Call for Papers | Architectural Ideas between Malta and Europe
From ArtHist.net:
People, Books and Models: The Order of St John and the Circulation of Architectural Ideas between Malta and Europe, 16th–18th Centuries
Online and in-person, Valletta, 17–19 April 2024
Proposals due by 30 September 2023
This conference aims at encouraging a multidisciplinary discussion, set in a broad European and Mediterranean context, of the spread of ideas, models for architecture, and construction techniques in Malta during the early modern age, via the networks of the Order of St John. In particular, it intends to investigate this dissemination of architectural theoretical and technical knowledge through the circulation of sources such as books, treatises, manuals of mathematics and geometry, catalogues, and collections of architectural images and drawings, as well as people, from architects to patrons, from engineers to intellectuals. The conference also aims to address a thorny methodological issue: the origin, dispersion, and fragmentation of the Hospitaller conventual library and, at the same time, the genesis of the library collections in Malta that include architectural sources, especially (but not only) at the National Library, for a better understanding of their provenance and context.
Taking Valletta and its civil architecture and historical construction sites as the main starting point of this investigation, the key role played by the city-convent was twofold. On one hand, the city was the core of the Hospitaller network, mirroring in its palaces, construction sites, and library collections the European dimension of the Order’s political, social, and cultural relationships. For this reason, the intense exchange between Malta and the Hospitaller offices in Europe will also be considered as well as the reciprocal influences between the Order and various political powers. On the other hand, there were also in Malta other important political stakeholders—from the Diocese to the Inquisition, from the many religious orders (like the Jesuits) to private individuals and travellers—that diversified the cultural scenario in Malta. These all need to be further investigated.
Finally, interpreting the Order as a powerful engine for the European circulation of drawings, books, and architectural models, the conference aims at serving as a forum where new research and methodologies can be discussed and fostered, not only to explore Malta and the other European nodes of the Hospitaller network, but also to better understand the broader European context from an original perspective.
Contributions delving into the following key topics are very welcome: migration of architectural languages, construction techniques, and circulation of drawings for architectural projects between the Maltese environment and Europe; analysis of architectural models from printed sources in the context of Hospitaller patronage; and the genesis of the Maltese and Hospitaller libraries and book circulation and production (with a focus on architectural sources).
The conference will be held as a hybrid event, with a Zoom link provided closer to the date of the conference. After the conference, participants will be invited to contribute to an edited volume to be proposed for inclusion in a peer-reviewed publication. Participants who wish to contribute are invited to send their text in English, along with related illustrations (including permission for publication) by 1 June 2024.
Abstract submissions will be open from 21 August 2023 to 30 September 2023. The submitted abstracts will be evaluated by the scientific committee and acceptance will be communicated by 23 October 2023. Selected speakers are invited to prepare 20-minute contributions. To apply, please send the following items to peoplebooksmodels2024@um.edu.mt
• 400-word abstract in English
• Contact information and affiliation
• Short CV (max 150 words) in English
The conference is the first step in an international project entitled Malta & Europe, Europe & Malta: Dissemination of Knowledge, Sources, and Architectural Models through the Network of the Order of St John run jointly by the University of Palermo (Dr Armando Antista), Politecnico di Torino (Dr Valentina Burgassi), and the University of Malta (Dr Valeria Vanesio).
Conference Directors
• Armando Antista (University of Palermo)
• Valentina Burgassi (Politecnico di Torino)
• Heléna Perez Gallardo (Complutense University of Madrid)
• Valeria Vanesio (University of Malta)
Scientific Committee Chairs
• Fernando Bouza Álvarez
• Sabine Frommel
• Marco Rosario Nobile
• William Zammit
New Book | Nobility and the Making of Race in 18th-C. Britain
From Bloomsbury:
Tim McInerney, Nobility and the Making of Race in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), 264 pages, ISBN: 978-1350346383, $115.
Nobility and the Making of Race in Eighteenth-Century Britain focuses on Britain and Ireland at a time when race theory as we know it today was steadily emerging in the realm of natural philosophy to examine the structural relationship between nobility and race. This ground-breaking book examines texts from the fields of naturalism, political philosophy, medicine, and colonial venture, as well as interrogating works of drama and literature, in order to track how climate-based understandings of human variety at this time became increasingly imbued with noble traditions of genealogical purity and hierarchies of descent.
This process, the book argues, allowed British naturalists and wider society to understand global populations according to an already familiar pattern of genealogical inequality and offered the proponents of race theory a ready made model of natural supremacy. Tim McInerney explains why nobility and race developed in the way they did and how the premise of each promoted a certain idea of superiority. The result is an in-depth understanding of how genealogical exclusivity works as a power strategy.
Tim McInerney is Senior Lecturer in British and Irish civilisation at Université Paris 8 – Vincennes Saint Denis.
c o n t e n t s
Introduction
1 The Race Myth in Retrospect
2 Performing Nobility in Eighteenth-Century Britain
3 Human Hierarchy and the Great Chain of Being
4 The Noble Body in Ethno-national and Medical Discourse
5 Civilised Anatomies in Eighteenth-Century Human Variety Theory
6 Creating a Global Nobility: The Rise of Genealogical Race Theory
7 Ireland: A Nation of Nobilities
8 The South Seas: Laboratory of the Noble Physique
9 ‘Royal Slaves’: Abolitionism and the Fantasy of Slave Nobility
10 Noble Race in a Time of Revolution
Conclusion: How Nobility Shaped the Concept of Race
Online Symposium | J. M. W. Turner: State of the Field
From ArtHist.net and YCBA:
J. M. W. Turner: State of the Field
Online, 22–23 September 2023
J.M.W. Turner, Staffa, Fingal’s Cave, 1831–32, oil on canvas, 91 × 121 cm (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection).
This symposium will consider the state and meaning of scholarship on J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), one of Britain’s most celebrated artists. Thinking through the extensive Turner historiography, this symposium will explore some of the key ideas, underlying assumptions, and future directions of research. Panelists will consider the place of their research within the broader field of British studies.
To join us on September 22, please register here»
To join us on September 23, please register here»
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All times Eastern Standard Time
9.00 Welcome by Courtney J. Martin (Yale Center for British Art)
9.10 Introduction: Turner in 2025 at the Yale Center for British Art — Lucinda Lax (Yale Center for British Art)
9.25 Keynote Conversation
• Amy Concannon (Tate Britain) in conversation with Richard Johns (University of York), moderated by Tim Barringer (Yale University)
10.25 Break
10.35 Panel 1 | Works on Paper and in the Environment
• Turner’s Pencil: Graphite Landscapes and Extractive Industry — Tobah Aukland-Peck (The Graduate Center, CUNY)
• ‘To Be Broken Up’: Turner, English Landscape, and the Anthropo(s)cenic — Frédéric Ogée (Université Paris Cité)
• A Historiographical Lacuna: Turner’s Prints — Gillian Forrester (independent scholar)
11.55 Break
12.05 Panel 2 | Sharing Turner
• Technical Studies for Turner: How Well Do We Share Knowledge? — Joyce Townsend (Tate Britain)
• The J. M. W. Turner Database: New Approaches to Documenting Turner for the 21st Century — Ian Warrell (independent scholar) and David Hill (University of Leeds)
• Cataloging Turner’s Sketchbooks, Drawings, and Watercolours — Turner Cataloging staff (Tate Britain)
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9.00 Panel 3 | Early Turner
• Whither Early Turner? — Leo Costello (Rice University)
• Turner and the Landed Estate — John Bonehill (University of Glasgow)
10.05 Break
10.15 Panel 4 | Curating Turner
• Turner at Petworth: Past Approaches and Future Directions — Emily Knight (National Trust)
• The Young Turner: Ambitions in Architecture and the Art of Perspective — Helen Cobby (Bath Spa University)
11.15 Break
11.25 Panel 5 | Varied Approaches: Language, Economy, and Ecology
• The Ecological Turn(er) — Sarah Gould (Université Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne)
• ‘The Sun is God’: Turner, Angerstein, and Insurance — Matthew Hunter (McGill University)
• Translating Turner: The French Edition of the Correspondence — Aurélie Petiot (Université Paris Nanterre)
Printmaking for Change: Past and Present
Thomas Rowlandson, The Contrast (detail), 1793, hand-coloured etching and letterpress, 25 × 35 cm
(London: The British Museum)
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From the Paul Mellon Centre:
Printmaking for Change: Past and Present
In-person and online, London, 2–12 October 2023
Join us for a festival of free events exploring how different communities have used, and continue to use, printmaking to enact change, share knowledge, and challenge ideas. With talks, workshops, and behind-the-scenes visits, the two-week festival will explore the potential of printmaking as both a means of mass communication and a radical art form. From the fifteenth century to the present day, the programme will cover a broad range of topics from gender, sexuality and race, to politics, activism, and health. The programme is an introduction to the subject and is open to all. Talks and workshops will take place at the Paul Mellon Centre, the British Museum, PageMasters, and the Royal College of Physicians. Talks at the Paul Mellon Centre will be streamed live via Zoom. Off-site workshops will be in person only.
Registration (required) via Eventbrite opens 8 September.
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Monday, 2 October, 6–8pm
Introductory Session | Printmaking for Change, with Ben Thomas and Marcelle Hanselaar at the Paul Mellon Centre
Prints are multiple yet individual, unpredictable and hard to regulate, often critical, funny, ephemeral, frightening, irreverent, angry or just plain weird. They can be popular or obscure, sophisticated or clumsy, beautiful or ugly or, when responding to market demand, repetitive and dull. They are hard to define and categorise and for that reason tend to be ignored by curators in their displays, yet every national art collection will have far more prints than paintings. Prints are also cheap by comparison with other artworks and can be collected by ordinary people, disseminating their message widely. In this introductory session, art historian Ben Thomas and painter and printmaker Marcelle Hanselaar will discuss the properties of prints that challenge our expectations, and how as an artform they can be democratic, undisciplined and consequently forces for change.
Wednesday, 4 October, 2–4pm
Collections Visit | Printmaking and Politics, with Esther Chadwick and Richard Taws at the Prints and Drawings Study Room of The British Museum
Go behind the scenes at the British Museum to experience a selection of prints from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that explore the varied and complex relationships between printmaking and politics. We will look at prints designed to persuade and effect political change and consider printmaking as a link between politics and ‘high art’. Ranging from woodcut to lithography, line engraving to aquatint, our selection will also highlight how print was used around the world at a time of social, political, and economic unrest.
Saturday, 7 October, 10am–12.30pm or 1.30–4pm
Risograph Workshop | Printmaking and Protest at PageMasters, Lewisham
This workshop will introduce you to risograph printing—a technique often described as a cross between screen printing and photocopying, which uses spot colours and stencils to create multiple prints. Taking place at PageMasters in Lewisham, the session will begin with an introduction to risograph and tour of the studio. This will be followed by an exploration of PageMasters’ archive of protest prints and the opportunity to create your own two-colour A4 print to take home.
Monday, 9 October, 10.30am–noon and 1–2.30pm
Collections Visit | Printmaking and Health, with Jack Hartnell and Katie Birkwood at the Royal College of Physicians
Using the fascinating early print collections of the Royal College of Physicians, this session will explore the roles played by printing, printers and print technology in the world of health. From diagrams in surgical manuals to moveable flap books demonstrating the body’s inner anatomical workings, printed objects have long helped medics debate how to care for changing bodies. The Royal College of Physician’s materials will provide us with a window into how bodies past were understood by artists, physicians, midwives and surgeons alike.
Tuesday, 10 October, 6–8pm
Talk | Mezzotint Engraving and the Making of Race, with Jennifer Chuong, Martin Myrone, and Mechthild Fend at the Paul Mellon Centre
How have prints shaped our understanding of bodies and, specifically, our understanding of race as a bodily attribute? In this session we will explore how a particular print technique, mezzotint engraving, contributed to racial theories between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The mezzotint, which can produce smooth tonal areas with dots or lines, became hugely popular in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century as a means of reproducing portraits. We will discuss how this technique resonated with new anatomical and racial ideas in this period and subsequently how we can better understand print’s role in developing ideas of race and the body.
Thursday, 12 October, 6–8pm
Talk | Printmaking and LGBTQIA+ Communities, with Zorian Clayton at the Paul Mellon Centre
Join V&A curator of prints, Zorian Clayton, to explore LGBTQIA+ liberty and visibility through the varied history of printmaking. Via seventeenth-century radicals, eighteenth-century flamboyance, and nineteenth-century scandal, to contemporary understandings around diverse gender and sexuality, prints and ephemera, Zorian will provide a unique snapshot into a rich and radical history. Through looking at portraits and zines celebrating pioneering activists, writers and artists, as well as highlighting significant Queer spaces in Britain through the centuries, this session will provide an overview of the considerable contribution to printmaking made by the LGBTQIA+ community and its many ancestors.
Exhibition | William Blake: Visionary
Opening this fall at The Getty:
William Blake: Visionary
Getty Center, Los Angeles, 7 October 2023 — 14 January 2024
A remarkable printmaker, painter, and poet, William Blake (1757–1827) developed a wildly unconventional world view, representing universal forces of creation and destruction—physical, psychological, historical—through his own cast of characters. By combining his poetry and images on the page through radical graphic techniques, Blake created some of the most striking and enduring imagery in British art. This major international loan exhibition explores the artist-poet’s imaginative world through his most celebrated works.
Organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum in cooperation with Tate.
Edina Adam and Julian Brooks, with an essay by Matthew Hargraves, William Blake: Visionary (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2020), 168 pages, ISBN: 978-1606066423, $35.
Celebrated for his boundless imagination and unique vision, William Blake (1757–1827) created some of the most striking and distinctive imagery in art, often combining his poetry and visual images on the page through innovative graphic techniques. He has proven an enduring inspiration to artists, musicians, poets, and performers worldwide and a fascinating enigma to generations of admirers. Featuring over 130 color images, this catalogue brings together many of Blake’s most iconic works. Organized by theme, it explores Blake’s work as a professional printmaker, his roles as both painter-illustrator and poet-painter, his relationship to the medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque artists that preceded him, and his legacy in the United States. It also examines his visionary prophetic books, including all eighteen plates of America a Prophecy.
A specialist in works on paper, Edina Adam is assistant curator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Julian Brooks is senior curator and head of the Department of Drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum and is the author of many books, most recently The Lure of Italy: Artists’ Views (Getty Publications, 2017) and Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance Workshop in Action (Getty Publications, 2015). Now the director of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Matthew Hargraves was previously chief curator of art collections and head of collection information and access at the Yale Center for British Art.
Conference | Rethinking British and European Romanticisms, Part II
From ArtHist.net and the University of York:
Rethinking British and European Romanticisms in Transnational Dimensions, Part II
University of York, King’s Manor, 19–21 September 2023
Organized by Elisabeth Ansel, Johannes Grave, Richard Johns, Christin Neubauer, and Elizabeth Prettejohn
The event is the second part of a cooperative two-part workshop between the History of Art Departments of the University of York and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Considering the institution’s main research areas, the event aims to discuss the different concepts of Europe present in the art and culture of Romanticism.
In recent years, national tendencies have challenged the European idea, exemplified by the wake of Brexit and its aftermath. In this context, the question arises to what extent European and national identity concepts can be reconciled. Today’s debate between Britain and Europe still roots in the divergent notions of national identity that manifested in several European countries in the 1800s.
Therefore, the workshop addresses the relationship between visual images and constructions of nationality and questions how European Romanticism can be understood. In contrast to literary studies, investigating transnational transfer processes of Romantic movements has been a desideratum in art historical research. Considering transcultural methods, the participants will reflect national patterns of thought and Romantic identities not as fixed but as processual and hybrid phenomena within the framework of the binational exchange. Based on individual case studies, the event aims to reevaluate the complex interplay of alterity and reciprocity of the relations between cultural spaces.
Funded by University of York and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation)
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9.45 Welcome and Introduction — Richard Johns
10.15 Morning Papers
• Marte Stinis (York) — ‘Sound Resounded from All the Treetops’: The Musical Landscape
• Sammi Lukic-Scott (York) — The Language of the Copy
• David Grube-Palzer (Jena) — Copy and Self-Repetition in the Age of Genius: Using the Example of Caspar David Friedrich
13.00 Lunch
14.30 Afternoon Papers
• Christin Neubauer (Jena) — Debts to German Romanticism in Joseph Noel Paton’s Luther: Dawn at Erfurt (1861)
• Miguel Angel Gaete Cáceres (York) — Johann Moritz Rugendas’ Picturesque Slavery: Denounce or Morbid Sublime Pleasure?
17.00 Evening Presentation
• Elizabeth Prettejohn (York) — Romanticism and Renaissance: Ideas for an Exhibition
18.30 Reception at King’s Manor
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10.00 Greeting
10.15 Morning Papers
• Richard Johns (York) — Further Thoughts on the Artist’s Bequest as a Romantic Phenomenon
• Elisabeth Ansel (Jena) — Heroic Femininity and the ‘Joy of Grief’ in Elizabeth Harvey’s Malvina Lamenting the Death of Oscar (1806)
• Mira Claire Zadrozny (Jena) — Emergent Pictoriality: Images of Ruins in 19th-Century France
13.00 Lunch
14.30 Afternoon Papers
• Helena Cox (York) — The Mánes Family: Bohemian Romanticism and (Inter)National Belonging
• Kayleigh Williams (York) — ‘Her Eyes Were Wild’: Transmediation of Gender and Gaze in Rossetti’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci
16.45 York Museum Garden
18.00 Evening Presentation
• Johannes Grave (Jena) — Duality and Temporality: Evocations of the Sublime in Romantic Paintings
20.00 Dinner at House of Trembling Madness
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9.15 Greeting
9.30 Morning Papers
• Johannes Rössler (Jena) — An Imagined Journey? Caspar David Friedrich and Switzerland
• Wanda Sue Warning (Jena) — Romanticising Youth: Sir Henry Raeburn’s Boy and Rabbit (1814) and the Portraiture of Anonymous Children
• Justus Hierlmeier (Jena) — Ligne et couleur in Théophile Thoré’s Des envois de Rome
12.15 Concluding Discussion
14.30 Afternoon Field Trip
• York Art Gallery
• Stroll through York
20.00 Dinner at Côte Brasserie
Call for Papers | HNA Conference 2024, Britain and the Low Countries
From HNA:
HNA Conference | Britain and the Low Countries: Cultural Exchange Past, Present, and Future
London and Cambridge, 10–13 July 2024
Proposals due by 29 September 2023
2024 marks the first time in the forty-year history of the Historians of Netherlandish Art that the biennial conference will be held in the UK. Cultural, political, and economic exchange has been pivotal to the histories of the UK and the Low Countries, and these relationships have taken on new significance and have new potential as the UK renegotiates its relationship with Europe after Brexit. Britain and the Low Countries: Cultural Exchange Past, Present & Future considers the extraordinary depth and breadth of the relationships between the constituent nations of the UK, Belgium, and The Netherlands.
The conference is comprised of workshops in London and Cambridge on 10 and 13 July and 40 paper sessions to be delivered at West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge on 11 and 12 July. Thirteen of the sessions relate to the subject of Britain and the Low Countries. These fall under three broad themes: technology and the natural sciences, key themes in scholarship on British-Netherlandish culture, and medium-based scholarship in the British-Netherlandish context. There are 25 further sessions on a broad range of themes and 2 career-development sessions.
The call for papers is now open for all sessions. Each session is 90-minutes long and, unless otherwise specified, will comprise three 20-minute papers and 30 minutes for discussion. Applicants must be HNA members and are allowed to submit multiple proposals but may not participate in more than one session. We ask that applicants inform the session chairs about the other sessions they are applying to. Unless specified otherwise, please send proposals of about 500 words, clearly stating the goals of the paper, along with a CV (no longer than one page) to the email address(es) ascribed to the session descriptions below.
The deadline for proposals is Friday, 29 September 2023. Applicants will be notified by the programme committee no later than four weeks after the submission deadline.
Please consider contributing to HNA IDEA’s appeal for contributions to an equitable conference.
s e s s i o n s a t a g l a n c e
• Copies and Reproductions in Netherlandish Art, 1400–1800
• Existential In(ter)ventions: Modernity as Makeability in the Dutch Republic
• Infinite Concordances: Elaborating on Visual Typology in Early Modern Netherlandish Art
• The ‘Inventions’ of Early Netherlandish Painting: Thirty Years since Hans Belting and Christiane Kruse’s Die Erfindung des Gemäldes: Das erste Jahrhundert der niederländischen Malerei (1994)
• Embracing the Digital Age: New Prospects for Researching Northern European Art with Computational Methods
• The ‘More-Than-Human World’ in 17th-Century Dutch Visual and Material Culture
• The Multidimensionality of Netherlandish Grotesques
• What is Anglo-Dutchness?
• Netherlandish-isms: Making Nationhood and Art History
• Reading Pendants and Multiples in Dutch and Flemish Art
• Gender and the Home across Cultures
• Remarkable Women Artists, 1500–1700
• Multiple Masculinities in Netherlandish Art
• Sound and Silence: Soundscapes, Noise, Music, and Quiet Pauses in Dutch and Flemish Art
• New Views on Vermeer: Reflections, Opinions, Reconsiderations
• Moving Dutch Knowledge: Collections as Knowledge Repositories and Sites of Transformation and Transfiguration (ANKK sponsored session)
• Museums in Conflict: Lessons Learned, 1930–1950
• Technical Art History: Material Stories – Object Itineraries
• Do We Belong Together? Case Studies into Portrait Pendants
• The Interconnected Nature between Britain and the Low Countries in the Production and Decorating of Glass
• Art and Nature in the Dutch Colonial World
• Worldly Images and Images of the World in Netherlandish Art
• Half the World Away: Cultural Circulations between Isfahan and the Early Modern Low Countries
• Mutual Appreciation and Exchanges between Artists of Northern and Southern Europe, 1590–1725
• Culture and Climate Change
• The Landscapes of Artists from the Netherlands Who Worked in Britain during the Long 17th Century
• ‘Soft Power’: The Material Legacy of William and Mary
• Netherlandish Migrant Artists and the emergence of Creativity in Late 17th-Century London
• Collecting and Exchange between North Sea Neighbours
• Netherlandish Art in Renaissance Florence: Architectural Exchanges from North to South?
• Print Culture between the UK and the Low Countries
• Print Exhibitions in the Making and Related Research
• New Research on Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the UK
• Immigrants and Excellence: Sculptors from the Low Countries at the English and Scottish Courts in the 17th and 18th Centuries
• Connecting Threads: Tapestries and Cultural Exchange in the Low Countries and England
• Material Depiction and (Cut-out) Trompe l’oeils: The Enchantment of Material Depiction by Netherlandish Painters and the Development of British Traditions
• Visual Sovereignty in Dutch and Indigenous Histories
• Visual Cultures of Cartography in the Low Countries, 1500–1800
• Professional Insights and Practical Advice for Early Career Researchers
• Pecha Kucha Workshop for Graduate Students and Early Career Researchers
Session descriptions are available here»
New Book | The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure
First published in 2020, the book appeared in paperback in 2022; from Simon & Schuster:
Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees, The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure: Catherine the Great, a Golden Age Masterpiece, and a Legendary Shipwreck (New York: Pegasus Books, 2020), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-1643135564 (hardback), $30 / ISBN: 978-1643139425 (paperback), $19.
A riveting history and maritime adventure about priceless masterpieces originally destined for Catherine the Great.
On October 1771, a merchant ship out of Amsterdam, Vrouw Maria, crashed off the stormy Finnish coast, taking her historic cargo to the depths of the Baltic Sea. The vessel was delivering a dozen Dutch masterpiece paintings to Europe’s most voracious collector: Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. Among the lost treasures was The Nursery, an oak-paneled triptych by Leiden fine painter Gerrit Dou, Rembrandt’s most brilliant student and Holland’s first international superstar artist. Dou’s triptych was long the most beloved and most coveted painting of the Dutch Golden Age, and its loss in the shipwreck was mourned throughout the art world. Vrouw Maria, meanwhile, became a maritime legend, confounding would-be salvagers for more than two hundred years. In July 1999, a daring Finnish wreck hunter found the ship, upright on the sea floor and perfectly preserved. The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure masterfully recounts the fascinating tale of Vrouw Maria—her loss and discovery—weaving together the rise and fall of the artist whose priceless masterpiece was the jewel of the wreckage. Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees bring to vivid life the personalities that drove (and are still driving) this compelling tale—evoking Robert Massie’s depiction of Russian high politics and culture, Simon Schama’s insights into Dutch Golden Age art and art history, and Gary Kinder’s spirit of, danger and adventure on the beguiling Archipelago Sea.
Gerald Easter is a Professor at Boston College who has been teaching and writing about Russian/East European politics and history for more than two decades.
Mara Vorhees is a travel writer with an expertise in Russia, New England, and Central America. She has written or contributed to more than 40 guidebook editions, published by Lonely Planet.
Call for Papers | A Different Perspective for the Atlantic Routes
The Call for Papers for three related workshops, from ArtHist.net:
Traveling Objects: The Material Culture of the Atlantic Routes
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 21 February 2024
New Towns and Old Settlements in Latin America: City Planning, Architecture, and Building Decorations in the Shadow of European Influence
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 17 April 2024
Leaving a Trail: Memories, Reports, and Maps beyond the Fascination and Fear of the New World
Palacio de Maldonado – Centro de Estudios Brasileños, Universidad de Salamanca, 15 May 2024
Organized by Maddalena Bellavitis and José Manuel Santos Pérez
After more than two years of careful and laborious preparation (slowed down and hindered several times by the difficulties that have arisen due to the global pandemic), this project finally gets underway. A Different Perspective for the Atlantic Routes intends to go back once more to questioning issues that already count important in-depth studies, like the transoceanic relations between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also has the ambition of wanting to integrate the results already obtained with new reflections and achievements, and above all with a different point of view.
The idea, in fact, is not to propose an approach which is purely targeted to how European society had received and used the travel reports and products arrived from American lands, but to also to evaluate on the one hand the influences and consequences—cultural, technical, artistic, and social—that the exchanges had had overseas on local populations, and on the other how items and symbols closely linked to the cultures of the American territories after being brought to Europe had been reinterpreted and deprived of their original meaning in the new environment in which they had been introduced to, thus also involving the sphere of memory and the Intangible Cultural Heritage. If the common thread proposed is that of the activity of the Dutch West India Company, the project also aims to consider the whole vast cultural, diplomatic, artistic, scientific, anthropological, and gastronomic panorama that the approach to such a topic necessarily brings with itself, and will therefore also evaluate the tangencies and interactions with travels and exchanges also made by other European states and kingdoms in the period considered.
The first opportunity for comparison will be dedicated to the material aspects—that is the objects that have been used and obtained in exchanges, explorations or raids—and to the engineering aspects of the ships used to transport them. The second meeting will focus on the urban installations and the architectural and social aspects of the new settlements, while the third session will concern travelers, travel impressions, and cartography. Workshops will be held in Paris and Salamanca, hosted by the Institut national d’histoire de l’art and the Centro de Estudios Brasileños of the Universidad de Salamanca.
In addition to those who have already been involved in the discussions and in the preparation of the preliminary phases of this project, scholars interested in any discipline that can offer points of contact with the proposed theme—from collecting to memory, from travel literature to material culture, from engineering to anthropology—are encouraged to send a proposal for a contribution.
Please submit an abstract for an unpublished contribution and a short bio by 30 September 2023 to maddalena.bellavitis@gmail.com, specifying the title of the workshop you are applying for. Presentations will be in English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese and will last a maximum of 20 minutes. The organizers, Maddalena Bellavitis and José Manuel Santos Pérez, director of the Centro de Estudios Brasileños of the Universidad de Salamanca, will notify the selected proposals by the second week of October 2023.
Conference | Garden Artist Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell (1750–1823)
Carl von Zimmermann, Portrait Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, detail, ca. 1810 (Münchner Stadtmuseum)
From the website marking the 200th anniversary of the landscape gardener’s death: www.sckell2023.de
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From ArtHist.net:
Der Gartenkünstler Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell und seine Werke: Geschichte und Aktualität
Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, 13–14 October 2023
Organized by Jost Albert and Iris Lauterbach
Registration due by 8 October 2023
Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell war der bedeutendste deutsche Gartenkünstler seiner Generation. Seine Ausbildung in Schwetzingen, in Frankreich und in England verhalf ihm zu einem internationalen Netzwerk. Als kurfürstlicher Hofgärtner und seit 1804 bayerischer Hofgartenintendant sowie in privatem Auftrag realisierte Sckell zahlreiche und bedeutende Gartenanlagen. Als weitsichtiger Stadtplaner legte er die Grundlage für die Erweiterung Münchens zur königlichen Residenzstadt. Der Englische Garten und die Umgestaltung des Nymphenburger Schlossgartens sind die Hauptwerke seiner Münchner Phase. Mit klassisch schönen „Bildern der Natur“ entwarf Sckell Landschaftsgärten, die sich durch große Dimensionen, ausgefeilte räumliche Gestaltungen und einen respektvollen Umgang mit dem Vorhandenen auszeichnen. Die Tagung nimmt das Sckell-Jubiläum zu seinem 200. Todestag zum Anlass, um neue gartenhistorische Forschungsaspekte sowie aktuelle gartendenkmalpflegerische Herausforderungen vorzustellen. Anmeldung zur Tagung bitte bis 8. Oktober 2023 unter: sckell@zikg.eu. Die Teilnahme ist kostenfrei.
Konzeption: Jost Albert und Iris Lauterbach, in Kooperation mit dem AK Historische Gärten der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Gartenkunst und Landschaftskultur (DGGL)
Partnerinstitutionen des Webauftritts www.sckell2023.de:
Natur wird Kunst: Auf den Spuren des Gartenkünstlers Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell (1750–1823)
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8.30 Anmeldung zur Tagung
9.00 Iris Lauterbach, München — Begrüßung und Einführung
9.15 Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell: Gartenkünstler, Verwalter, Organisator
Moderation: Iris Lauterbach
• Rainer Herzog, München — Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell als königlicher Beamter: Die Hofgarten-Intendanz unter organisatorischen, personellen und finanziellen Aspekten
• Gabriele Ehberger, München — Corporate Identity für die Hofgartenintendanz: Sckells Entwurf einer Gärtneruniform
• Thorsten Marr, München — Der Publikumsverkehr im Nymphenburger Garten zur Zeit Sckells
• Brigitte Huber, München — Eine Stadt im Umbruch: München 1795 bis 1825
• Heike Palm, Hannover — „Überhaupt ist diese Parthie noch zu erweitern und unter die Gruppen me[h]r Deutlichkeit zu bringen.“ Sckells Begleittexte zu seinen Entwürfen
12.30 Mittagspause
14.00 Zu Sckells Pflanzenverwendung
Moderation: Jost Albert
• Clemens Alexander Wimmer, Potsdam — Die Pflanzenverwendung Sckells in ihrer Zeit und ihre Rezeption
• Hans Joachim Klemmt, München — Sckells Baumartenwahl: Eine forstliche Einwertung aus heutiger Sicht vor dem Hintergrund des Klimawandels
15.00 Kaffeepause
15.30 Gartenkunst in der Nachfolge von Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell
• Michael Schwahn, München — Carl August Sckell und der Englische Garten in Neuburg an der Donau
• Peter Lack, Güstrow — Ein Gärtner auf Grand Tour: Die zweijährige Reise des Fritz Sckell von 1826 bis 1828
• Dietger Hagner, Rudolstadt — Wilhelmsthal bei Eisenach: Die Transformation zum Landschaftsgarten und das Wirken der Thüringer Hofgärtnerfamilie Sckell
17.00 Pause und Ortswechsel
19.00 Abendveranstaltung (Max-Joseph-Saal der Residenz)
• Bernd Schreiber, Präsident der Bayerischen Verwaltung der staatlichen Schlösser, Gärten und Seen — Begrüßung
• Jost Albert, München — Sckells Arbeitsschwerpunkte in den letzten Lebensjahren
• Iris Lauterbach, München — Der Zauberstab des Gartenkünstlers: Sckells „Methode, in der Natur zu zeichnen“
• Udo Weilacher, Freising/München — Die Landschaft von Morgen: Impulse von Sckell
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Sckells Gärten heute: Herausforderungen und Ziele der Gartendenkmalpflege
Exkursionen mit Mitarbeiter:innen der Gärtenabteilung der Bayerischen Schlösserverwaltung. Teilnahme nur für angemeldete Teilnehmer:innen der Tagung
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12.00–16.00 Mitgliederversammlung des AK Historische Gärten der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Gartenkunst und Landschaftskultur (DGGL), nicht öffentlich
19.00 Öffentliche Abendveranstaltung (Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste)
Vergabe des Sckell-Rings durch die Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste und Laudatio
Vergabe der Sckell Students Awards, Preisvergabe durch Udo Weilacher, Technische Universität München
Enfilade 
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