Online Seminar | The John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History
Trade Card of J. F. Lacourt (Leeds University Library, MS 2241 John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History).
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From The Furniture History Society:
‘Pattern Books, Early Trade Catalogues, and Many Other Rarities’: The John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History
The Furniture History Society Online Lecture, Wednesday, 24 March 2021, 18.00 (GMT)
Members of the Bedford project team from Special Collections at the University of Leeds will highlight some of the rare books and ephemera in the John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History and explain more about the ambitions of the cataloguing project. Chaired by Mark Westgarth, the presentations will be followed by a discussion with the Bedford team and an opportunity to ask questions about the project.
When the art and antique dealer John Bedford died in February 2019 he gifted a remarkable collection of rare books, manuscripts, artworks, and objects to the University of Leeds. Assembled over almost half a century, the John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History is an exceptional resource covering all aspects of the English home, from interiors and furnishings to lighting and metalwork, drapery and upholstery to architectural and garden design. Comprising over 3,000 printed items, many of them extremely rare, and in some cases unique, the collection includes furniture pattern books, designs for ornament, and inventories of country houses. The books, which also touch on household life and management, date from the seventeenth century onwards. The archive is also rich in rare ephemera including trade cards, labels, and pamphlets, many of which are unknown outside this collection. The John Victor Bedford Will Trust, with great generosity and vision, is funding a cataloguing project based in Special Collections at the University of Leeds to make the collection fully searchable and accessible.
This event is free for FHS members and £5 for non-members. If you are a non-member and would like to attend, please click here. Contact events@furniturehistorysociety.org to register interest.
Mark Westgarth is Associate Professor in Art History and Museum Studies at the University of Leeds and also Director of the Centre for the Study of the Art & Antiques Market. He has been instrumental in developing antique dealer collections at Leeds; Mark is a Council Member of the FHS.
Rhiannon Lawrence-Francis, Collections and Engagement Manager, has operational oversight of the project to catalogue the John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History. She visited John at his Guernsey home a few weeks before he died, and planned and managed the transfer of his collection to Leeds. A medievalist by background she is responsible for the rare book collections in the University Library and has a special interest in incunabula, early modern printing, provenance, and bookbindings.
Rachel Eckersley, Rare Book Specialist, is responsible for cataloguing the pre-1851 books, researching provenance, and promoting the collection. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at The Centre for the Comparative History of Print (also at Leeds), a library digitisation assistant at the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, and a research fellow in book history at Queen Mary University of London.
Rosie Dyson, Collections Officer, is currently researching trade cards and ephemera. She is undertaking work to catalogue, digitise, and repackage John’s collection of trade cards and associated ephemera and has written several articles on her findings so far. Her background is in photography and digitisation.
Illustration from Jean-Baptiste Pillement, The Ladies Amusement: Or, the Whole Art of Japanning Made Easy, second enlarged edition, ca. 1762 (Leeds University Library, MS 2241 John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History). This is the only known complete and coloured copy.
Location of 1634 St Mary’s Fort Discovered
Conjectural drawing of the 1634 fort at the St. Mary’s settlement in Maryland (Jeffrey R. Parno/Historic St. Mary’s City). Interestingly, the outline of the fort does not match a 1634 description of it made by the governor, Philip Calvert.
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St. Mary’s City served as the capital of the Providence of Maryland until 1694, when the capital of the royal colony was moved to Annapolis. For more information on the discovery of the site of St. Mary’s Fort, see Michael Ruane’s reporting for The Washington Post. From the HSMC press release (22 March 2021). . .
In honor of Maryland Day (25 March 2021), Historic St. Mary’s City announces today that Dr. Travis Parno, Director of Research and Collections for Historic St. Mary’s City, and his team have located the site of the original St. Mary’s Fort, the 1634 palisaded fort erected by the first wave of European settlers who founded Maryland. The site, which spans an area approximately the size of a football field, is located in Historic St. Mary’s City (HSMC) in Southern Maryland.
“Finding the location of Maryland’s original settlement is truly exciting news for our state and will give us an opportunity to reconnect with our pre-colonial and early colonial years,” said Governor Larry Hogan. “The state has been proud to support the study of St. Mary’s Fort and looks forward to further excavation of the area as we approach our state’s 400th anniversary,” Governor Hogan added.
St. Mary’s Fort was the first major foothold of European settlement in the state and the fourth English colony in the country after Jamestown (1607), Plymouth (1620), and Massachusetts Bay (1630). In March of 1634, approximately 150 Maryland colonists arrived on two ships, Ark and Dove, in an area that was home to the Yaocomaco, a tribe loosely allied with the Piscataway paramount chiefdom. What little is known about this period is drawn from English colonial records. The archaeological study of St. Mary’s Fort has the potential to unearth new information about Maryland’s pre-colonial and early colonial past.
Members of the HSMC Department of Research and Collections have been conducting fieldwork within the St. Mary’s City National Historic Landmark area since 1971, but definitive traces of St. Mary’s Fort remained elusive until a 2018 grant from the Maryland Historical Trust allowed Parno to hire geophysicist Dr. Timothy J. Horsley to survey two suspected locations using magnetic susceptibility, magnetometry, and ground-penetrating radar. The results, which were verified via a brief archaeological dig, confirmed the fort’s exact location.
The study of St. Mary’s Fort is part of a larger initiative titled People to People: Exploring Native-Colonial Interactions in Early Maryland, scheduled to begin in 2021. Created as a collaborative effort between Historic St. Mary’s City and Piscataway tribal participants, the project will include archaeological excavations at St. Mary’s Fort and indigenous sites near the fort, interpretation and exhibits of native and colonial culture, and public programming about life in the region in the years prior to and during the early seventeenth century.
Parno is currently consulting with Piscataway tribal participants and other stakeholders, and excavations of St. Mary’s Fort are ongoing thanks to the support of private donors and funds provided by Governor Hogan’s office. With the support of the State, St. Mary’s Fort will be integrated into Historic St. Mary’s City’s living history program in time for the state’s 400th anniversary in 2034. In the meantime, the excavation site is open during public visitation hours.
A formal online announcement will premiere 25 March 2021, at 7pm (EST) on the HSMC Maryland Day event page. No registration needed; the premiere will be free and open to the public.
New Book | Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty
This new, expanded paperback edition is distributed in North and South America by The U. of Chicago Press:
Julie Nelson Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty (London: Reaktion Books, 2021), 296 pages, ISBN: 978-1789142358, $40.
Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806) was one of the most influential artists working in the genre of ukiyo-e, ‘pictures of the floating world’, in late eighteenth-century Japan, and was widely appreciated for his prints of beautiful women. In 1804, at the height of his success, Utamaro published a set of prints related to a banned historical novel. The prints, titled Hideyoshi and his Five Concubines, depicted the military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s wife and concubines, and consequently, he was accused of insulting Hideyoshi’s dignity. Utamaro was sentenced to be handcuffed for fifty days and is thought to have been briefly imprisoned. According to some sources, the experience crushed him emotionally and ended his career as an artist.
In this new expanded edition, Julie Nelson Davis draws on a wide range of period sources, makes a close study of selected print sets, and reinterprets Utamaro in the context of his times. Reconstructing the place of the ukiyo-e artist within the commercial print market, she demonstrates how Utamaro’s images participated in a larger spectacle of beauty in the city of Edo (present-day Tokyo).
Julie Nelson Davis is associate professor of East Asian art in the Department of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Dramatic Impressions: Japanese Theater Prints from the Gilbert Luber Collection.
C O N T E N T S
Introduction: Utamaro, Ukiyo-e, and the City of Prints
1 Constructing the Artist Known as Utamaro
2 ‘Pictures of Beauties’ and Other Social Physiognomies
3 Behind the Brocade and Other Yoshiwara Illusions
4 Utamaro and the Feminine Spectacle
5 Making History into the Pageant of the Floating World
References
Works Cited
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Index
Exhibition | Yinka Shonibare CBE: End of Empire
Yinka Shonibare CBE, End of Empire, 2016; fiberglass mannequins, Dutch wax printed cotton textile, metal, wood, motor, globes, and leather; 116 × 201 × 39 inches.
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Opening this spring at the Museum der Moderne:
Yinka Shonibare CBE: End of Empire
Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, 22 May — 12 September 2021
Curated by Thorsten Sadowsky and Marijana Schneider
One of the most prominent and versatile artists working in the UK today, Yinka Shonibare CBE (b. London, 1962) makes work that scrutinizes the legacy of Western colonialism and its lingering traces. The British-Nigerian artist rose to renown with installations featuring headless life-sized figures in historic costumes tailored out of colorful batik-dyed fabrics. A self-described ‘postcolonial hybrid’, Shonibare zooms in on episodes from art and history, primarily from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, employing subversive creative strategies to visualize them in tragicomic scenes of human activity. Shonibare’s multimedia oeuvre probes constructions of race, class, and national and cultural identities through a sustained study of the historic interdependencies between Africa and Europe. The retrospective gathers ca. sixty works from the past thirty years.
The catalogue is distributed in North American by The University of Chicago Press:
Thorsten Sadowsky, ed., Yinka Shonibare CBE: End of Empire (Munich: Hirmer Publishers, 2021), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-3777435893, $45.
Since the 1990s, the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare CBE has developed opulently executed sculptures and installations, colorful collages, and theatrically staged photographs and films. The signature material in Yinka Shonibare’s multimedia artworks, so-called African fabric, is a cipher. Originally produced in Manchester and intended for sale in Indonesia, the brightly colored fabric gained its name after British imperialists shifted their focus to colonial Africa. Featuring this product of both colonization and self-identification, Shonibare’s sculptures and installations revisit the conflicted legacy of many historical artifacts in order to explore the complex hybridity of postcolonial life with unique irony. Illustrated by two hundred full-color reproductions of his work, Yinka Shonibare CBE: End of Empire offers an up-close encounter with the tensions and history that motivate this singular artist, tracing colonialism and its consequences for leaders, worldviews, and body images in his oeuvre.
Thorsten Sadowsky is director of the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, Austria.
Online | Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade
Presented by the Center for Netherlandish Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Harvard Art Museums, and Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture:
Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade: Curating Histories, Envisioning Futures
Online conference in four parts: 9–23 April 2021
Organized by Sarah Mallory, Kéla Jackson, and Rachel Burke, together with Joanna Sheers Seidenstein
Registration is now open for the conference Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade: Curating Histories, Envisioning Futures, presented by the Center for Netherlandish Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Harvard Art Museums, and Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture. This four-partprogram explores efforts by art museums to deploy their spaces and their collections—which are often enmeshed with colonialism and exploitation—to present more complete narratives of and perspectives on slavery and its legacies. This conference is organized by Sarah Mallory, Kéla Jackson, and Rachel Burke, all doctoral students in Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture, and Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, the Stanley H. Durwood Foundation Curatorial Fellow in the Division of European and American Art, at the Harvard Art Museums. We hope you will attend!
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Part 1 | Exhibiting Slavery and Representing Black Lives
Friday, 9 April 2021, 1–3pm EST
Curators will discuss their work on groundbreaking projects in the Netherlands and the United States, namely the Rijksmuseum’s current Slavery exhibition, the Rembrandthuis Museum’s exhibition Here: Black in Rembrandt’s Time, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s reinstallation of its permanent collection, and the Museums Are Not Neutral initiative. They will reflect on the broader call for museums to recognize the relationship of their collections to slavery and to present-day racial injustice. Speakers include Maria Holtrop (Curator of History, Rijksmuseum), Stephanie Archangel (Junior Curator, History Department, Rijksmuseum), Diva Zumaya (Assistant Curator, European Painting and Sculpture, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), and La Tanya S. Autry (cultural organizer, co-producer of Museums Are Not Neutral, founder of the Black Liberation Center, and independent curator).
For more information and to register, please click here»
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Part 2 | De-centering/Re-centering: Forging New Museological and Historical Narratives
Friday, 16 April 2021, 1–3 pm EST
This session brings together historians and art historians whose work has, on the one hand, been grounded in art museum collections and, on the other, challenged traditional museological narratives of slavery’s legacies in the Netherlands and the Americas. Speakers include Vincent Brown (Charles Warren Professor of American History, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Founding Director of the History Design Studio, Harvard University), Pepijn Brandon (Assistant Professor of Economic and Social History, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Senior Researcher, International Institute of Social History), Elmer Kolfin (Assistant Professor, University of Amsterdam), and Claudia Swan (Mark Steinberg Weil Professor of Art History & Archaeology, Washington University in St. Louis).
For more information and to register, please click here»
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Part 3 | History, Memory, and Legacy: Jamaica Kincaid, Rosana Paulino, and Cheryl Finley in Conversation
Friday, 23 April 2021, 11am–noon EST
Renowned writer Jamaica Kincaid and groundbreaking visual artist Rosana Paulino will discuss their explorations of the legacies of slavery in their work. They will be joined in conversation by eminent art historian Cheryl Finley.
For more information and to register, please click here»
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Part 4 | The Work of Objects: Interpretation within and beyond Museum Walls
Friday, 23 April 2021, 1– 2:30pm EST
This session includes brief talks, followed by a roundtable discussion, by academics and museum professionals who focus on Dutch and American art and history. Speakers will discuss specific objects—ranging from the 17th to the 21st century—that have posed interpretive and museological challenges. They will also present new possibilities for considering the relationship between slavery’s past and present-day racial injustice. Speakers include Justin Brown (Ph.D. candidate, Department of the History of Art, Yale University), Ana Lucia Araujo (Full Professor and Associate Chair, Department of History, Howard University), Makeda Best (Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museums), Nancy Jouwe (Chairwoman, BAK [basis voor actuele kunst] Supervisory Board, Utrecht; co-founder, Framer Framed; and co-founder, Mapping Slavery), Imara Limon (Curator, Amsterdam Museum), Adam Tessier (Barbara and Theodore Alfond Director of Interpretation, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and Lea van der Vinde (Curator, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis).
For more information and to register, please click here»
Online Conference | Relics and the Arts between Europe and America
From ArtHist.net:
Relics and the Arts between Europe and America: Debating Shared Histories
Reliquias y arte entre Europa y América: historias compartidas a debatir
Online, Universidad de los Andes UNIANDES, Bogotá, Colombia, 12–14 April 2021
Registration due by 8 April 2021
This international conference is the first to address relics from a transatlantic perspective. It aims to explore art historical issues regarding relics and reliquaries in the early modern period in the Iberian world. By bringing together papers that deal both with the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America, we also wish to provide a forum for wider discussion and debate regarding the presumed ‘shared histories’ of these territories as far as concerns relics and reliquaries, objects which are as peculiar as they are inextricably tied to the Catholic societies of this age. Papers will be in English and Spanish.
This free conference is open to academics and professionals. Please register at the conference website. Note that the times are for Columbia (5 hours behind GMT).
Organización
• Luisa Elena Alcalá (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, España)
• Juan Luis González García (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, España)
• Patricia Zalamea Fajardo (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)
Comité científico
• María Berbara (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil)
• Carmen Fernández-Salvador Ayala (Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador)
• Escardiel González Estévez (Universidad de Sevilla, España)
• Cécile Vincent-Cassy, (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, Francia)
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8:30 Inauguración y bienvenida. Patricia Zalamea (Decana), Universidad de los Andes
Presentación del Proyecto “Spolia Sancta,” a cargo de Luisa Elena Alcalá (UAM) y Juan Luis González García (UAM)
8.40 Primera sesión: Reliquias e imágenes-reliquia
Moderan: Juan Luis González García y Luisa Elena Alcalá
• Imagen-reliquia o imágenes y reliquias en la Nueva España: funciones y funcionamientos propios y compartidos — Patricia Díaz Cayeros, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
• Divine Fragments: Image-Relics in Spanish America — Cristina Cruz González, Oklahoma State University (EEUU)
• El poder de la mirada. El caso de la Virgen del Lledó y otras imágenes-reliquia — María Elvira Mocholí Martínez, Universitat de València (España)
• Francisco de Holanda: reliquia, icono, retrato — José Riello, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (España)
• Relics and Miraculous Images in Early Modern Spain and Latin America: Religious Responses to the Plague of Locusts — Milena Viceconte, Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘Federico II’ (Italia)
11.30 Segunda sesión. Mapas de circulación
Modera: Cécile Vincent-Cassy
• Presencia y amplificación del lignum crucis en el Virreinato del Perú: elaboraciones visuales y escritas para la construcción de lo sagrado — Agustina Rodríguez Romero, UNTREF-CONICET, Buenos Aires (Argentina)
• Auge y desaparición de las reliquias en Tunja. El altar relicario de la Soledad en la iglesia de los Jesuitas, 1655–1854 — Abel Fernando Martínez Martín (Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, Tunja) y Andrés Ricardo Otálora Cascante (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá)
• Presencia de corpi santi en México: análisis del proceso de circulación y materialidad de un relicario. Siglos XVIII–XIX — Gabriela Sánchez Reyes, Coordinación Nacional de Monumentos Históricos-INAH (México). Doctoranda en El Colegio de Michoacán. (México)
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8.30 Tercera sesión. Reliquias e identidad local: éxitos y fracasos
Modera: Patricia Zalamea Fajardo
• Reliquias e identidades en el virreinato del Perú (siglos XVI–XVII) — María Cruz de Carlos Varona, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (España)
• Tras las huellas de los mártires, santos y hombres insignes. Bosquejo sobre las reliquias de la iglesia catedral metropolitana de Lima (siglos XVI–XIX) — Jesús Alfaro Cruz, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
• La memoria perdida de los Santos Mártires de Cardeña en San Juan de Puerto Rico (1664–presente) — María Judith Feliciano, Independent Scholar, Nueva York (EEUU)
10.15 Cuarta sesión. Relicarios y lenguajes artísticos
Modera: Escardiel González Estévez
• A Paper Journey into a Sacred World: The Transmission of Manual Manifestations of Devotion in New World Convents — Yessica Porras, University of California, Berkeley (EEUU)
• Los relicarios de la Iglesia de San Ignacio en Bogotá — María Constanza Villalobos, Investigadora Independiente, Bogotá
• Capilla, oratorio, tesoro: algunas reflexiones en torno al relicario como espacio de íntima oración — Elsaris Nuñez Méndez, IIE, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
• Envolviendo la (in)tangible sacralidad: el retablo de la Virgen del Pilar de Quito — Carmen Fernández-Salvador Ayala, Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador)
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8.30 Quinta sesión. Reliquias y sus controversias: ortodoxia / heterodoxia
Moderan: Maria Berbara y Carmen Fernández-Salvador
• Reliquias del cielo: Las cuentas de Estefanía de la Encarnación y el problema de la ortodoxia — Tanya J. Tiffany, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (EEUU)
• Reliquiae maioris y reliquiae minoris. Circulación, uso y censura de reliquias en el Nuevo Reino de Granada, siglos XVI–XVIII — María Cristina Pérez Pérez, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Bogotá
• Reliquia, conversión y sometimiento. Apuntes sobre la reliquia de Pedro Claver y su función como objeto de evangelización e identidad — Darío Velandia, Uniandes, Bogotá
• Heads to Adore, Heads to Horrify — Jens Baumgarten, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Brasil)
• Reliquaries as Nodal Objects in Transcultural Negotiation Processes — Urte Krass, Institute for Art History, Universität Bern (Suiza)
11:30 Visita virtual al Museo Colonial, Bogotá
13:00 Conclusiones y cierre
Decorative Arts Trust Announces Recipients of IDEAL Internship Grants
Press release (9 March 2021) from The Decorative Arts Trust:
Samuel Whitehorne House (1811), Newport, Rhode Island. Newport Restoration Foundation bought the Federal period brick mansion in 1969. Five years later, it was opened as a public museum dedicated to 18th-century Newport furniture and related decorative arts.
The Decorative Arts Trust is pleased to announce that the Atwater Kent Collection at Drexel University; The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Backstreet Cultural Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Newport Restoration Foundation are the inaugural recipients of IDEAL Internship Grants.
Part of the Trust’s growing Emerging Scholars Program, IDEAL Internships focus on inclusivity, diversity, equity, access, and leadership. Internship grants are awarded to non-profit institutions and require a strong mentorship component.
“The Decorative Arts Trust is striving to improve access to curatorial careers for students of color as a path toward achieving systemic change,” Trust Executive Director Matthew Thurlow states. “These partners were selected based on the impact of the internship, which will offer students experience and stipends while providing the host organizations the opportunity to continue meaningful discussions about inclusion, diversity, and equity.”
Drexel University is stewarding the collection of the former Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent, which closed in 2018. Drexel’s Lenfest Center for Cultural Partnerships is conducting a multiyear evaluation of the Atwater Kent Collection of over 133,000 works of art and other objects. The intern will focus on exhibitions highlighting little-known objects for galleries at the Peck Alumni Center and the Pearlstein Gallery.
The Historic New Orleans Collection (THNOC), in partnership with the Backstreet Cultural Museum, seeks an intern to further the study and preservation of Mardi Gras Indian suits. The intern will catalog a newly acquired suit, document its history by interviewing the artist, plan a permanent storage solution, prepare the suit for display in an upcoming exhibition, and write an article for an online publication.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston intern will focus on a gallery reinstallation project that explores the connections between art, modern design, and jazz in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. The intern will assist with object research, develop interpretive text, lead gallery tours, and host programs to engage a range of communities with the project.
The Newport Restoration Foundation will hire an intern to analyze their collection of 18th-century furniture at the Whitehorne House Museum. The intern will work with the interpretive staff to address the absences of African-Heritage craftspeople (both enslaved and free) as well as Narragansett peoples in Colonial-era Newport’s material culture.
The Decorative Arts Trust is a non-profit organization that promotes and fosters the appreciation and study of the decorative arts through exchanging information through domestic and international programming; collaborating and partnering with museums and preservation organizations; and underwriting internships, research grants, and scholarships for graduate students and young professionals. Learn more about the Trust at decorativeartstrust.org.
Online Seminars | The Future of Country House Studies
Antonio Verrio, Heaven Room, ca. 1695–96
Burghley House, Lincolnshire
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From the research day programme:
The Future of Country House Studies
Online, University of Buckingham, Tuesday, 13 April 2021
A research day organized by the University of Buckingham Humanities Research Institute—one of a series of research seminars in the history of art.
This series of postgraduate Research Days revolve around some of the main research strengths of the department of History and History of Art of the University of Buckingham: the history of collecting and the evolution of taste; the reception of the classical tradition in the art and architecture of early modern Europe; the cultural history of the long eighteenth century; and the history of materials in art and architecture.
Each Research Day involves presentations by PhD students and members of staff, followed by a seminar given by an established scholar. Their structure is intended to facilitate dialogue and exchange between scholars at different stages of their career. Sessions are open to all, free of charge. To register, please send a simple one-line email to seminars-hri@buckingham.ac.uk.
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All times listed are for the UK.
2.30pm Session 1
Adrian Tinniswood, OBE — Fellow, Humanities Research Institute, University of Buckingham
The Guilt and the Gingerbread: The Country House 1945–1974
Adrian Tinniswood discusses his latest research project, Noble Ambitions, to be published by Jonathan Cape in September 2021. Adrian directs the MA in the History of the English Country House at the University of Buckingham. His most recent books include Behind the Throne: A Domestic History of the Royal Household and The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House between the Wars.
3.30pm Session 2
Michael Bentley — PhD Student, University of Buckingham
‘Properly Bestowed’: Decorum and the Mural in the English Country House, from Verrio to Thornhill, 1672–1728
To what extent was decorum a factor in the decision-making process when commissioning wall and ceiling paintings for an English country house? If not decorum, then what? New light will be shed on Adlington Hall, Sudbury Hall, and Boughton in particular.
4.30pm Tea break
5.00pm Session 3
Martin Postle — Deputy Director, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Yale University
Collection and Display: Art and the Country House Digital Project
Martin Postle discusses the Mellon Centre’s latest digital project. Art & the Country House, launched in autumn 2020, is an online publication focused on the collection and display of works of art in the country house in Britain from the sixteenth century to the present day. Eight case studies (Castle Howard, Doddington Hall, Mells Manor, Mount Stuart, Petworth House, Raynham Hall, Trewithen, and West Wycombe) relate to a broad range of research topics and give a varied set of examples, in terms of geographical location, scale, patterns of ownership, chronologies, collections, and displays.
Call for Papers | Painted Ceilings in Europe
From ArtHist.net (where the French version is available). . .
Painted Ceilings in Europe, 14th–21st Centuries: Forms, Functions, Fictions
Plafonds Peints en Europe, XIVe–XXIe Siècles: Formes, Fonctions, Fictions
Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte (DFK), Paris, 2–3 December 2021
Proposals due by 31 May 2021
Organisé par le Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art-DFK (Paris), la Ludwig Maximilian Universität (Munich) et l’université de Bourgogne (LIR3S, CNRS, UMR 7366)
Emerging in the Middle Ages and then becoming in the Early Modern period one of the most important spaces for the development of painting, interior decoration, and representations of power, painted ceilings have represented prestigious artworks to this day, implementing its own poetics and symbolism.
From the beams of medieval castles to the ceilings of town halls, through the vaults of Baroque galleries and the domes of churches and theaters, ceiling painting constitutes a parallel history to that of the easel painting. Although the period from the 16th to the 19th century represents a privileged moment of the painted ceiling, its origins in medieval times (Bourrin Bernardi, 2009 ; Fern, 2016) and its more recent developments (Bianchi, 2016) deserve to be also considered, due to various identical problematics.
This critical object of art history has experienced a recent resurgence of interest from researchers in both the medieval and modern and contemporary periods, as evidenced by the creation of an international association for research on medieval framework structures and painted ceilings (RCPPM), investigations outreach to sites outside Europe (Raggi, 2017 ; Bailey, 2018), and the ceiling commission from Cy Twombly for the Louvre in 2010. While the research field has been consequently broadened geographically and chronologically, it has also included new problematics, beyond the representation of power (Milovanovic, 2005). The current survey takes more into consideration the site’s specificity through the eye of a mobile spectator (Alpers, Baxandall, 1994); illusionism beyond classical and baroque, as an effective rhetoric (Scott, 1991); and the issue of propaganda and artistic identity (Oy-Marra, 2016). Recent research has favored monographic approaches in the different countries of Europe (see selective bibliography): it is now relevant to situate these studies within a European horizon.
This conference will examine both case studies and general reflections, taking advantage of recent research contributions from a cross-history perspective. Four lines of thought (which may be intertwined in the papers) are envisioned:
1. Challenges of the painted ceiling: what to expect from a painted ceiling?
2. Powers of the image: how does a large decor work?
3. Decoration temporalities: appropriations, retrospective views, re-uses and misappropriations, historiographies.
4. Digital and research: contributions of new visualization and reconstruction techniques
To submit a paper (which will be limited to 20 minutes), please send an abstract no more than 500-word long in English, French, German, or Italian, along with a short 100-word biography, before May 31, 2021, to plafondspeintsfff@gmail.com. The conference will be held in Paris, with the presence of the participants, or as a virtual event, pending future sanitary measures. It is planned to allow much time to discussions and to organize sites’ visits.
Organizing Committee: Olivier Bonfait (Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, LIR3S), Matteo Burioni (Corpus « Deckenmalerei », Ludwig Maximilian Universität, Munich), Bénédicte Gady (musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris), Thomas Kirchner (Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte-Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art, Paris), Matthieu Lett (Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, LIR3S)
Call for Submissions | Horowitz Book Prize
From Bard Graduate Center:
The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Book Prize
For titles on the decorative arts or material culture of the Americas published in 2019 or 2020
Submissions must be postmarked by 1 April 2021
Bard Graduate Center welcomes submissions for the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Book Prize, awarded annually to the best book on the decorative arts, design history, or material culture of the Americas. The prize will reward scholarly excellence and commitment to cross-disciplinary conversation. Eligible titles include monographs, exhibition catalogues, and collections of essays in any language, published in print or in digital format. The winning author(s) or editor(s) will be chosen by a committee of Bard Graduate Center faculty and will be honored with a symposium on the subject of the book. Submissions must have a 2019 or 2020 publication date.
Three copies of each print title should be sent to the below address along with an entry submission form. For digital publications, please email a copy of the form along with a link to the publication and a PDF of the publication to horowitz.prize@bgc.bard.edu.
Horowitz Book Prize Committee
Bard Graduate Center
38 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
Submissions must be postmarked by 1 April 2021. There is no limit to the number of submissions, but please note we are unable to return items submitted for review. Incomplete submissions will not be considered. Shipping is the responsibility of the applicant and we are not able to confirm receipt of submissions. The winning title will be announced in late summer 2021. For questions, contact Laura Minsky, Associate Director of Research Programs, at horowitz.prize@bgc.bard.edu.
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