Symposium | Balkan and Aegean Artistic Identities in the 18th Century
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From ArtHist.net and the conference programme:
Balkan and Aegean Artistic Identities in the 18th Century: Between East and West
Online and in-person, Athens, 8–9 April 2025
Organized by Maria Georgopoulou and Alper Metin
This symposium aims to shed light on the intricate artistic and cultural identities that flourished in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Balkans and Aegean, regions positioned at the confluence of ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ historiographical conventions. The event encourages scholars to engage in a comprehensive examination of artistic production, architectural development, and socio-political dynamics during this transformative period.
Central to the symposium is the reassessment of the historiographical terms post-Byzantine art and Ottoman Baroque. Are these designations still relevant? If post-Byzantine art predominantly refers to religious works, how should we classify secular creations, such as the richly decorated interiors of Balkan and Anatolian mansions? How authentically Baroque was the so-called Ottoman Baroque, and does this term effectively convey the unique synthesis embodied in Ottoman architecture? Furthermore, how should we approach the non-Baroque elements within this period—features rooted in Byzantine, Western medieval, and Renaissance traditions—that complicate the conventional understanding of the Ottoman Baroque? The aim is to explore how these varied influences merged into hybrid forms that challenge conventional categorization.
The symposium will address the following themes:
1 The impact of political and cultural rivalries between the Ottomans and Venice in the Aegean and the Habsburgs in the Balkans, which not only redefined power structures but also shaped cross-cultural artistic and architectural identities. The manifestation of these rivalries in the built environment and material culture, such as building that bear testimony to shifts of power, conflict, and transformation.
2 The rich network of technical expertise of itinerant artists, architects, master builders, naval builders and artisans that fostered the exchange of knowledge and artistry. The fusion of local traditions in crafts (woodcarving, silverwork, textiles etc.) in areas such as Mount Athos and the Peloponnese. The influential interactions between the Archipelago and the coastal cities of mainland Greece and Anatolia, including Constantinople/Istanbul.
3 The interactions between Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim communities in centers such as Crete, Chios, Constantinople/Istanbul, and Smyrna/Izmir, that shaped and transformed urban and architectural spaces.
4 The role of Orthodox merchants, whose economic influence and cultural mediation bridged the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe, fostering significant cross-cultural exchanges.
5 The mediation of Greek communities between the Venetian and Ottoman realms. The dual status of Greeks, as subjects of Venice and the Porte, in shaping of the artistic and architectural heritage they cultivated, with its broader implications for the region’s cultural fabric.
t u e s d a y , 8 a p r i l
16.00 Registration and coffee
16.15 Introduction — Maria Georgopoulou (Director of the Gennadius Library) and Alper Metin (University of Bologna and 2024–25 Cotsen Traveling Fellow at the Gennadius Library)
16.30 Session 1 | Mapping Architectural Connections
• Nikos Magouliotis (Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich) — The Printed Page and the Painted Column: An Architectural Microhistory of a Church in Ottoman Thessaly, ca. 1800
• Alper Metin (Department of the Arts, University of Bologna) — Warming Up to Change: Heating Appliances in the Gradual Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Interiors
• Deniz Türker (Department of Art History, Rutgers University) — ‘Carvers of Chios’: Imperial Patrons, Ottoman Greek Kalfas, and Nimble Building in the Eighteenth Century
18.00 Coffee break
18.15 Session 2 | Domestic Spaces: History and Conservation
• Theocharis Tsampouras (Ephorate of Antiquities of Kozani, Hellenic Ministry of Culture) — The Political Character of Eighteenth-Century Christian Orthodox Art in the Ottoman Balkans
• Amalia Gkimourtzina (Ephorate of Antiquities of Kastoria, Hellenic Ministry of Culture) — The Secular Decoration in the Eighteenth-Century Mansions of Western Macedonia: The Example of the Conservation Works Carried Out in Tsiatsiapa Mansion in Kastoria
• Omniya Abdel Barr (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) — Eighteenth-Century Painted Ceilings in Cairo: Bayt al-Razzaz in the Context of Ottoman Architectural Networks
20.00 Reception
w e d n e s d a y , 9 a p r i l
9.30 Session 3 | ‘Post-Byzantine’ Sculpture, Textiles, Material Culture
• Anna Ballian (Benaki Museum, Athens) — From Art of the Empire to Art in the Empire: The Case of Ottoman and ‘Post-Byzantine’ Art
• Nikolaos Vryzidis (School of Applied Arts and Culture, University of West Attica) — Networks of Pluriversality: Trade, Diasporas, and ‘Baroque’ Textile Culture in Ottoman Greece
• Dimitrios Liakos (Ephorate of Antiquities of Chalkidike and Mount Athos, Hellenic Ministry of Culture) — Observations on Eighteenth-Century Sculpture in Mainland Greece: The Cases of Thessaly and Mount Athos
11.15 Coffee break
11.30 Sessions 4 | Relations with Antiquity
• Elizabeth Key Fowden (Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge) — Pharos, Tower, Temple and Tent: Visualizing the Horologion in Eighteenth-Century Athens
• Paolo Girardelli (Department of History, Boğaziçi University) — A ‘Rotunda’ on the Aegean Shores: The Franciscan Church of Santa Maria in Bornova, 1797–1831
Symposium | Turner Today
J.M.W. Turner, Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne: Morning, detail, ca. 1845, oil on canvas
(New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection)
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Upcoming at YCBA:
Turner Today
Online and in-person, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 9 May 2025
The dramatic landscapes of J. M. W. Turner continue to enthrall audiences across the globe, more than two centuries after the artist’s birth. Organized in conjunction with the Yale Center for British Art’s exhibition J. M. W. Turner: Romance and Reality, this symposium invites scholars and curators from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom to explore the multiple ways that Turner’s oeuvre speaks to our present moment, from its relationship to contemporary visual art to its role in framing conversations about climate change and resource extraction. What exciting and new possibilities exist for interpreting and sharing Turner’s work in 2025?
The symposium is free and open to the public. It will be held in the Lecture Hall at the Yale Center for British Art and will be livestreamed. Registration is recommended but not required for this event.
s c h e d u l e
10.15 Welcome and opening remarks by Martina Droth (Paul Mellon Director, YCBA)
10.30 Panel One | Transatlantic Turner: Reputation and Reception
Moderator: Tim Barringer (Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art, Yale University)
Turner established a significant reputation in North America in his lifetime and still draws considerable attention from American museums. This panel brings together curators from the Frick Collection, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Metropolitan Museum of Art to explore Turner’s transatlantic appeal in the past and present. How has Turner been introduced to, and understood by, American audiences? What factors cemented Turner’s reputation in the United States and how does his storied reputation affect the way we present and represent his work today?
• Julian Brooks (Senior Curator and Head of the Department of Drawings, J. Paul Getty Museum)
• Alison Hokanson (Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Aimee Ng (John Updike Curator, Frick Collection)
11.30 Break
11.45 Panel Two | Turner’s Atmospheric Topography
Chair: Lucinda Lax (Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, YCBA)
How are Turner’s paintings being reinterpreted amid current ecological crises? This panel situates Turner’s interest in particular locations, and the specifics of place, within the broader sociopolitical and environmental context of industrialization and natural resource extraction. Curators based in the United States and United Kingdom will discuss how exhibitions of Turner’s work can address contemporary environmental issues and consider how museums can put contemporary works with environmental themes in dialogue with Turner’s paintings.
• John Chu (Senior Curator of Pictures and Sculpture / Senior Curator for Midlands, National Trust)
• Lizzie Jacklin (Keeper of Art, Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums)
• Jennifer Tonkovich (Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator of Drawings and Prints, Morgan Library and Museum)
12.45 Lunch
2.00 Panel Three | Turner, Tradition, and Modern Painting
Chair: Martin Myrone (Head of Research Support and Pathways, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and Convenor, British Art Network)
This panel considers a paradox: Turner is often portrayed as a harbinger of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Impressionism and abstraction, yet he made constant and overt reference in his art to major artists of the past. How is Turner being embraced and interpreted as an artist who both self-consciously worked within a longstanding tradition and broke radically with traditional painting practices? How are curators engaging with Turner’s elusive relationship to modernity and tradition? What is Turner’s relevance to contemporary artistic practice?
• Amy Concannon (Manton Senior Curator of Historic British Art, Tate)
• Anni Pullagura (Margaret and Terry Stent Associate Curator of American Art, High Museum of Art)
• Nicholas Bell (President and CEO, Glenbow)
3.00 Closing Remarks and Reflections on J. M. W. Turner: Romance and Reality
• Lucinda Lax (Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, YCBA)
• Tim Barringer (Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art, Yale University)
Symposium | Art, Museum, Nation
Canaletto, Westminster Bridge, with the Lord Mayor’s Procession on the Thames, 1747, oil on canvas
(New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection).
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From YCBA:
Art, Museum, Nation
Online and in-person, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 25 April 2025
What does it mean to display art through the lens of national identity and history? To mark its reopening, the Yale Center for British Art convenes Art, Museum, Nation, a symposium to critically interrogate the concept of nationhood in contemporary practices of art exhibition, interpretation, and acquisition. In roundtable discussions, leading art historians, curators, and directors from the Art Gallery of Ontario, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and National Gallery, London, among others, will explore how art museums can revise, think beyond, and reinvigorate national frameworks. Among many questions, the symposium will ask: How have expressions of national identity influenced the civic and public role of art museums in both explicit and implicit ways? How might art museums contend with the fluidity of borders and foreground ideas of migration and diaspora? What can art museums do to better acknowledge the traces of colonialism and empire embedded in national collections?
The symposium is free and open to the public. It will be held in the Lecture Hall at the Yale Center for British Art and will be livestreamed. Registration is recommended but not required for this event.
The Yale Center for British Art is pleased to offer a travel stipend for curators and museum professionals who wish to attend this symposium in person and are traveling from within the Boston–New York rail corridor or an equivalent driving distance (approximately 125 miles). If you are facing particular financial barriers to participating and wish to take advantage of this funding, please email your name, position, and travel details to ycba.research@yale.edu before Monday, April 21. Funding is limited and applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, so apply early!
s c h e d u l e
9.30 Welcome — Rachel Chatalbash (Deputy Director for Academic Affairs, Education, and Research, YCBA)
9.35 Introduction: Reopening the Yale Center for British Art — Martina Droth (Paul Mellon Director, YCBA)
9.45 Keynote Conversation | Art, Museum, Nation: Building Collections Today
Moderator: Lucinda Lax (Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, YCBA)
How can museums serve the needs of both local and international constituents? What does it mean to present a global collection in a national context? Conversely, what should the mission of a national museum be in a globalized world? YCBA curator Lucinda Lax leads a discussion on building and stewarding heritage art collections in the twenty-first century.
• Andrea Bayer (Deputy Director for Collections and Administration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Christine Riding (Director of Collections and Research at the National Gallery, London)
10.45 Break
11.00 Session 1 | Art, Museum, Nation in Exhibitions and Display
Moderator: Tim Barringer (Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art, Yale University)
Curators based in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States reflect on the potential of exhibitions to advance inclusive and critical definitions of national artistic canons. How are curators using museum display to alter or challenge established ideas of Canadian, British, and American art?
• Patricia Allerston (Deputy Director and Chief Curator, National Galleries of Scotland)
• Horace Ballard (Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Curator of American Art, Harvard Art Museums)
• Julie Crooks, Curator (Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, Art Gallery of Ontario)
12.00 Lunch Break
1.30 Session 2 | Art, Museum, Nation in the History of Art and Museums
Moderator: Sria Chatterjee (Head of Research Initiatives, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)
This conversation looks to the past, addressing how Enlightenment-era ideas of progress and race shaped the construction of public museums in North America and Europe. Discussants will consider the impact of imperialism and scientific racism on modern museum practice and ask what institutions can do to acknowledge and combat these forces.
• Nana Adusei-Poku (Assistant Professor of History of Art and African American Studies, Yale University)
• Andrew McClellan (Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Tufts University)
• Marina Tyquiengco (Ellyn McColgan Associate Curator of Native American Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
2.30 Break
2.45 Session 3 | Art, Museum, Nation: New Futures
Moderator: Anni Pullagura (Margaret and Terry Stent Associate Curator of American Art, High Museum of Art)
Building on the previous session, the symposium’s closing discussion looks to the future of ‘the nation’ in the art museum. How can the lenses of national identity and history be mobilized toward new and productive ends? What other interpretive frameworks can museums use to complement and complicate ideas of nationality and nationhood?
• Mark Mitchell (Holcombe T. Green Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, Yale University Art Gallery)
• Stephanie Sparling Williams (Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art, Brooklyn Museum)
• Linsey Young (Independent Curator and PhD Candidate, Royal College of Art)
3.45 Closing Remarks — Kishwar Rizvi (Robert Lehman Professor in the History of Art, Islamic Art and Architecture, Yale University)
4.00 Reception
Anna Jameson Lecture by Paris Spies-Gans
This evening at The National Gallery (the lecture is fully booked, but it will be live-streamed) . . .
Paris Spies-Gans | ‘The Spirit of a Particular Age’
Women Artists and the Challenges of an Integrated Art History
Online and in-person, The National Gallery, London, 13 March 2025, 6pm GMT
Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Self Portrait in a Straw Hat, 1782 (London: The National Gallery).
Women artists are having a moment—featuring in exhibitions, headlines, and auctions. Art historians have, however, long known of their existence. Why do we continue to treat these creators as rare, exciting discoveries? This lecture will consider the complicated legacies surrounding women artists and notions of historical truth. Taking Anna Jameson’s concept of the ‘Spirit of a Particular Age’ as a jumping-off point, it will explore the tensions that often accompany studies of women in their own places and times and suggest a path towards a more integrated—and hopefully lasting—narrative of art: one that includes women as the prominent historical players they regularly were. Sometimes this entails uncomfortable work, such as questioning canonical narratives about women and art. However, embracing such complexities can ultimately lead to a deeper, fuller understanding of the cultural and gender dynamics that shaped the past—and continue to influence the present.
The lecture will also be live-streamed; please book tickets here»
Paris A. Spies-Gans holds a PhD in History from Princeton University, an MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and a BA from Harvard University. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the Harvard Society of Fellows and the J. Paul Getty Trust, among other institutions. Her first book, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760–1830 (PMC/YUP 2022), has won several prizes in the fields of British art history and 18th-century studies and was named one of the top art books of 2022 by The Art Newspaper and The Conversation. She is currently working on her second book, A New Story of Art (US/Doubleday and UK/Viking).
Online Talks | Tempus Fugit / Time Flies
I’m sorry to have missed the first half of the series; the last two talks take place in March and April. –CH
Tempus Fugit / Time Flies: Measuring, Perceiving, and Living Time in Early America
Online, Historic Deerfield, Sundays: 26 January, 23 February, 30 March, 27 April 2025
Tall Clock, detail, by Aaron Willard of Boston for Asa Stebbins of Deerfield, Massachusetts, ca. 1799 (Historic Deerfield).
Early New Englanders frequently invoked the passage of time in religious terms, but the ‘horological revolution’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced technological developments in timepieces that complemented older cultural views of time. These developments went on to play an important role in the standardization of timekeeping, the rise of market economies, and industrialization. Sundials, mechanical clocks, and pocket watches were not only scientific marvels but also style-bearing objects that displayed refinement. Such objects provide suggestive windows into everyday life, especially when we broaden our sense of the many different objects and practices that marked the passage of time for diverse early Americans. This series features speakers who will address both the abstract and material nature of time found not only in clocks but also in other objects and processes central to life in early New England such as brewing, needlework, husbandry, farming, and cooking. Together the presentations will complicate our sense of what the passage of time meant for early New Englanders who had more than one way to ‘keep’ and ‘spend’ time. All lectures are free of charge and will be presented virtually via Zoom webinar. Registration required.
January 26, 2pm
Bob Frishman | Edward Duffield and Colonial American Clockmaking
Bob Frishman has professionally repaired nearly 8,000 timepieces and sold more than 1,700 vintage clocks and watches. In recent years, he has reduced his clock-repair activities and now devotes his time to research, writing, and lecturing. He has organized horology-related conferences at the Winterthur Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Henry Ford Museum, the Museum of the American Revolution, and the Horological Society of New York; he was also an organizer of the 2019 Time Made in Germany symposium in Nuremberg. Along with more than 100 articles and reviews, his recent book on the Philadelphia clockmaker Edward Duffield was published by the American Philosophical Society Press in 2024.
February 23, 2pm
Alexandra Macdonald | ‘Regard Not Time, but This Sign’: Recipes and Embodied Knowledge
Alexandra M. Macdonald is an historian of labour and the body with a particular interest in embodied knowledge and practices of making in the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century. As part of her research, she is interested in using period specific ingredients and methods to recreate historical craft and culinary recipes, for example indigo vats and preserved food. Alexandra has received a number of fellowships to support her research, including a fellowship from the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium which brought her to Deerfield. Most recently she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library where she worked closely with conservation scientists to analyze a canvaswork embroidery made in Connecticut in the mid-eighteenth century. She is currently the Social Science and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at Brock University where she is working on a book length study of indigo in the Atlantic world.
March 30, 2pm
Sara Schechner | Marking Time during the American Revolutionary Period: Sundials and Clocks
Sara J. Schechner is the David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University.
April 27, 2pm
Elizabeth Bacon Eager | Mastering Time: Slavery, Self-Sovereignty, and the 18th-C. Clockmaker
Elizabeth Bacon Eager is an assistant professor of art history at Southern Methodist University, where she teaches courses on early American art, architecture, and material culture. Exploring intersections between art, science, and technology of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Atlantic World, she is particularly interested in questions of materiality and process and fascinated by the reconstruction of historical tools and techniques. Her current research examines the material culture of time in early America, with a particular focus on objects and images produced by Black, Indigenous, and female makers. Dr. Eager’s work has been published in The Art Bulletin, Journal18, and Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art.
Online Talk | Conserving Paper with Live Demonstration
From The Linnean Society:
John Abbott | How to Conserve 18th- and 19th-Century Paper with Live Demonstration
Online and in-person, The Linnean Society, Burlington House, 5 March 2025, 2pm
The Linnean Society takes the preservation of its collections seriously. The Society has a full-time conservator, Janet Ashdown, and an adopt-an-item programme (AdoptLINN). The Society is also incredibly fortunate in having had an experienced volunteer and retired paper conservator, John Abbott, who has been working with Janet since 2018. In the past seven years, John has conserved many illustrations within the Society Papers Collection, and in this talk, he will demonstrate how to conserve loose 18th- and early 19th-century papers. By showcasing papers in need of conservation, John will reveal the decision-making process even before the start of conservation, and then undertake a live conservation demonstration. The demonstration will cover cleaning as well as repairing paper. We will send the link for this online event two hours before it starts.
Registration is available here»
John Abbott is a retired archive conservator who worked for the National Archives and its predecessor The Public Record Office for 43 years. He was involved in the conservation and preservation of archival material including paper and parchment manuscripts, maps, plans, designs, posters, photographs, and seals. Between 1984 and 1986 John was part of a team of three (two archive conservators and one book conservator) involved in the conservation and rebinding of Great and Little Domesday books.
Research Seminar | Martin Myrone on the Foggo Brothers’ Parga
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James and George Foggo, Parga during the Awful Ceremony that Preceded the Banishment of its Brave Christian Inhabitants and the Entrance of Ali Pacha, ca. 1819, lithograph, 42 × 64 cm (London: the British Museum, 1842,0319.14).
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Next month at the Mellon Centre:
Martin Myrone | A Radical Alternative within British Romanticism: The Foggo Brothers’ Parga
Online and in-person, Paul Mellon Centre, London, 19 March 2025, 5pm
This talk focuses on one of the most remarkable—but forgotten—works of British art of any era: The Christian Inhabitants of Parga Preparing to Emigrate (1822) by the brothers George and James Foggo. This huge painting, twenty-six feet long by sixteen high, was exhibited several times in the nineteenth century before disappearing. Recorded in a mezzotint, the picture features a multitude of figures in a scene of horror with the people of Parga in Greece disinterring their ancestors so that their remains were not left on ground falling under Ottoman rule. The incident of 1819 on which the picture was based was an international scandal, identified as an appalling indictment of British foreign policy. Ironically, the very size, political purpose and pictorial ambition of the Foggo brothers’ picture has made it easy to be ignored by art history. This talk will explore how the discipline has by contrast—and this is almost regardless of political orientation—been preoccupied with the subjective and commodified aesthetics assumed to be the enduring legacy of the ‘Romanticism’ of the era.
The event starts with a presentation and talk by Martin Myrone, lasting around 40 minutes, followed by Q&A and a free drinks reception. The event is hosted in our Lecture Room, which is up two flights of stairs (there is no lift). The talk will also be streamed online and recording published on our website.
More information and registration is available here»
Martin Myrone is Head of Research Support and Pathways at the Paul Mellon Centre. Before joining the Centre in 2020, Martin spent over twenty years in curatorial roles at Tate, London. His many exhibitions at Tate Britain have included Gothic Nightmares (2006), John Martin (2011), William Blake (2019), and Hogarth and Europe (2021). His research and publications have focused on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art, with a special interest in artistic identity and artists’ labour, class, cultural opportunity and gender. His many published works include Bodybuilding: Reforming Masculinities in British Art 1750–1810 (2005) and Making the Modern Artist: Culture, Class and Art-Educational Opportunity in Romantic Britain (2020), both published by the Paul Mellon Centre.
Online Conversation | Teaching the 18th Century Now
From the event flyer (which includes a QR code for registering). . .
Online Conversation | Teaching the Eighteenth Century Now: Pedagogy as Ethical Engagement
Online, Wednesday, 26 February 2025, 3pm (Eastern Time)
What does teaching mean in this historical moment? Join Bucknell University Press as we host editors and contributors to the collection Teaching the Eighteenth Century Now: Pedagogy as Ethical Engagement for a moderated discussion about teaching Enlightenment topics during a period of attacks on education, identity, and expression. How can our pedagogies be more meaningful, more impactful, and more relevant? Participants will discuss the intellectual labor of the classroom and share contemporary models and approaches to animating material for today’s students. The conversation will be moderated by Eugenia Zuroski.
Kate Parker and Miriam Wallace, eds., Teaching the Eighteenth Century Now: Pedagogy as Ethical Engagement (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2024), 196 pages, ISBN: 978-1684485048 (hardcover) / ISBN: 978-1684485031 (paperback), $38.
Online Talks | HECAA Emerging Scholars Showcase, 2025
From the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art & Architecture:
HECAA Emerging Scholars Showcase
Online, Tuesday, 18 February 2025, 11.00am–12.30pm EST
A beloved HECAA tradition, the Emerging Scholars Showcase serves as a platform for emerging scholars to connect with the wider HECAA community and get feedback on their research. We would appreciate your presence and participation in this meaningful event!
• Emily Hirsch (Brown University) — Flemish Sculptors and Terracotta, ca. 1600–1750
• Siraye Herron (University of Oklahoma) — Degrees of Indigenous Autonomy: Aestheticizing Artistic Survivance in Colonial Cuzco, 1690s–1780s
• Katie DiDomenico (Washington University in St. Louis) — Visions of Colonial Suriname, ca.1667–1795
• Katie Cynkar (University of Delaware) — Myth Making and Remembrance: A Sensorial Examination of Framed North Carolina Plantation-Made Cloth Samples, 1861–1865
• Amelia Goldsby (University of Iowa) — Trees as Bodies of Communication: The Arboreal Aesthetic in French Painting, 1780–1870
• Benet Ge (Williams College) — Looked Through: Edward Orme’s Transparent Prints between Britain and Canton
To attend, please register here»
As always, direct all questions, suggestions (and love) to hecaa.emergingscholarsrep@gmail.com.
Warmly,
Demetra Vogiatzaki
HECAA Board Member At-Large, Emerging Scholars Representative
Research Seminar | Artists and the East India Company, 1760–1830
Upcoming at the Mellon Centre:
Holly Shaffer and Laurel Peterson | Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1760–1830
Online and in-person, Paul Mellon Centre, London, 5 February 2025, 5pm
In January 2026, the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) will open Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1760–1830. This exhibition explores the interactions between artists trained in India, China, and Britain amid the relentless commercial ambitions of the East India Company at key ports and centres of trade in Asia. Featuring over a hundred objects drawn from the YCBA collection in various media—including architectural drafts, opaque watercolours, hand-coloured aquatints and small- and large-scale portraits—the exhibition highlights works by artists who are no longer well known alongside those of well-established ones. Brought together for the first time, these works tell a story of artists compelled by new subjects, styles and materials in expanding markets, profoundly affecting art within and beyond Asia.
As the power of the British empire waned in the twentieth century, ‘Company painting’ became a prevalent umbrella term to describe works made for Company officials, specifically by Indian artists, and ‘Export art’ became a descriptor for works created by Chinese artists for a European market. Painters, Ports, and Profits challenges and critically rethinks these terms while also putting the arts into dialogue. It presents an expanded conception of arts made under the auspices of the Company by focusing on artists trained in different ways who worked for Company patrons as well as commercial markets in India, China, and Britain; the types of subjects in which they specialised; and the artistic materials with which they experimented. By examining the range of arts and relationships developed during the Company’s relentless pursuit of profits, the exhibition sheds light on aesthetic and colonial discourses that were formed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and persist today. Co-curators Laurel Peterson and Holly Shaffer will preview the themes and objects explored in the exhibition and the related catalogue.
Book tickets here»
Holly Shaffer is Robert Gale Noyes Assistant Professor of Humanities in the department of history of art and architecture at Brown University. Her research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century arts in Britain and South Asia, and their intersections. Her first book, Grafted Arts: Art Making and Taking in the Struggle for Western India, 1760–1910 (London and New Haven: Paul Mellon Centre with Yale University Press, 2022), was awarded the Edward C. Dimock Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities and an Historians of British Art Book Award. In 2011, she curated Adapting the Eye: An Archive of the British in India, 1770–1830 at the YCBA, and in 2013, Strange and Wondrous: Prints of India from the Robert J. Del Bontà Collection at the National Museum of Asian Art. She has published essays in Archives of Asian Art, The Art Bulletin, Art History, Journal 18, Modern Philology, and Third Text, and recently edited volume 51 of Ars Orientalis on the movement of graphic arts across Asia and Europe.
Laurel O. Peterson is the Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Yale Center for British Art. She specialises in British works on paper produced during the long eighteenth century. She served as the organising curator of John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal in 2019 and as co-curator of Architecture, Theater, and Fantasy: Bibiena Drawings from the Jules Fisher Collection in 2021, both at the Morgan Library and Museum. She received her PhD in the history of art from Yale and her research has been supported by the Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the Lewis Walpole Library. She has held positions at the British Museum and the Morgan Library.
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