New Book | The Nation That Never Was
From The University of Chicago Press:
Kermit Roosevelt, The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America’s Story (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-0226817613, $25.
Our idea of the Founders’ America and its values is not true. We are not the heirs of the Founders, but we can be the heirs of Reconstruction and its vision for equality.
There’s a common story we tell about America: that our fundamental values as a country were stated in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the Revolution, and made law in the Constitution. But, with the country increasingly divided, this story isn’t working for us anymore—what’s more, it’s not even true. As Kermit Roosevelt argues in this eye-opening reinterpretation of the American story, our fundamental values, particularly equality, are not part of the vision of the Founders. Instead, they were stated in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and were the hope of Reconstruction, when it was possible to envision the emergence of the nation committed to liberty and equality.
We face a dilemma these days. We want to be honest about our history and the racism and oppression that Americans have both inflicted and endured. But we want to be proud of our country, too. In The Nation That Never Was, Roosevelt shows how we can do both those things by realizing we’re not the country we thought we were. Reconstruction, Roosevelt argues, was not a fulfillment of the ideals of the Founding but rather a repudiation: we modern Americans are not the heirs of the Founders but of the people who overthrew and destroyed that political order. This alternate understanding of American identity opens the door to a new understanding of ourselves and our story, and ultimately to a better America.
America today is not the Founders’ America, but it can be Lincoln’s America. Roosevelt offers a powerful and inspirational rethinking of our country’s history and uncovers a shared past that we can be proud to claim and use as a foundation to work toward a country that fully embodies equality for all.
Kermit Roosevelt III is a professor of constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. A former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice David Souter, he is the author of The Myth of Judicial Activism, as well as two novels, Allegiance and In the Shadow of the Law.
C O N T E N T S
Introduction
1 Stories of America
2 Questioning the Standard Story: Dissenters
3 The Exclusive Declaration
4 The Ambiguous Revolution
5 The Geostrategic Constitution
6 The Story of Continuity
7 The March of the Declaration
8 Why We Tell the Standard Story
9 Why We Shouldn’t Tell the Standard Story
10 Magic Tricks and Revolutions
11 Why, How, and Who We Are
12 Redemption Songs: Inclusive Equality and Exclusive Individualism in Modern America
13 The Better Story
Bibliographical Essay
Acknowledgments
Notes
At Bonhams | Old Master Paintings
Lot 80: J.M.W. Turner, East Cliff Lodge, Ramsgate, the Seat of Lord Keith, 1796–97, pencil and watercolour. 31 × 41 cm.
Estimate: £30,000–50,000.
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Press release, via Art Daily, for Turner’s View of East Cliff Lodge, included in the July 5 sale at Bonhams:
Old Master Paintings
Bonhams, London, 5 July 2023
An early architectural watercolour, East Cliff Lodge, Ramsgate, the Seat of Lord Keith, by J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) is to be offered at Bonhams Old Master Paintings sale in London on Wednesday 5 July 2023 (Lot 80). It is estimated at £30,000–50,000.
Bonhams Director of Old Master Paintings, Caroline Oliphant, said: “East Cliffe Lodge dates from 1796–97 when the artist was in his early 20s and is one of several architectural watercolours Turner executed around this time. Topographical commissions were a good and dependable way of earning a living for young aspiring painters but, this being Turner, the results are, of course, rather special.”
East Cliff Lodge was designed in the gothic revival style by Charles Boncey and completed by 1794. Early owners included George Elphinstone, 1st Viscount Keith (1764–1823), a Scottish-born naval officer who served in the American Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He was Commander in Chief of the North Sea Squadron while living at Cliff Lodge; the house gave him an excellent view of the Downs anchorage.
In 1831, East Cliff was acquired by Moses Haim Montefiore (1784–1885), a British financier, banker, activist, and philanthropist. Sheriff of London, Fellow of the Royal Society, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and a key figure in British Jewish history. He was knighted in 1837. Moses and his wife Judith spent their honeymoon in Ramsgate, fell in love with the area, and rented East Cliff Lodge for some years before buying it. Montefiore built a private synagogue in the grounds of East Cliff and, following his wife’s death in 1862, commissioned a mausoleum where they both now lie. On nearby land he founded the Judith Montefiore College. Most of the house was demolished in 1954, but the synagogue, mausoleum, and college remain.
At Auction | ‘Charles Monro’s House at Finchley’ by Turner
Lot 2143: J.M.W. Turner, Charles Monro’s House at Finchley, 1793–94, 22 × 29 cm
(Estimate: £30,000–50,000)
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From the press release (via Art Daily) for the sale:
Fine Art and Silver
Ewbank’s, Surrey, 22 June 2023
An early watercolour by J.M.W. Turner, consigned by the descendants of the patron for whom it was painted, comes to auction at Ewbank’s in Surrey on 22 June 2023 (Lot 2143: estimated at £30,000–50,000). Charles Monro’s House at Finchley (1793–94) is a signed corner view of an imposing mansion set among trees. It depicts the home of the brother of Turner’s patron Dr. Thomas Monro (1759–1833), a serious collector who also supported Peter De Wint, Thomas Girtin, and John Sell Cotman, among others, and established an academy and what became known as ‘The Monro Circle’ of artists. Dr. Monro rose to prominence, not just as a patron and art collector, but also as one-time consulting physician to King George III.
The painting, whose subject was the home of Dr. Monro’s elder brother Charles, passed to Charles’s son and namesake, before descending through the family to the current day. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1887 and in the Monro Academy Exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1976. The house is identified by a signed inscription to the reverse of the artwork by his son, the younger Charles, reading: “Original drawing of my father’s House Nether Street Finchley made for him about the year 1793 or 4. Charles Monro.” The reverse of the frame bears an inscription by Robert W. Monro, nephew of the younger Charles Monro and the son of Thomas Monro, dated 23rd July 1874 and alluding to the main inscription by Charles Monro to the reverse.
Partner Andrew Ewbank said: “This is a delightful painting packed with detail and character, as well as demonstrating considerable draughtsmanship. Turner would have been about 18 when he painted it, and his assured hand in its composition makes this an important historical document in the story of the artist, as its inclusion in distinguished public exhibitions has shown.”
New Installation | Joana Vasconcelos’s Wedding Cake at Waddesdon
Joana Vasconcelos, Wedding Cake, at Waddesdon Manor in Aylesbury, installed 2023.
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From the press release for the new installation at Waddesdon:
Joana Vasconcelos: Wedding Cake at Waddesdon
The Dairy at Waddesdon Manor, open from 8 June 2023, with tours available until 26 October
Wedding Cake—a 12-metre-high sculptural pavilion in the form of a three-tiered wedding cake, clad entirely in ceramic tiles—is a major new work at Waddesdon by celebrated Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos (b. 1971). Almost five years in the making, Wedding Cake was commissioned by the Rothschild Foundation for Waddesdon, prompted by the relationship between visionary collector Lord Rothschild and Vasconcelos.
Part sculpture, part architectural garden folly, Wedding Cake is an extraordinary, enormous, fully immersive sculpture that combines pâtisserie and architecture. Gleaming and icing-like outside and in, it offers an intricate and richly sensory experience—glazed in pale pinks, greens, and blues, beset with sculptural ornament, and complete with the sounds of trickling water and a site-specific lighting scheme. Wedding Cake is Vasconcelos’s most ambitious commission to date, described by the artist as “a temple to love” celebrating festivity and marriage.
Joana Vasconcelos, Wedding Cake, at Waddesdon, detail of the ground level.
The history of the wedding cake is long and varied, full of symbolism and tradition—from ancient Rome where bread was broken over the bride’s head to bring good fortune to the couple, to contemporary confections that embody celebration and social status. Vasconcelos’s Wedding Cake is a playful addition to this rich history. Inspired by the exuberant Baroque buildings and highly decorative ceramic traditions of Lisbon—where Vasconcelos lives and works—the work is also a contemporary response to the great Rothschild traditions of hospitality with echoes of 18th-century garden pavilions.
At Waddesdon Wedding Cake will stand in a grove of trees alongside the 19th-century Dairy, built by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild to entertain and charm guests at his famous house parties, and described by contemporaries as “a treasure house of what is beautiful, curious, or ancient.” It reminds us of the long European history of placing fanciful buildings in gardens and landscapes and forms part of a growing collection of significant contemporary and historic sculpture, brought together by Lord Rothschild. Today, the Dairy is still a much sought-after entertaining space, and the presence of the Wedding Cake, a symbol of love and happiness, is a perfect complement.
Wedding Cake is emblematic of Vasconcelos’s practice. She is deeply influenced by the artistic traditions of her home country, and the way in which she combines her materials reflects international influences on Portuguese culture over centuries—born from a history of exploring and seafaring, from Chinese and Japanese ceramics to Brazilian carnival, incorporating colour and light. Her work is often playful, manipulating scale to dramatic effect and using familiar daily objects in surprising, charming, and inventive ways. On a deeper level, her work explores notions of domesticity, femininity, empowerment, and the tension between private and public realms.
Vasconcelos’s work often challenges the assumptions of traditional hierarchies of ‘noble’ materials, such as marble, used frequently to embellish grand structures and often set above more everyday substances like ceramics and textiles. Her practice champions traditional, hand-made objects and techniques, and the ceramics for Wedding Cake have been made by the Viúva Lamego manufactory, which has been operating in Sintra for 170 years. The company’s standard 14×14cm tiles determined the size of the overall structure of Wedding Cake, whose 11m diameter is the smallest circle that can be made with whole tiles.
At Waddesdon, this combination of materials and the exploration of scale and technique is a perfect fit. The house is famous for its ceramics, particularly Sèvres and Meissen porcelain. The fashions and traditions of 18th- and 19th-century dining, entertaining, and festivity are also deeply embedded in the collections, whether a silver dinner service made for King George III, an 18th-century book recording the festivities laid on to mark a royal wedding, or a manual illustrating sugar sculpture. The sumptuous decoration of the Wedding Cake also speaks to the architecture of the house, itself covered in ornament and designed to complement the collections inside and the carefully laid out garden and landscape. These include the fanciful buildings in Waddesdon’s grounds like the Dairy, Flint House, and the Aviary, all intended to surprise and delight visitors.
According to Joana Vasconcelos, “An enormous project such as this one could only happen with the vision and encouragement provided by a generous and extraordinary patron such as Lord Rothschild. He could see its dreamlike potential, believe in it, and provide the means to make it come true. I have been addressing the subject of love through my career for almost 30 years now, but this is my biggest challenge so far. Many artists have the ‘impossible project’ and this is mine. I wanted people to have three different approaches to it: looking from the outside, enjoying the surroundings from the different levels or balconies, and rising to the top, finally completing the artwork with their presence. Above all, I always thought of it as a temple to love.”
Lord Rothschild says, “We are delighted to be collaborating again with Joana Vasconcelos, whose work is already magnificently represented at Waddesdon by her giant candlesticks, Lafite. The vision, imagination, and ambition exemplified in the Wedding Cake is a perfect match for the passion which drove Baron Ferdinand, the creator of Waddesdon, to build the Manor and the Dairy, where he intended that his many friends would be surprised and delighted at every turn. I am sure that the Wedding Cake will have just as great an impact on visitors and wedding guests today.”
Pippa Shirley, Director of Waddesdon says, “Waddesdon was built to entertain; so, what better way to mark the continuity today of that spirit of hospitality, artistic creativity, and Rothschild family patronage than through the commission of this magical object, an emblem of love and celebration. Projects like this require a leap of faith from both artist and patron, and we are proud to have been a partner in this innovative work.”
Recipe for Wedding Cake
• 1 creative artist
• 1 visionary patron
• 2 international teams
• Pinch of experts
• 3500 wrought iron parts
• 21,815kg iron sheet
• Approximately 25,150 Viúva Lamego ceramic tiles (99 different types) and 1,238 Viúva Lamego ceramic pieces (52 different types). Ceramic tile area: 365 m2
• Plethora of ornaments — mermaids, dolphins, candles, globes, etc
• Indoor and outdoor lights — 350 glass flames receiving optical fiber (about 3,000 meters)
• 592 light points
• Rivers of glaze
• Sprinklings of water
• Hope, belief, and effort
Blend the circa 50 tons with generous amounts of creativity and patience. Bind into different panels; raise tier by tier to height of 12 meters. Assemble at Waddesdon. Serve with love.
Joana Vasconcelos’s Lafite, two giant candlesticks made of illuminated Chateau Lafite Rothschild magnums (commissioned in 2015 by the Rothschild Foundation in celebration of the family associations with the world of great Bordeaux wine), will be moving to the Dairy. In 2012, her Pavillon de Thé, a giant wrought-iron tea pot, was the focal point of House of Cards, a contemporary sculpture exhibition in the gardens, and in 2016 her Cup Cake (2011) was exhibited on the North Front.
Vasconcelos’s work is also represented in major collections around the world, such as those of Calouste Gulbenkian, François Pinault, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation. She has exhibited regularly since the mid-1990s. Her work became known internationally after her participation in the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, with the work A Noiva [The Bride] (2001–05). She was the first woman and the youngest artist to exhibit at the Palace of Versailles, in 2012. Other highlights of her career include a solo exhibition at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2019); the project Trafaria Praia for the Pavilion of Portugal at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); the participation in the group exhibition The World Belongs to You at the Palazzo Grassi/François Pinault Foundation, Venice (2011); taking part in Un Certain Etat du Monde? A Selection of Works from the François Pinault Foundation at the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow (2013); and her first retrospective Sem Rede held at the Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon (2010). Her solo show Time Machine was on view at Manchester Art Gallery in 2014; in London she exhibited at Royal Academy of Arts’ Summer Exhibition in 2018; and she was given a major show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Beyond in 2021.
Visitors to Waddesdon will be able to visit Wedding Cake on a guided tour that will include the impressive collection of contemporary sculpture situated in the Water Garden at the Dairy. Wedding Cake tours will run from 8 June until 26 October on Thursdays and selected Sundays.
Enfilade turns 14!
From the Editor
As Enfilade turns fourteen (22 June), I write with keen appreciation: thanks to you all for still reading. And so, as is the custom, please celebrate by buying an art book! Yale UP is offering 50% off books with free shipping (some restrictions apply), until the 23rd. Now is also a fine time to renew your HECAA membership and sign up for this fall’s HECAA@30 conference.
Best for a good summer!
Craig Hanson
Symposium | Belatedness and Historiographies of N. American Art
The last event in the Belatedness and North American Art series, from The Courtauld:
Belatedness and Historiographies of North American Art
Courtauld Institute, Vernon Square Campus, London, 16–17 June 2023
Focused on historiographies of North American Art, the symposium asks, how has belatedness shaped the historiography of the arts of North America? How have projections of belatedness shaped the inclusion or exclusion of African American, Latinx, Caribbean, and Native American art in the canon of ‘American art’, as well as art from regions outside the Northeast? How have the arts of Canada and Mexico been framed in dialogue with the art of the United States? Has visual studies recentred these hierarchies? In the context of the United States, how has the discipline’s emergence in dialogue with the American Mind school of American studies continued to shape the sub-field’s relationships with the wider field and canons of the history of art? How have narratives of modernist progress in abstraction shaped critics’ constructions of belatedness around artists who retain figuration? How have artists operating outside geographic and cultural ‘centres’ of art production taken up, mimicked, or inverted expectations of cultural belatedness?
Abstracts and registration information can be found here»
F R I D A Y , 1 6 J U N E 2 0 2 3
12.45 Registration
1.15 Welcome and Introductory Comments
1.30 Session 1 | Belatedness as Difference
• Emmanuel Ortega — From New Spain to Mexico, Belatedness as a Tool of Empire
• Alexis L. Boylan — Always Late to the Party: North American Art, Science, and Epistemological Anxiety in the Twentieth Century
2.45 Coffee Break
3.15 Session 2 | Belatedness as Positionality
• Jessica L. Horton — Tipi and Dome: Indigenous Futurism at Expo 70
• Leon Wainwright — Between the United States, Britain and the Caribbean: A Historiography of Belatedness
4.30 Reception
S A T U R D A Y , 1 7 J U N E 2 0 2 3
10.00 Registration
10.30 Welcome and Introductory Comments
10.45 Session 3 | Belated Inclusions
• Elizabeth Hutchinson — When Did Indigenous Art Become ‘American’?
• Tanya Sheehan — American Art Historiography, Slavery, and Its Aftermath
12.00 Lunch Break
1.30 Session 4 | Belatedness and American Art Histories
• Juliet Sperling — The Late Jacob Lawrence
• Martha Langford — Belatedness, Near and Far
• Nicholas Robbins — ‘Yet-to-be-dismantled’: Elizabeth Bishop and Winslow Homer in 1974
3.15 Concluding Remarks
Symposium | Rethinking Methodologies in British Art Research
From the Mellon Centre and Eventbrite:
Expanding the Field: Rethinking Methodologies in British Art Research
Online and in-person, Paul Mellon Centre, London, 23 June 2023
This hybrid event has been programmed by the Early Career Researchers Network (ECRN) and Doctoral Researchers Network (DRN). All interested parties are welcome to attend. You can find out more about the networks here.
This annual symposium offers an opportunity for doctoral and early career researchers to share and discuss their research creative methods, varied approaches, ethics, and methodologies on topics related to British art and art history (broadly defined). By questioning ‘how we come to know what we know’, we aim to reflect on the current possibilities, dilemmas, and challenges in academic research, participatory engagement, or creative practice. Join us to hear from speakers presenting on a variety of topics that cover decolonial, postcolonial, feminist, or queer perspectives; address the impact of quantitative and data-driven methodologies; report on practice-based, curatorial, or collaborative research; or reflect on the role of different media, including digital, audio, and filmmaking.
Travel grants are available for DRN and ECRN members travelling to London from within the UK to join us for the day. Please contact us at doctoralresearchers@gmail.com to be considered for a travel grant.
P R O G R A M M E
10.00 Opening Remarks
10.15 Panel 1 | Transnational Identities
Chair: Lauren Houlton (University of Westminster)
• Rahila Haque (University of the Arts, London) — In Rehearsal: A Methodology for Diasporic Feminist Worlds
• Helena Cuss (Kingston University) — Transnational Art Markets, 1948–57
• Excellent Hansda (University of Liverpool) — Exploring Modern Identity in Twentieth-Century Residential Architecture in Mumbai through ‘Contrapuntal Reading’
• Lucy Shaw (University of Birmingham) — Travel, Sexuality, and Nation in John Minton’s Post-War Work
11.35 Break
11.50 Panel 2 | Perception, Practice, and Participation
Chair: Alex Gushurst-Moore (University of Cambridge)
• Layla Khoo (University of Leeds) — Exploring Practice-based Methodologies in Creating and Evaluating Participatory Contemporary Art within Heritage Sites and Collections
• Antonio Capelao (University College London) — Our Children Will Change the Built Environment
• Adam Benmakhlouf (University of Dundee, Dundee Contemporary Arts) —‘The Work before the Work’
• Alex Culshaw (Arts University Bournemouth) — Listening Lounge Q&A
1.10 Lunch
2.00 Panel 3 | Reconsidering Visual Culture (Virtual)
Chair: Claudia di Tosto (University of Warwick and The Paul Mellon Centre)
• Lea Stephenson (University of Delaware) — Egyptomania, Experiential Research, and the Senses
• Sonal Singh (University of Delhi) — Colonial Cities in British Art, Late Eighteenth to Mid-Nineteenth Century
• Jessica Johnson (University of Oregon) — Of the Wrong Class and Complexion: James Northcote’s Ira Aldridge as Othello, the Moor of Venice
• Tania Cleaves (University of Warwick) — The Ethics of Exclusion: On (Not) Representing Photographs of Child Nudists
• Nora Epstein, (Independent Scholar) — Carving New Lines of Investigation: Material and Digital Methods for Tracing the Use of Tudor Relief Blocks
3.35 Break
3.50 Panel 4 | Creation: Media, Technology, and Representation
Chair: Nick Mols (Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University)
• Dawn Kanter (The Open University) — A Digital Approach to the Portrait Sitting in Enhancing Knowledge and Understanding of British Portraiture, 1900–1960
• Clare Chun-yu Liu (Manchester Metropolitan University) — Reinterpreting English Chinoiserie from a Postcolonial Perspective through Fiction Filmmaking / Trailers for Clare Chun-yu Liu’s films: This is China of a Particular Sort, I Do Not Know (trailer) and Another Beautiful Dream (trailer)
• Richard Müller (University College London) — Depictions of the Para-City: Art and Practice as Methodology in Informal Taiwan
4.50 Closing Remarks
5.00 Reception at the Paul Mellon Centre
Call for Papers | Material and Visual Culture Seminar Series, Edinburgh
From ArtHist.net:
Material and Visual Culture Seminar Series
Online, University of Edinburgh, Autumn 2023
Proposals due by 31 July 2023
The Material and Visual Culture of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Research Cluster is pleased to announce that the Material and Visual Culture Seminar Series (MVCS) will be continuing for a fifth year. We therefore invite proposals for twenty-minute papers from PhD candidates, early-career researchers, and cultural heritage professionals addressing any aspect of material and visual culture studies.
The seminars aim to explore a wide variety of themes, and localities within the long seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (broadly defined) to foster methodological and interdisciplinary dialogue. Topics might include but are not limited to: object or subject case studies, material/visual culture and identity especially with respect to marginalized peoples or communities, material/visual culture and literature, craft, consumer cultures, global ‘things’, etc. Please submit a title and abstract of no more than 250 words, with a short biography (about 100 words) to materialcultureresearcheca@ed.ac.uk by 31 July.
The seminars are scheduled for Wednesday evenings online, at 5pm BST/GMT fortnightly throughout semester one of the 2023/24 academic year.
Twitter: @mvcseminar
Instagram: mvccluster
Decorative Arts Trust Announces 2023 Research Grant Recipients
From The Decorative Arts Trust:
The Decorative Arts Trust announced that the 2023 Research Grants will be awarded to 15 recipients, the largest number of recipients since the program began 20 years ago.
Alyse Muller is studying Sévres porcelain, such as this Lidded pot-pourri vase, from around 1760 (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 75.DE.11). The painting on front panel is attributed to Charles-Nicolas Dodin, after an engraving of a painting by David Teniers the Younger.
Damiët Schneeweisz is studying Caribbean miniatures. Pictured: Eliab Metcalf, Benjamin Turo of Bermuda, ca. 1825, probably painted in the Caribbean islands, watercolor on ivory (Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1986.64.2).
• Elliot Camarra (MA student, History of Design and Material Culture, Bard Graduate Center) Brauronian votive mirrors
• Graham Feyl (PhD student, History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara), queer craft in San Francisco
• Isabella J. Galdone (PhD student, History of Art, Yale University), paintings and textile works by women
• Cara Marie Green (MA student, Fashion & Textile Studies: Theory, History, Museum Practice, Fashion Institute of Technology), Norwegian folk dress
• Andrew Grider (BA student, Interior Design, Virginia Commonwealth University), furnishings in the Hill House Museum
• Lily Higgins (PhD student, History of Art, Yale University), bilingual samplers
• Alida R. Jekabson (PhD student, History of Art and Architecture, University of California Santa Barbara), indigenous craft displays in the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco
• Laura C. Jenkins (PhD student, History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art), French 18th-century interiors in 19th-century New York
• Sybil F. Joslyn (PhD student, History of Art and Architecture, Boston University), furniture made of reclaimed ship materials, scrimshaw, and ship figureheads
• Tracy Meserve (MA student, Decorative Arts and Design History, George Washington University), the silk industry in Calabria, Italy
• Alyse B. Muller (PhD student, Art History, Columbia University), port scenes on Sévres porcelain
• Damiët Schneeweisz (PhD student, History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art), Caribbean miniatures
• Krishna Shekhawat (PhD student, Art History, University of California, Berkeley), an 18th-century gilded palanquin (DARTS Grant)
• Hampton Smith (PhD student, History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), tools created by Black craftspeople
• Lea C. Stephenson (PhD student, Art History, University of Delaware), Egyptian-inspired textiles and jewelry (Marie Zimmermann Grant)
The application deadline for Research Grants is April 30 annually. For more information on grants and scholarships from the Decorative Arts Trust, read about our Emerging Scholars Program, generously supported by many Trust members and donors. For grant announcements and deadline reminders, sign up for our e-newsletter and follow us on Facebook and Instagram. The deadline for the 2023 Prize for Excellence and Innovation is approaching on 30 June 2023.
New Book | Media and the Mind
To mark the book’s launch, Matthew Eddy will give a 45-minute talk this Friday (16 June, 5pm) at the University of Edinburgh Main Library to mark the book’s launch; there will also be on view a small exhibition of student manuscripts that Eddy used in writing the book. From The University of Chicago Press:
Matthew Daniel Eddy, Media and the Mind: Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700–1830 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2023), 512 pages, ISBN: 978-0226183862, $65.
A beautifully illustrated argument that reveals notebooks as extraordinary paper machines that transformed knowledge on the page and in the mind.
Information is often characterized as facts that float effortlessly across time and space. But before the nineteenth century, information was seen as a process that included a set of skills enacted through media on a daily basis. How, why, and where were these mediated facts and skills learned? Concentrating on manuscripts created by students in Scotland between 1700 and 1830, Matthew Daniel Eddy argues that notebooks functioned as workshops where notekeepers learned to judge the accuracy, utility, and morality of the data they encountered. He shows that, in an age preoccupied with ‘enlightened’ values, the skills and materials required to make and use notebooks were not simply aids to reason—they were part of reason itself.
Covering a rich selection of material and visual media ranging from hand-stitched bindings to watercolor paintings, the book problematizes John Locke’s comparison of the mind to a blank piece of paper, the tabula rasa. Although one of the most recognizable metaphors of the British Enlightenment, scholars seldom consider why it was so successful for those who used it. Eddy makes a case for using the material culture of early modern manuscripts to expand the meaning of the metaphor in a way that offers a clearer understanding of the direct relationship that existed between thinking and notekeeping. Starting in the home, moving to schools, and then ending with universities, the book explores this argument by reconstructing the relationship between media and the mind from the bottom up.
Matthew Daniel Eddy is professor and chair in the history and philosophy of science at Durham University. He is the author and editor of numerous works on the cultural history of Britain and its former empire.
C O N T E N T S
Bibliographic Note
Prologue
Introduction
1 Recrafting Notebooks
The Tabula Rasa and Media Interface
Notebooks as Artifacts
Notekeeping as Artificing
Notekeepers as Artificers
Thought as a Realtime Activity
Science as a System
Book Outline
Part I | Inside the Tabula Rasa
2 Writing
Writing as a Knowledge-Creating Tool
The Place of Writing within Literacy
Script and Observational Learning
Grids and Verbal Pictures
Copies and the Exercise of Memory
3 Codexing
Paper Machines as Material Artifacts
Paper as an Informatic Medium
Quires and Knowledge Management
Books and Customized Packaging
4 Annotating
Revisibilia Made through Annotation
Marginalia as Scribal Interface
Paratexts and Editorial Training
Ciphers and the Acquisition of Numeracy
Part II | Around the Tabula Rasa
5 Categorizing
Headings as Realtime Categories
Headings as Mnemonic Labels
Headings as Visual Cues
Headings as Coordinates for Scanpaths and Sightlines
6 Drawing
Description and Movement across a Page
Learning to Draw a Picture
Figures as Developmental Tools
Scenes as Observational Training
Observation and the Utility of Perception
7 Mapping
Mapkeepers and Knowledge Systems on Paper
Map-Mindedness and Embodied Experience
Desk Maps as Crafted Constructions
Field-Mindedness in the Classroom
Field Maps and Visualized Data
Maps as Mnemonic Devices
Part III | Beyond the Tabula Rasa
8 Systemizing
The Syllabus as a System and a Machine
Lecture Notebooks and Knowledge Formation
The Syllabus and Its Organizational Technologies
Scroll Books and the Strategies of Realtime Learning
Transcripts and the Extension of Memory
Lines and the Media of the Mind
9 Diagramming
Paths and Diagrammatic Knowledge
Schemata as Useful Mnemonic Aids
Shapes as Repurposed Perceptual Devices
Pictograms and Visual Judgment
Tables as Kinesthetic Diagrams
Traces and Realtime Observation
10 Circulating
Local and Global Networks
Personal and Institutional Libraries
Commodities within Knowledge Economies
Courts of Law and Public Opinion
Conclusion
11 Rethinking Manuscripts
The Tabula Rasa and Manuscripts
Manuscripts as Dynamic Artifacts
Manuscript Skills as Artifice
Manuscript Keepers as Artificers
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Abbreviations
Primary Sources
Manuscripts and Ephemera
Printed Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Index
Enfilade 
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