Summer Institute | Beyond the Digitized Slide Library
Beyond the Digitized Slide Library
University of California, Los Angeles, 28 July — 6 August 2014
Applications due by 1 March 2014
Beyond the Digitized Slide Library is an eight-day summer institute to be held at the University of California, Los Angeles, July 28–August 6, 2014. Participants will learn about debates and key concepts in the digital humanities and gain hands-on experience with tools and techniques for art historical research (including data visualization, network graphs, and digital mapping). More fundamentally, the Institute will be an opportunity for participants to imagine what digital art history can be: What constitutes art historical ‘data’? How shall we name and classify this data? Which aspects of art historical knowledge are amenable to digitization, and which aspects resist it?
With major support for the program provided by the Getty Foundation, participants will receive travel and lodging in Los Angeles for the duration of the Institute. Sessions will be taught by UCLA’s team of leading digital humanities technologists, who will be joined by faculty members Johanna Drucker (Bernard and Martin Breslauer Professor of Bibliography, Information Studies), Steven Nelson (Associate Professor of African and African American Art History), Todd Presner (Chair, Digital Humanities Program, and Professor of Germanic Languages and Comparative Literature), and Miriam Posner (Digital Humanities Program Coordinator and Institute Director). Participants will be selected on the basis of their ability to formulate compelling research questions about the conjunction of digital humanities and art history, as well as their potential to disperse the material they glean to colleagues at their home institutions and to the field at large.
Applicants must possess an advanced degree in art history or a related field. The application is open to faculty members, curators, independent scholars, and other professionals who conduct art historical research. We define ‘art history’ broadly to include the study of art objects and monuments of all times and places. Current graduate students are not eligible to apply. If you have questions about eligibility, please contact Institute Director Miriam Posner at mposner@humnet.ucla.edu. Please apply online. Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. PST on March 1, 2014.
Francesca Albrezzi, a Ph.D. candidate in UCLA’s World Arts and Cultures department, will serve as Head, Logistics and Communications.
University of Buckingham, MA in Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors
Partial studentships for the MA in Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors at the University of Buckingham
Applications are invited for partial studentships for the MA in Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors at the University of Buckingham to start in September 2014. This unique MA 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.
The course is taught by the University of Buckingham, with contributions from leading international experts and curatorial staff from the Wallace Collection. A key element is the emphasis on the first-hand study of decorative arts within the context of historic interiors. There are frequent trips to collections in and around London, as well as a study week in Paris.
The programme provides a vocational and academic training which has enabled students to pursue careers in museums and galleries, auction houses, interior design, and institutions such as the National Trust and English Heritage.
Eligibility: applicants should hold a first or second class honours degree.
Informal enquiries can be made to the course director Jeremy Howard, Jeremy.howard@buckingham.ac.uk; the course tutor Dr Barbara Lasic, Barbara.lasic@buckingham.ac.uk; or Linda Waterman, Linda.waterman@buckingham.ac.uk.
Further details are available here»
Call for Essays | Terra Foundation for American Art Essay Prize
Terra Foundation for American Art International Essay Prize
Submissions due by 15 January 2014
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 understanding of American art, demonstrating new findings and original perspectives. The prize-winning essay will be translated and published in American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s scholarly journal. The winner will receive a $1,000 cash award and a $3,000 travel stipend to give a presentation in Washington, D.C., and meet with museum staff and fellows. This prize is supported by funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art.
The aim of the award is to stimulate and actively support non-U.S. scholars working on American art topics, foster the international exchange of new ideas, and create a broad, culturally comparative dialogue on American art. Ph.D. candidates and above (or equivalent) 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 studies 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. Manuscripts previously published in a foreign language are eligible if released within the last two years (please state the date and venue of the previous publication). Essays that have been published in English will not be considered. Authors are invited to submit their own work for consideration. We also urge scholars who know of eligible articles written by others to inform those authors of the prize.
The length of the essay (including endnotes) should be between 7,000 and 8,500 words and should include approximately 12 to 14 illustrations with figure references in the text. The essay should be submitted by e-mail as a Word file, accompanied by a PDF file containing all of the illustrations, along with captions that provide each object’s title, artist, date, medium, dimensions, and current location. All manuscripts should be accompanied by an abstract of 500 to 1,000 words written in English that: 1) clearly states the author’s thesis and the essay’s contribution to the field of American art, and 2) outlines the essay’s basic structure and methodology. A curriculum vitae should be included.
Submissions must be sent to TerraEssayPrize@si.edu by January 15, 2014. Questions or comments may be addressed to the same address.
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Note (added 20 June 2014) — The Smithsonian American Art Museum is pleased to announce that John Fagg, a lecturer in the school of English, drama, and American & Canadian studies at the University of Birmingham in England, is the winner of the 2014 Terra Foundation for American Art International Essay Prize. Fagg’s award-winning essay, “Bedpans and Gibson Girls: Clutter and Matter in John Sloan’s Graphic Art,” will appear in the 2015 volume of American Art (volume 29).
Call for Proposals | ISECS Seminar for Early Career Scholars
From the call for proposals (which includes the French text, too) . . .
2014 ISECS International Seminar for Early Career Eighteenth-Century Scholars
Arts of Communication: In Manuscript, in Print, in the Arts, and in Person
Manchester, 8-12 September 2014
Proposals due by 14 March 2014
The International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS) invites applications from scholars in all fields of eighteenth-century studies within the context of a one-week International Seminar for Early Career Eighteenth-Century Scholars.
This annual event now has an established reputation for promoting intellectual and social engagement between scholars from many countries. In 2014, the meeting will take place in Manchester, UK, and will be co-sponsored by the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) and the University of Manchester with its John Rylands Library, a Victorian masterpiece which will provide the Seminar venue. Other scholarly bodies in Manchester which may provide support include the People’s History Museum; the Museum of Science & Industry; Chetham’s Library; the Portico Library; and the Whitworth Art Gallery. The programme will include a reception, a dinner, a guided tour of Manchester and a visit to Quarry Bank Mill, ‘one of Britain’s greatest industrial heritage sites’.
The International Seminar will be held from Monday 8 September to Friday 12 September 2014 in Manchester, UK, directed by Prof. Jeremy Gregory (President BSECS: University of Manchester) and Prof. Penelope J. Corfield (Vice-President ISECS: Royal Holloway, University of London). This year, the theme of the International Seminar will be: C18 Arts of Communication: in manuscript, in print, in the arts, and in person.
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Dear Sir, If you think the word ‘Sir’ at present necessary, then I cannot object to it … – but it appears cold and & seems to place one at an uncomfortable distance. [letter to tradesman father from medical student son, Edinburgh, Sept. 1781]
It has long been known that the formal advice manuals and etiquette books published in such numbers in the eighteenth century were not taken literally by all readers. Instead, a dynamic and fluid art of inter-personal communication was evolving. Literacy levels were rising and access to all forms of media were spreading (just as today new social media are dramatically extending and changing forms of participation). The result was a simmering tension between formal/ informal styles; between public/ private modes; and, as a result, scope for innovation.
This International Seminar will address questions relating to the evolution of the art of communication, both following conventions and yet also breaking them. The focus falls especially upon contemporary awareness and innovations in the style and purpose of communication in different media – and the shared role of recipients, whether reading letters and books, viewing art, hearing music, or greeting/ talking in person. Was there a clear trend for change? If so, how should scholars characterise it? It is not enough to refer loosely to the advent of ‘Modernity’ (a slippery term with too many meanings). But if not that, then what?
1. Manuscript communication, including letters: Discussions here can draw upon recent studies of the spread of intimate letter-writing among all classes of society. In literature, there are also famous novels narrated via the medium of epistolary communication. Among European scientists/intellectuals, letters formed a key means of establishing informal networks, fostering a context favourable to scientific and technical innovation. In all these contexts, changing styles of greeting (as in the quotation above) offer one relevant theme to consider as well as other authorial choices in modes of communication.
2. Printed communication, in newspapers, broadsheets, books: In recent years, there has been a huge growth of scholarly interest in the history of book-publishing and book-selling. With that, there is scope for more focus upon new styles in print communication, such as specialisation for different markets (eg. the recently-studied children’s literature). Readers’ responses are relevant here, as shown in the history of reading newspapers; as are authorial appeals to implied readers, demonstrated in the history of literary erotica.
3. Communication by sound and sight in the arts: Tensions between traditional formulas and innovation, which often recur in the arts, merit fresh attention in the C18 context. In music, there was a gamut of evolving styles from formal compositions to popular songs (and the overlap between them). In the visual arts, there was a similar range from ‘high art’ to casual sketches and to illustrated manuscripts, as evidenced by William Blake.
4. Communication in person, including the arts of greeting: Alongside formal encounters, there was a negotiated intimacy, seen in this period by, for example, the rise of the egalitarian handshake. Themes of interpersonal communication have relevance for C21 film and TV representations of eighteenth-century social encounters – which tend to reproduce courtly manners, underestimating more casual semi-public/domestic styles.
Submission of proposals. The seminar is limited to 15 participants. The proposals (approx. 1.5 pages long, single-spaced) should be based on an original research project (e.g. a doctoral dissertation or post-doctoral project) that deals with one of the aspects mentioned above. The format of the seminar gives each participant a solo-session, with a 40-minute presentation followed by a further 20 minutes of questions/discussion directed at the paper.
Preference will be given to scholars who are at the beginning of their academic career (PhD or equivalent in or after 2009). The official languages are French and English.
Applications should include the following information:
* short curriculum vitae with date of PhD (or equivalent)
* list of principal publications and scholarly presentations
* brief description of the proposed paper (approx. 1.5 pages long, single-spaced)
* ONE letter of recommendation
Lodging and travel: Accommodation will be provided free on site, with free breakfast, lunch, and evening meals, including Conference dinner. Travel costs will also be met, if participants are unable to obtain travel funding from their home institutions. PLEASE NOTE: The organisers will book both travel tickets and accommodation.
Publication: The Seminar papers are usually published by Honoré Champion Éditeur (Paris) in the series ‘Lumières internationales’. In addition, any later studies based upon the John Rylands Library Special Collections can be considered for publication in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library: for full information see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/.
Deadlines: The deadline for submission of proposals is Friday 14 March 2014. Applications should be sent preferably by email, with details in file attachments, or by post (if email unavailable) to Prof. Jeremy Gregory, for consideration by himself and Prof. Corfield:
Prof. Jeremy GREGORY, Head of Arts, Languages & Cultures, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL. Tel: [44] 0161 306 1242. Email : jeremy.gregory@manchester.ac.uk.
Seminar | The Uses of Antiquity in European Art, 1300–1800
The following announcement may be of interest for full-time faculty who regularly teach art history at institutions affiliated with the Council of Independent College (there are over 600 member schools). While addressing the eighteenth century, the seminar will focus on previous periods; I imagine it’s ideally suited for dix-huitièmistes who find themselves teaching late medieval and Renaissance courses. Up to 20 individuals will be selected. Details are available from the brochure. -CH
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The Uses of Antiquity: A Seminar on Teaching Pre-Modern European Art in Context
Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 13–18 July 2014
Nominations due by 2 December 2013
Daphne Fleeing from Apollo, ca. 1500
(Chicago: Smart Museum of Art)
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This seminar will be led by Rebecca Zorach, professor of art history and the college at the University of Chicago, and will be held at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art. It will take as its starting point European objects spanning the years 1300–1800 at the Smart Museum and participants will have the chance to examine prints and rare printed books in the Regenstein Library’s Special Collections Research Center, principally the very large collection of the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae and related prints after Roman monuments and antiquities, considering the role of prints, books, and other small objects in disseminating and popularizing classical styles and imagery. Moving beyond the European early modern period, the seminar also will visit other local sites—the Oriental Institute, campus and neighborhood murals, and buildings such as the nearby Museum of Science and Industry—to think about how participants can use their own local resources creatively to discuss with students ways in which artists, architects, patrons, and others have understood and reinterpreted the past. The seminar will examine recent and older scholarship on the uses of the past and draw on the expertise and teaching experience of participants. For many of our students, differences between an ancient Greek temple and a Renaissance church (or a 19th-century Beaux-Arts museum, for that matter) barely register. But the benefits of teasing out the nuances of
references and associations go beyond awareness of the chronology of style. Pedagogical discussions will address close looking, the relationship of texts to objects, and ways faculty members can help students think critically about the texture of history and the practices and decisions of artists.
Zorach teaches late medieval and Renaissance art, primarily French and Italian; gender studies and critical theory; print culture and technology; and contemporary activist art. Her books include The Passionate Triangle (2011) and Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance (which received the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women 2005 Book Award), both published by the University of Chicago Press. In addition, she has created catalogues for several exhibitions, including The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome: Printing and Collecting the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae produced in conjunction with The Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae Digital Collection, and Paper Museums: The Reproductive Print in Europe 1500–1800, co-edited with Elizabeth Rodini.
2013 Attingham Course: French Eighteenth-Century Studies
From The Attingham Trust:
Attingham Course: French Eighteenth-Century Studies
The Wallace Collection, London, 14–18 October 2013
Applications due by 12 July 2013
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French Eighteenth-Century Studies is a new course 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.
Trying to Think Seriously about Pinterest, Part 2
From the Editor
Open Position: Clerk of the Pinterest Boards
Silivered brass pins, 1620-1800 (London: V&A Museum, given by R. J. Andrews, #123D-1900) Pinned to Cheryl Leigh’s Pinterest Board, 18th-Century Accessories
Last May I invited Enfilade readers to consider how Pinterest might be put to better use for scholars of the eighteenth century. Over the past few months, I’ve grown even more bullish, optimistic about the potential utility of pinning images with texts (organized under headings) and then distributing those pins via a social network (recent stats for Pinterest usage are available here). Pinterest Business accounts were launched in November, and while these may not be precisely the model for establishing scholarly credibility, the offering suggests Pinterest may slowly be growing up. If art historians are well placed to say what’s wrong with most of what happens on Pinterest, it seems to me we might also start contributing models for making a tool like this work better.
For all of these reasons, I’m now accepting applications for a volunteer position I’ve dubbed Clerk of the Pinterest Boards. I’m especially interested in exploring the following problems:
• How and to what extent might Pinterest be used in the production of knowledge, particularly in terms of collecting information (visual and textual information) and presenting that information together?
• How can we make a Pinterest board into something more than merely a collection of ‘pretty’ pictures?
• Are there things Pinterest could do that other digital formats (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, &c.) don’t do or don’t do well?
• How might we increase broad interest in the art and architecture of the eighteenth century via Pinterest?
I’m envisioning this position as extremely flexible and open-ended. As an experiment, it should probably run for at least a year, but the amount of work should be minimal to modest, perhaps an hour or two each week. For the best candidates, you’re probably already spending this much time on exactly the kinds of searches the positions would require; I just need you to start pinning those results and giving some thought to larger questions of organization and goals.
To apply, please send a message of interest and a recent CV to me at CraigAshleyHanson@gmail.com. As always, comments and feedback are welcome.
— Craig Hanson
P.S. — If this talk of pins brings to mind Adam Smith’s example of a “trifling manufacture,” all the better; you’re in the right place.
New HGCEA Emerging Scholar Publication Prize
HGCEA Emerging Scholar Publication Prize
Nominations due by 14 December 2012
The Historians of German and Central European Art (HGCEA), an affiliated society of CAA, announces a new Emerging Scholar Publication Prize. The Prize will be awarded annually to a distinguished essay published the previous year by an emerging scholar. Submissions may be on any topic in the history of German or Central European art, architecture, design or visual culture. This year, essays published in 2011 and 2012 will be considered; submissions will be accepted from current PhD students and from those who earned a PhD in or after 2007. The recipient of the Prize, which will be announced at CAA and comes with an award of $500, must be a current member of HGCEA. Nominations and self-nominations are welcome; the deadline for submissions (the publication and a CV) by electronic attachment to the HGCEA president, Marsha Morton at mortonmarsha10@gmail.com, is December 14, 2012.
Applying for a Clark Fellowship
From the Clark:
Clark Fellowships
Applications due by 15 October 2012
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute combines a public art museum with a complex of research and academic programs, including a major art history library. The Clark is an international center for discussion on the nature of art and its history.
The Clark offers between fifteen and twenty Clark Fellowships each year, ranging in duration from six weeks to ten months. National and international scholars, critics, and museum professionals are welcome to propose projects that extend and enhance the understanding of the visual arts and their role in culture. Stipends are dependent on salary and sabbatical replacement needs. Housing in the Institute’s Scholars’ Residence, located across the street from the Clark, is also provided. Fellows are furnished with offices in the library, which contains a collection of 200,000 books and 700 periodicals. The Institute’s collections, its library, visual resources collection, and the Fellows’ program are housed together with the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art. The Clark is within walking distance of Williams College, its libraries, and its art museum. The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) is a ten-minute drive away.
Candidates must already have a Ph.D. or equivalent professional experience. The Clark does not award pre-doctoral fellowships, and given the intense competition for fellowships, we do not normally make awards to those who have received their Ph.D. within the last four years.
A number of special fellowships are also offered, as seen here»
Call for Applications | Getty 2013-14: Connecting Seas
From the Getty:
Getty Scholars Program — Connecting Seas: Cultural and Artistic Exchange
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2013-14
Applications due by 1 November 2012
Water has long been a significant means for the movement of goods and people. Sophisticated networks, at a variety of scales, were established in antiquity around the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, and later in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. Together with sporadic and accidental encounters, these networks fostered commerce in raw materials and finished objects, along with the exchange of ideas and cultural concepts. Far from being barriers, seas and oceans were vital links connecting cultures. The 2013–2014 academic year at the Getty Research Institute and Getty Villa will be devoted to exploring the art-historical impact of maritime transport.
How has the desire for specific commodities from overseas shaped social, political, and religious institutions? How has the introduction of foreign materials and ideas transformed local artistic traditions, and what novel forms and practices have developed from trade and other exchanges, both systematic and informal? What role do the objects born of these interactions have in enhancing cultural understandings or perpetuating misunderstandings? How has the rapidly accelerating pace of exchange in recent years influenced cross-cultural developments? The goal of this research theme is to explore how bodies of water have served, and continue to facilitate, a rich and complex interchange in the visual arts.
The Getty Research Institute and the Getty Villa invite proposals focusing on artistic exchange and the transmission of knowledge across bodies of water from ancient times to the present day. Scholars actively engaged in studying the role of artists, patrons, priests, merchants, and explorers in oceanic exchange are encouraged to apply, and projects focusing on the Pacific are particularly welcome.
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