Working Group | Home Subjects, ca. 1750–1900
Arthur Devis, The John Bacon Family, 1742–43, 30 x 52 inches (76.2 x 131.1 cm), oil on canvas (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection).
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Thanks to Historians of British Art for sponsoring the “Home Subjects” panel at the 2015 meeting of the College Art Association last week in New York. The panel kicked off a series of activities that the organizers of Home Subjects are planning over the course of the next few years in an attempt to bring together scholars interested in the display of art in the the private or domestic interior. Our hope is to make connections across traditional period boundaries in order to encourage and facilitate research and discussion about the role art played in the decoration of the private interior and, in turn, how the display of art in the private interior shaped the direction of contemporary art. Further information about the topics Home Subjects would like to address can be found on our blog. We also encourage anyone interested in participating or sharing ideas to sign up for our email list at homesubjects@gmail.com. Stay tuned for blog posts, calls-for-papers, and more!
Melinda McCurdy, The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA
Morna O’Neill, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC
Anne Nellis Richter, Independent Scholar and part-time faculty, American University, Washington, DC
2015 Dresden Summer Academy
From Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden:
Dresden Summer Academy
Dresden, 22–29 August 2015
Applications due by 30 April 2015
During this intensive seven-day course the participants explore the city of Dresden, its great monuments, and its museums. The main theme is the study of the collections in a context that considers the princely attitudes of the Saxon rulers during the late Renaissance, the magnificent royal patronage of the arts, and flourishing of courtly display especially in the 18th-century Augustan Age, and the role of the monarchy in 19th-century bourgeois society.
These collections are presented in the beautiful royal palaces in and around Dresden where their meaning and importance can be studied in the original surroundings. With their modern and often highly innovative exhibitions and the diversity of the themes explored in them, the museums and their collections are essential features of the vibrant cultural life and lively discourse that characterise the city of Dresden today.
Scholarships are available and are intended for candidates who are unable to pay the fee personally or whose organisation / institution cannot support them in full.
NEH Summer Institute | 3D Modeling of Cultural Heritage Sites
From H-ArtHist:
Advanced Challenges in Theory and Practice in 3D Modeling of Cultural Heritage Sites
UMass Amherst, 22–28 June 2015, and UCLA, 20–23 June 2016
Applications due by 30 March 2015
Directors: Alyson A. Gill (UMass Amherst) and Lisa M. Snyder (UCLA)
Applications are currently being accepted for Advanced Challenges in Theory and Practice in 3D Modeling of Cultural Heritage Sites. This NEH Summer Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities will take place over two consecutive summers. In 2015, participants will gather at UMass Amherst from June 22–28 to discuss key issues and challenges facing scholars working with 3D content with an emphasis on the end user experience, and define research questions that they will explore in the subsequent academic year. In 2016, participants will present their findings at a three-day symposium to be held at UCLA from June 20–23.
Submissions are encouraged from scholars with research or teaching projects that would benefit from advanced discussion of theoretical issues related to 3D content; in-service educators interested in pedagogical applications for 3D content across humanities disciplines and grade levels; library, museum, and publishing professionals investigating or using 3D content in installations or born-digital publications; and technologists involved with interactive 3D computer graphics, educational games, or dissemination platforms.
Applications due by March 30, 2015; applicants notified by April 13, 2015. Successful applicants receive a $1,375 stipend to defray expenses related to the 2015 Summer Institute at UMass Amherst and an additional $1,000 to defray expenses related to the 2016 Symposium at UCLA. Please visit advancedchallenges.com for details about the schedule, institute faculty, and the application process.
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And the website really is worth visiting even if you have no intentions of applying; the reading list alone is pretty exciting. –CH
Recent Launch of the Association of Print Scholars
APS envisions a future for itself as a CAA affiliate society. As noted at H-ArtHist:
Introducing the Association of Print Scholars, a new group bringing together the print community
We are excited to announce the launch of the Association of Print Scholars (APS). APS is a nonprofit members’ group for enthusiasts of printmaking that will bring together the diverse community of curators, collectors, academics, grad students, artists, paper conservators, critics, independent scholars, and dealers. APS’s goals are to encourage innovative and interdisciplinary study of printmaking and to facilitate dialogue among members.
Membership benefits will include
• Access to a searchable database of active members and their current activities
• Ability to update online membership profile with all print-related activities
• Announcements about events, exhibitions, calls for papers, and other news from the print world
• Opportunities to promote new projects to members on the APS website and listserv
• Participation in APS’s events, including lectures and scholarly conferences
• Grants for digital projects and research, and support for working/reading groups
For further information, please contact info@printscholars.org, or visit www.printscholars.org. In addition, please consider joining and donating to APS through our Indiegogo campaign. Your support will help us build our website, which will launch in early 2015.
Call for Essays | Terra Foundation for American Art Essay Prize
Terra Foundation for American Art International Essay Prize
Submissions due by 15 January 2015
The Terra Foundation for American Art International Essay Prize recognizes excellent scholarship by a non-U.S. scholar in the field of historical American art. Manuscripts should advance the understanding of American art, demonstrating new findings and original perspectives. The prize winner will be given the opportunity to work toward publication in American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s scholarly journal. He or she will also receive a $1,000 cash award and a travel stipend of up to $3,000 to give a presentation in Washington, D.C., and meet with museum staff and fellows. This annual prize is supported by funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Ph.D. candidates and above who have not published in American Art previously are eligible to participate in the competition. Essays may focus on any aspect of historical (pre-1980) American art and visual culture; however, architecture and film studies are not eligible. Preference will be given to submissions that address American art within a cross-cultural context and offer new ways of thinking about the material. A strong emphasis on visual analysis is encouraged.
Submissions for the 2015 prize must be sent to TerraEssayPrize@si.edu by January 15, 2015. For more information about eligibility and the format for submissions, please visit www.americanart.si.edu/research/awards/terra.
Charles Eldredge Prize for 2014 (Lecture) and 2015 (Nominations)
Wendy Bellion, ‘Here Trust Your Eyes’: Visual Illusion and the Early American Theater
2014 Charles C. Eldredge Prize Lecture
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 18 September 2014
The Smithsonian American Art Museum invites you to join Wendy Bellion (associate professor of American art and material culture at the University of Delaware and winner of the museum’s 2014 Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Citizen Spectator: Art, Illusion, and Visual Perception in Early National America) for a discussion entitled ‘Here Trust Your Eyes’: Visual Illusion and the Early American Theater on September 18th, 2014, at 4:00pm at the museum. Bellion’s talk will explore how Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street Theater was also a space of visual display and illusion akin to and in conversation with exhibition sites like Charles Willson Peale’s museum.
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2015 Charles C. Eldredge Prize for a Single-Author Book
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Nominations due by 1 December 2014
The Smithsonian American Art Museum invites nominations for the 2015 Charles C. Eldredge Prize, an annual award for outstanding scholarship in American art history. Single-author books devoted to any aspect of the visual arts of the United States and published in the three previous calendar years are eligible. To nominate a book, send a one-page letter explaining the work’s significance to the field of American art history and discussing the quality of the author’s scholarship and methodology. Self-nominations and nominations by publishers are not permitted. The deadline for nominations is December 1, 2014. Please send them to: The Charles C. Eldredge Prize, Research and Scholars Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum, P.O. Box 37012, MRC 970, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012. Nominations will also be accepted by email: eldredge@si.edu or fax: (202) 633-8373. For more information about the prize, please visit americanart.si.edu/research/awards/eldredge.
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Note (added 26 October 2014) — A slightly different version of the announcement for the 2015 Eldredge Prize originally appeared in this posting; the new wording reflects the most recent description from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
L’Aquila: The Future of the Historical Center
From the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz:
L’Aquila: The Future of the Historical Center, A Challenge for Art History
Summer School of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut
Florence, 8–15 September 2014
Applications due by 25 May 2014
Concept and organization: Carmen Belmonte, Elisabetta Scirocco and Gerhard Wolf
The devastating earthquake that struck L’Aquila on 6 April 2009 created a major rupture in the social and cultural history of the city. After dealing with the immediate aftermath of the natural disaster through the construction of the so-called ‘New Towns’, the necessity of securing the city’s buildings has paralyzed the historical center. Today, ongoing restorations are accompanied by a lively debate, requiring the expertise of specialists from various disciplines. It is crucial that art historians participate in the discussions on the complex issues of reconstruction, restoration, and preservation, that are deciding how to return the city to its citizens and to ensure the survival of its monumental heritage.
The KHI summer school invites young art historians and scholars from neighboring disciplines to discuss the future of historic centers, focusing particularly on the critical as well as the ethical roles of art history. The case of L’Aquila provides an opportunity to reflect broadly upon the effect of natural disasters on civic life and cultural heritage and its management.
Located on site, the summer school will take a diachronic approach to the study of the city of L’Aquila, both inside and outside the walls, beginning with its medieval foundation as a free ‘civitas’ disputed by popes and emperors, through Spanish rule, up to the urban transformations of the Fascist period. Located in a strategic position on the ‘Via degli Abruzzi’, L’Aquila has long been a market town; its main raw materials, wool and saffron, reached the markets of northern Italy and beyond the Alps. The city of L’Aquila serves as a shrine that houses the bodies of Pope Celestine V and Bernardino of Siena. Throughout its history, the city has therefore been a place of exchange, a center of culture and artistic patronage, and an important pilgrimage site beginning with the institution of the plenary indulgence in 1294 at Collemaggio.
The close study of the historical city, its urban structure, its works of art, and its dispersed and decontextualized collections, together with an awareness of the dynamics of destruction and reconstruction of its cultural heritage, will call attention to the future of L’Aquila and to the methodological questions related to the preservation of its past. What techniques and methodologies allow mediation between aesthetic and historical values? Is it possible to find a balance between the protection of heritage and the needs of the citizens of L’Aquila; between the desire for change and the impulse to return to the forms of the past? Issues such as reconstruction, integration, and authenticity versus fake are central topics to be addressed. (more…)
English Collaborative Doctoral Award: At Home With Books
AHRC-funded English Collaborative Doctoral Award: At Home With Books
The University of Oxford Faculty of English Language & Literature and The Geffrye Museum of the Home are pleased to announce a new English Collaborative Doctoral Award (AHRC-funded): ‘At home with books: the role and history of reading in domestic contexts in the long eighteenth century.’
Applicants are sought for a three year, fully funded studentship to work towards a DPhil (PhD) in the Faculty of English, University of Oxford on the AHRC project ‘At home with books: the role and history of reading in domestic contexts in the long eighteenth century.’ This collaborative doctoral award (CDA) will be supervised jointly by Dr Abigail Williams, of the University of Oxford, Ms Hannah Fleming, Curatorial Department of the Geffrye Museum, and a member of the Learning and Engagement Department of the Geffrye Museum. The Geffrye Museum in East London is a leading centre for the study of home, with a focus on middle class urban homes over 400 years.
The studentship will commence in October 2014 and is open to UK nationals, or EU nationals who have resided in the UK for 3 years or more. The successful applicant will normally have achieved a Master’s degree with distinction (or equivalent) in literary studies or history, or will have done so by October 2014. It would be an advantage to have a solid grounding in the literature or history of the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
Applicants for this position should apply online by Friday 18 April 2014 at http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate_courses/index.html and quote reference ENGL AHWB Studentship in the ‘Departmental Studentship Applications’ section of page 6 of the application form. Interviews for the studentship will be conducted in late April or May. Further information on the studentship and details on how to apply may be found here. If you would like to discuss this informally, please contact Dr Abigail Williams or Hannah Fleming.
More information (as a PDF file) is available here»
Attingham’s French Eighteenth-Century Studies Course
From The Attingham Trust:
The Attingham Trust’s French Eighteenth-Century Studies Course
The Wallace Collection, London, 12–17 October 2014
Applications due by 30 April 2014
François Boucher, Shepherd Piping to a Shepherdess, ca. 1747–50
(London: Wallace Collection)
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French eighteenth-century studies is organised by The Attingham Trust on behalf of the Wallace Collection. Based at Hertford House, this intensive, non-residential study programme aims to foster a deeper knowledge and understanding of French eighteenth-century fine and decorative art and is intended primarily to aid professional development. A day at Waddesdon Manor, Ferdinand de Rothschild’s former country house, will help broaden the scope of the course still further.
The academic programme will provide privileged access to the world-class collections of furniture, paintings, sculpture, textiles, metalwork and porcelain in these two collections. The group will be limited to fifteen people to allow for detailed, object-based study, handling sessions and a look at behind-the-scenes conservation.
Study sessions and lectures will be led by Dr. Christoph Vogtherr, Director of the Wallace Collection, and the relevant curatorial staff; other international authorities and the curators at Waddesdon will provide further specialist teaching. The Course Director is Dr. Helen Jacobsen, Curator of French eighteenth-century Decorative Arts at the Wallace Collection. This course is primarily aimed at curators and other specialists in the fine and decorative arts.
More information is available here»
Call for Participation | Technologies of Turning
From the Call for Participation:
Technologies of Turning: An Exploration of Making and Meaning
Harvard University, 20–22 May 2014
Applications due by 18 March 2014
Organized by Jennifer L. Roberts (Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University) and Ethan W. Lasser (Margaret S. Winthrop Associate Curator of American Art, Harvard Art Museums)
Eligibility: Current graduate students in any discipline; space is limited to nine students.
This workshop is the second in a new annual series focusing on processes of making in the fine, decorative, and industrial arts. The workshops will bring together faculty, artists, museum professionals, and graduate students for demonstrations, hands-on exercises, and discussion. Each day will combine instruction in historic techniques with the close analysis of related historic objects. One of the features that will differentiate this workshop from others like it is that it will include time for extensive discussion about the merits of bringing technical and artisanal knowledge into the historical and interpretive disciplines in a conceptually rigorous way. Rather than focus on a specific medium or type of object, each workshop is organized around a single species of physical operation that cuts across multiple media and can also be evocatively transposed into cultural and theoretical dimensions.
This year we will concentrate on “turning.” From the lathe to the spindle to the potter’s wheel to the turntable, rotational dynamics sit at the heart of multiple mechanical and artisanal practices. The workshop will trace processes of turning through pottery throwing, textile production, and media playback and projection. What modes of thinking and approaches to materials link these processes? How have makers across time conceptualized working “in the round” and how might such modes of embodied making inform our understanding of the creative process? What are the implications of turning’s intricate relationship to control in artisanal and industrial settings? How does turning engage with problems in programming, tacit knowledge, and automation?
Each participant will be expected to complete a short list of preliminary readings and to attend all portions of the workshop. The workshop is organized by Americanists and will focus primarily on American material, but students in all fields are encouraged to apply. Lodging for four nights and most meals will be provided for selected participants. Participants will be responsible for supporting their own travel to and from Cambridge.
Send a CV and a short statement explaining your reasons for wishing to participate in the workshop to both roberts6@fas.harvard.edu and elasser@fas.harvard.edu by March 18, 2014, 5pm. Selected participants will be notified by March 25. Space in this workshop will be limited to nine students.
Sponsored by the American Art Workshop Fund and the Department of American Art, Harvard Art Museums
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T U E S D A Y , 2 0 M A Y 2 0 1 4 — C E R A M I C S
Demonstration and hands-on studio session, Harvard Ceramics Studio (Allston, MA)
Handling session with historic material
Debriefing and reflection
Dinner
W E D N E S D A Y , 2 1 M A Y 2 0 1 4 — T E X T I L E S
Demonstration and hands-on session with early machinery, American Textile History Museum (Lowell, MA)
Handling session with historic material
Debriefing and reflection
Dinner
T H U R S D A Y , 2 2 M A Y 2 01 4 — M E D I A
Demonstration and hands-on session, Harvard Film Archive
Final debriefing, workshop conclusion
Enfilade 
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