Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

American Ceramic Circle Research Grants
Applications due by 2 April 2024

To encourage new scholarship in the field of ceramics, the American Ceramic Circle (ACC) annually underwrites grants for up to $5,000 to individuals to help offset costs associated with original research. Grant applications, which are reviewed by the Grants and Scholarship Committee, are due the second Friday of April. Grants are not intended for projects involving commercial profit, including publication subventions. Successful applicants are required to submit the results of their completed research to the ACC in the form of a paper, which may be published in the ACC Journal. Grantees may also be invited to speak at the annual ACC symposium. Please send completed application including a coversheet and proposal as PDF to: ACC Grants and Scholarship Chair at accgrants@gmail.com using this form.

1  Coversheet
• Name
• Address
• Telephone
• Email
• Institutional Affiliation
• List of Publications — please attach copy of one, especially if related to proposed topic.
• References — please ask references familiar with your project to send letters of recommendation directly to accgrants@gmail.com as PDFs.

2  Proposal
Please prepare an attachment to the cover sheet with the following sections:
• Project title
• Brief project summary (100 words max)
• Significance of topic (500 words max)
• List of primary sources consulted (if project is historic in nature)
• Project description: plans for the project, reasons, how it will be accomplished, and describe the qualifications of individuals involved in project (500 words max)
• Research plan
• Timeline, including estimated date of completion
• Collections, archives, institutions, etc. to be visited
• Proposed budget, with estimated expenditures
• Total amount requested from ACC

The American Ceramic Circle was founded in 1970 as a non-profit educational organization committed to the study and appreciation of ceramics. Its purpose is to promote scholarship and research in the history, use, and preservation of ceramics of all kinds, periods, and origins.​ The current active membership is composed of ceramics enthusiasts from many walks of life, including museum professionals, collectors, institutions, auction house professionals, and dealers in ceramics. Member interest is focused on post-Medieval pottery and porcelain of Europe, Asian ceramics of all periods, and ceramics made, used, or owned in North America.

From the Call for Applications at the Bibliotheca Hertziana:

Touched / Retouched: Paper across Time, 1400–1800
Rome, 11–16 November 2024

Applications due by 20 March 2024

The Lise Meitner Group at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History and the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica in Rome invite applications for an intensive one-week, hands-on workshop for early career specialists in the field of prints and drawings. This is made possible with support from Getty through The Paper Project initiative.

The goal of the workshop is to provide object-based training to the next generation of curators in the graphic arts, with a focus on premodern practices of retouching. We take an expansive approach to the term ‘retouching’ to encompass any discernible alterations carried out on drawings, prints, or their support after completion. Once identified, such alterations carry important repercussions: they change the way an object is cataloged, interpreted, and presented to the public; they influence choices about acquisition or deaccessioning; they shape decisions about conservation, affecting storage and treatment needs. Among drawing specialists, detecting and dating traces of retouching is considered to be largely a matter of tacit knowledge. The reconstruction of the chronological sequence of interventions via close looking or the help of diagnostic technologies is carried out on a daily basis in collections worldwide, yet this practice is often virtually inaccessible to outsiders.

This workshop is designed to provide a source of technical and material knowledge that will prove essential for drawing and print curators entering the field. By focusing on retouching and its interpretation, we intend to advance a materially layered understanding of paper objects that builds on recent scholarly literature while exploring a fundamental point of intersection between academic, curatorial, and conservation practices. The Hertziana leads (Francesca Borgo, Camilla Colzani, Alice Ottazzi) and ICG co-leads (Giorgio Marini and Gabriella Pace) will be joined by keynote speakers Carmen Bambach and Antony Griffiths and senior discussants Jonathan Bober, Hugo Chapman, and Catherine Goguel, among others.

During the first, virtual phase of the program, participants will present their own preliminary research on a selected drawing from the BHMPI’s collections. This will lay the groundwork for the second, central segment: a week-long, in-person workshop in Rome, with senior experts from prominent European and North American graphic arts collections joining the cohort of instructors. Hands-on examination of works on paper both pre- and post-treatment, viewing exercises, and practical paper-marking experiences will take place at the BHMPI’s and ICG’s study rooms, at the Diagnostic Lab and Paper Conservation Department, at local archives, and in Fabriano, the largest paper production center of premodern Europe. Dedicated presentations on the most common forms of manipulation will cover collector’s marks, highlighting and overdrawing, pricking and pouncing, framing and binding, hand-coloring, conservation decisions, and archiving and filing. The week will be followed by a remote capstone session and presentation of individual projects.

During the week in Rome, accommodation and travel expenses will be covered for all participants. Shared meals and a per diem will also be provided.

This project is aimed at early career curators and academics with demonstrable interest and experience in the field of graphic art. Eligible candidates for application should hold a doctoral degree (earned within the past 10 years), be enrolled in a doctoral program, or possess a solid curatorial experience in graphic arts collections. A background in conservation is not a prerequisite. An active museum affiliation is preferable but not required. The working language is English. Knowledge of Italian is advantageous but not essential.

Applications to participate in the workshop must be submitted via the online application portal before 20 March 2024, 11.59pm CEST.

More information is available here»

This week-long summer seminar will take place at the American Antiquarian Society:

Disability Histories in the Visual Archive: Redress, Protest, and Justice
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, 9–14 June 2024

Led by Jennifer Van Horn and Laurel Daen

Applications due by 8 April 2024

The seminar will focus on the visual and material cultures of disability in eighteenth and nineteenth-century North America. Participants will hone their skills in visual and material culture analysis, learn key methods and theories, including cripping, and gain experience working closely with archives and visual materials that support disability history. We will explore the unparalleled collections of the AAS, especially the library’s exemplary graphic arts collection of prints, photographs, and ephemera as well as collections materials on related topics such as education and printing for the blind.

The seminar will interrogate disability as lived experience, analytical category, and site for creativity and protest. Centering the histories of diverse peoples, we will explore topics such as enslavement, colonization, indigeneity, gender, education, warfare, and disability rights. Participants will actively work toward disability justice by attending to understudied and obscured histories, by questioning how we can use visual and material things to redress past injustices and dismantle ableism, and by considering equitable archival access.

Interdisciplinary in approach, the seminar welcomes scholars across multiple fields and areas of expertise that might include art history, Black studies, design history, disability studies, medical humanities, histories of vast early America, Native and Indigenous studies, and visual and material culture studies. Librarians, museum professionals, and public historians are encouraged to apply. No previous experience in disability studies or visual culture is required.

Guest speakers will include Jenifer Barclay, Associate Professor of History, University of Buffalo and author of The Mark of Slavery: Disability, Race, and Gender in Antebellum America (University of Illinois Press, 2020), and Erin Corrales-Diaz, Curator of American Art, Toledo Museum of Art.

Please follow this link for more information and instructions on how to apply.

The tuition fee for each seminar is $800, which includes meals throughout the week and evening receptions. Modest aid may be available for graduate students and early-career scholars to assist with travel and housing costs. Please feel free to reach out to Jennifer Van Horn with any questions (jvanhorn@udel.edu), or questions can be addressed to John J. Garcia, AAS Director of Scholarly Programs and Partnerships, jgarcia@mwa.org.

The seminar is sponsored by the Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC).

From the Traditional Architecture Group:

Understanding Period Plasterwork: A Workshop with Philip Gaches
Gaches Workshops, Deeping St James, Lincolnshire, 25–26 April 2024

Registration due by 1 March 2024

There are three distinctly different periods of plasterwork in the UK. The use of plaster on ceilings began toward the end of the 15th century, flourished with 16th-century Elizabethan masterpieces, and blossomed in the 17th century with more complex Jacobean work. By 1700, fashion was changing with more influence from Europe, and Palladianism swept in with its beautiful balance and precision, a style that continued through the Georgian period and its neo-classicism. By 1850, however, a new method was introduced: cheaper, quicker fibrous casting, which is installed dry. Though inferior to all that came before, fibrous cast plaster still remains the most popular method of creating ornamental plasterwork.

Philip Gaches has taught traditional plastering in Myanmar, Afghanistan, and across Europe during his 45-year career, from which he has gained a huge amount of experience that he brings to his courses. In the two-day Understanding Period Plasterwork course, he will guide students through the three periods of British plasterwork, using a combination of presentations and practical demonstrations—after which participants will create, with Philip’s guidance, their own pieces of plasterwork from each period, underscoring the differences between materials, methods, and designs.

Course fees are £350 per person / £250 (full-time student rate). Included are Gaches aprons for each student, along with all tools, materials, and PPE. To register, please send an email to admin@traditionalarchitecturegroup.org before 1 March 2024 for payment instructions. Students should include proof of school/university registration.

View of Versailles with the Royal Stables in the Foreground
(Versailles: Musée Lambinet)

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This year’s Attingham offerings:

The Attingham Summer School, 29 June — 14 July 2024
Applications due by 28 January

The 71st Attingham Summer School, a 16-day residential course directed by David Adshead and Tessa Wild, will visit country houses in Sussex, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, Wiltshire, and Dorset. From West Dean, our first base, we will study, amongst other houses and gardens: the complex overlays of Arundel Castle, the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Norfolk; Petworth House, where the patronage of great British artists such as Turner and Flaxman enrich its Baroque interiors; Parham, a fine Elizabethan house in an unrivalled setting and Standen, an Arts and Crafts reinterpretation of the country house.

In the Midlands a series of related houses will be examined: Hardwick Hall, unique amongst Elizabethan houses for its survival of late 16th-century decoration and contents; Bolsover Castle, a Jacobean masque setting frozen in stone and Chatsworth, where the collections and gardens of the Cavendishes and Dukes of Devonshires span more than four centuries. Other highlights include the superb collections and landscaped gardens at Boughton House, ‘the English Versailles’.

Based in Salisbury, the final part of the course will explore the estates and collections of Dorset and Wiltshire. Our itinerary will include Wilton House, the fine Palladian seat of the Earls of Pembroke, renowned for its state rooms and outstanding art collection; Henry Hoare II and Henry Flitcroft’s magnificent garden at Stourhead, the superlative example of the 18th-century English landscape garden style; and Kingston Lacey, home of the collector, traveller and pioneering Egyptologist William John Bankes, who spent the last fourteen years of his life in exile in Venice, from where he continued to embellish the interiors and add to his significant collections.

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Royal Collection Studies, 1–10 September 2024
Applications due by 11 February

The Royal Collection is one of the world’s leading collections of fine and decorative art, with over one million works from six continents, many of them masterpieces. Working in partnership with The Royal Collection Trust, this ten-day residential course offers participants the opportunity to study the magnificent holdings of paintings, furniture, metalwork, porcelain, jewellery, sculpture, arms and armour, books and works on paper and to examine the architecture and interiors of the palaces which house them.

Based near Windsor, the course also examines the history of the collection and the key roles played by monarchs and their consorts over the centuries. Combining a mixture of lectures and tutorials, visits to both the occupied and unoccupied palaces in and around London and close-up object study, Royal Collection Studies aims to give experienced professionals in the heritage sector a deeper understanding of this remarkable collection.

The course is intended to be interactive, with participants asked to contribute and participate in group discussions. As with all Attingham courses, the group is encouraged to engage with current curatorial debates, questions of display and interpretation and, in this instance, the issues surrounding a working collection. During the course, members find that they build an invaluable network for the ongoing exchange of ideas and expertise.

Royal Collection Studies is organised on broadly chronological principles, developing an understanding of the changing function and character of the British Royal Collection. The course is held when the Royal Family is not in residence and Windsor Castle is the central focus. The programme explores palaces past and present and five centuries of collecting and display, covering all aspects of the collection.

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Attingham Study Programme: Arts and Crafts Houses and Gardens, 16–22 September 2024
Applications due by 11 February

This seven-day study programme will explore the origins and evolution of the Arts and Crafts movement in England by studying the work of its leading architects and designers and considering its influence here and abroad. We will be based in Surrey and Gloucestershire and will examine houses, gardens and collections in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire.

The course will begin with the two influential houses which bookend the architect Philip Webb’s career: Red House, designed for William Morris in 1859–60, and Standen, his most complete surviving work, with its fine collection of original Morris & Co. furnishings, furniture, and decorative arts. We will explore the extraordinary creative partnership between Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens at Munstead Wood, where Jekyll’s skill as a designer and horticulturist finds perfect expression in her own garden which clothes the house designed for her by Lutyens. We will also visit Vann, where the architect W D Caröe extended his 16th-century house and commissioned Jekyll to create a water garden in 1911. From Surrey, we will travel to Morris’s country home at Kelmscott Manor and on to Gloucestershire where we will spend time studying the pre-eminent Arts and Crafts collections of The Wilson in Cheltenham. Among the houses and gardens we will explore in this area, are Rodmarton Manor, designed by Ernest Gimson for Claud and Margaret Biddulph, and recognised as the last and greatest of the houses, entirely built and with its furniture made to Arts and Crafts ideals using local materials and craftspeople. At Owlpen Manor, which the architect, Norman Jewson, discovered in a state of near-dereliction and acquired in 1925, in order to repair it and ensure its survival, we will study the Mander family’s wonderful collection. We will then spend a day at two superb and highly contrasting houses near Malvern, the moated 19th-century Madresfield Court, home to the Lygon family for over 900 years, with its library by CR Ashbee and the Guild of Handicraft and exceptional chapel and Perrycroft, designed by CFA Voysey as a country retreat for JW Wilson MP in 1893–94, on a spectacular sloping site in the Malvern Hills.

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Court Culture and the Horse, 1700–1900: Versailles, Chantilly, and Compiègne, 6–11 October 2024
Applications due by 11 February

This intensive short course will explore the central role of horses, ceremonial carriages and grand stable complexes within French court culture during the long 18th century. By connecting these objects and spaces with their immediate surroundings, we hope to reach a more nuanced understanding of their importance in French aristocratic life and of how this is reflected in the architecture, interiors and art collections of the palaces and chateaux we will be visiting.

The programme is planned to coincide with a major new exhibition entitled Cheval en majesté, au coeur d’une civilisation to be held at the Château de Versailles. We will spend the first full day of the course visiting the palace, including the great and small stables, highly important spaces often overlooked by visitors. From our hotel in the 19th arrondissement, we will travel by coach to the Château de Chantilly to study the spectacular 18th-century stables (the largest princely stables in Europe), the newly redisplayed Musée du Cheval, and the interiors and collections of the château. A day will be spent at the Château de Compiègne, a palace built to indulge Louis XV’s passion for hunting and now also the home of the Musée Nationale de la Voiture, established in 1927, comprising the foremost collection of horse-drawn vehicles, harnesses and livery in France. Other visits in Paris will explore smaller spaces with equine connections, including the cavalry department of the Republican Guard who were responsible for protecting the Kings of France and who now play an important ceremonial role.