workshop, the role of prints, sketching as an artistic practice, and the art market and private patronage.
Stacey Sloboda is the Paul H. Tucker Professor of Art History at UMass, Boston.
Meredith Gamer is Assistant Professor of Art History and Archeology at Columbia University.
This seminar is open to graduate students of the history of art and the conservation of works on paper. Interested participants are kindly invited to submit a one paragraph statement which should include the following:
• Name and email
• Academic institution
• Class year
• Field of study
• Interest in British eighteenth-century drawings and relevance of the seminar to your research
Applications should be submitted electronically with the subject header ‘British Drawings Seminar’ to drawinginstitute@themorgan.org. Participants will be notified by 15 March 2024.
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