Enfilade

From the Museums and Galleries History Group:

MGHG Biennial Conference | Museums, Collections, and Conflict, 1500–2010
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 13–14 July 2018

Proposals due by 1 March 2018

Museums have been profoundly shaped by war and armed conflict, and have also played a significant part in shaping understandings and memories about them. Yet there has been little sustained examination of the way museums in war and war in museums has played out. Since Gaynor Kavanagh’s foundational study Museums and the First World War in 1994 and with the publication this year of Catherine Pearson’s similarly ground-breaking Museums in the Second World War, it is clear that museums have played and can play an important role in helping society address such crisis situations. On the home front, for example, museums have helped society prepare for war and armed conflict. In leading commemoration in the aftermath of war and armed conflict, museums have helped society come to terms with what happened, understand why it happened, and remember sacrifices. Yet museums have equally served as arenas where issues such as commemoration have been contested and negotiated and where particular narratives legitimising war and conflict have been developed. This conference hopes to address a broad range of questions, including on collecting (in) war and armed conflict, on the deliberate targeting and destruction or safeguarding of museums and cultural property, and the broader range of institutions brought forth or which are strongly influenced by war and armed conflict.

Keynote speaker: Annie Coombes, Professor of Material and Visual Culture, Birkbeck, University of London

We seek papers which particularly address but are not restricted to the following questions over a period from the early modern to the end of the twentieth century:

• What have museums done during periods of conflict and what has happened to them? Have they been responsible for morale, have they been targets of attack, have they physically moved and how has their staffing been affected?
• How have museums and collections acted to commemorate conflict?
• In what ways have wars and other conflicts affected museums’ and collectors’ collecting activities, positively or negatively? How have wars and conflicts been collected, and by whom?
• How have museums represented war, civil war and other conflicts such as rebellions? Have museums promoted peace by interpreting war?
• How have museums OF conflict, of the armed forces and of weaponry/armouries developed historically?
We welcome proposals for papers which deal with the history of museums and collecting in a British, European, or wider context or which address the relationships between different geographical areas.

Paper proposals should be for papers of 20 minutes’ length. Proposals should be 250 words max and include the name, contact details and affiliation (if applicable) of the speaker. Panel proposals are strongly encouraged and should consist of a panel title, proposals for 3 papers, along with a rationale for the panel theme, and contact details and affiliations (if applicable) of all participants. Please indicate whether you will provide a chair for your session or not (it does not matter which). Poster proposals are also welcomed. Please contact Kate Hill (khill@lincoln.ac.uk) for more information. All proposals should be sent to contact@mghg.info by 1 March 2018. Please note that all speakers and poster presenters will be expected to pay the conference registration fee.

The Museums and Galleries History Group (MGHG) was founded in 2002 and inaugurated in 2003 with the symposium Museums and their Histories, held at the National Gallery in London. The MGHG provides a platform for debate and contact among all those who seek to understand museums and galleries from historical and theoretical perspectives. The interests represented are wide-ranging, interdisciplinary and international and the Group also acts as a forum for considerations of the place of museum history within academic discourse and its importance for current museum practice.

From the Call for Papers:

British Art and the Global
University of California, Berkeley, 17–18 September 2018

Organized by Imogen Hart and David Peters Corbett

Proposals due by 15 April 2018

What is the role of art history in the Brexit era? In the wake of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, the history of Britain’s relationships with the rest of the world takes on renewed significance. This conference explores how art history today can shed light on the history of Britain’s interaction with other countries and cultures. Among other questions, the conference asks: How have institutions of display and education provided frameworks that have articulated and/or obscured global contexts for British art? How can the traditions of art history, including concepts of national schools, movements, modernisms, periods, originality and imitation, aesthetic judgment, and hierarchies of media be exploited and/or critiqued by scholars of British art and the global?

We invite papers that illuminate global contexts for the history of British art by considering works of art (including painting, sculpture, architecture, the decorative arts, photography, and other forms of visual and material culture) as sites and tools of international cooperation, conflict, and exchange. Potential papers may address the global history of British art in relation to topics that include, but are not limited to:
• International artistic collaborations and organizations
• Artistic movements and their international legacies
• International modernisms
• Aesthetic theory across national boundaries
• Contexts of display including museums, collections, and exhibitions
• Institutions of artistic training and education
• The international art market
• Reproduction and circulation
• Periodicals
• Art and empire
• Travel and tourism
• Immigration
• Art and war

Keynote speakers: Tim Barringer (Yale University), Dorothy Price (University of Bristol), and Mary Roberts (University of Sydney).

This two-day, international conference is sponsored by the Center for British Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. The conference is co-organized by Imogen Hart (History of Art Department, UC Berkeley) and David Peters Corbett (Courtauld Institute of Art, London). Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words plus a brief biographical note to imogenhart@berkeley.edu by April 15, 2018. Limited funds may be available to assist with travel expenses for speakers who do not have institutional funding.

While HECAA has historically had a sizable presence only at meetings of the College Art Association and the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, for the first time, the organization will convene its own conference this fall in Dallas. We would love to have you join us! –Craig Hanson

From the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU:

Art and Architecture in the Long Eighteenth Century: HECAA at 25
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, 1–4 November 2018

Proposals due by 7 February 2018

We invite proposals for participation in the HECAA at 25 conference, to be held November 1–4, 2018, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. There are many ways to participate as a presenter: by submitting a paper abstract for a research panel or the early-career scholarship showcase, a proposal for a roundtable, or an application to serve as facilitator for a breakout session.

Guidelines for how to apply can be found under each individual session description. Proposals due to session chairs by February 7, 2018. Applicants may apply to more than one session, or for more than one role; please notify chairs of your parallel applications. Questions about the conference? Contact us at hecaa25@gmail.com.

Keynote Speakers
Melissa Hyde, University of Florida
Daniela Bleichmar, University of Southern California

Local Organizing Committee
Elizabeth Bacon Eager, Southern Methodist University; Denise Baxter, University of North Texas; Kelly Donahue-Wallace, University of North Texas; Lindsay Dunn, Texas Christian University; Amy Freund, Southern Methodist University; Jessica Fripp, Texas Christian University; Nicky Myers, Dallas Museum of Art

Image: Francisca Efigenia Meléndez y Durazzo, Portrait of a a Seated Girl Holding Flowers, ca. 1795, tempera on ivory, 5 × 5 cm (Dallas: Meadows Museum, SMU, MM.08.01.20).

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R O U N D T A B L E S

The History of Studying Eighteenth-Century Art, the Belgium of Art History
Chair: Michael Yonan, University of Missouri, yonanm@missouri.edu

With Barbara Maria Stafford’s now famous 1988 phrase to guide us, this roundtable seeks to discuss eighteenth-century art history’s historiography. The subject was an infrequently studied one in North America prior to the 1970s, and even into the 1990s its community of adherents was remarkably small, very much in contrast to its current prominence. How has this unusual history shaped the discourse of eighteenth-century art, and what are the challenges it creates for our future? Please send a CV and a 300-word proposal for a brief presentation (5–10 minutes) intended to spur further conversation to Michael Yonan.

Engaging Twenty-First-Century Publics: Innovations in Teaching, Advising, Exhibiting, and Curating
Chair: Amelia Rauser, Franklin and Marshall College, arauser@fandm.edu

In these times it is more important than ever to make the case for art, and for understanding the cultural productions of our own and other cultures. What new approaches to pedagogy or museology are you using to engage students or broader publics in the aesthetics and ideas of eighteenth-century art and architecture? What projects, ideas, and initiatives are the most promising for sustaining and renewing the understanding of our period among a twenty-first-century public? Please send a CV and a 300-word proposal for a brief presentation (5–10 minutes) intended to spur further conversation to Amelia Rauser.

The Future of Studying Eighteenth-Century Art: HECAA at 50?
Chair: Amy Freund, Southern Methodist University, afreund@smu.edu

Where will—or should—our field go next? Or, conversely, what should we avoid or abandon? This roundtable will examine the current state of eighteenth-century art history and foster debate about new modes of inquiry. Propositions, critiques, utopian projects welcome from scholars at all career stages. Please send a CV and a 300-word proposal for a brief presentation (5–10 minutes) intended to spur further conversation to Amy Freund.

How to Art History
Chair: Elizabeth Bacon Eager, Southern Methodist University, eeager@mail.smu.edu

Share your professional experience polishing job applications, publishing, teaching, administrating, and maintaining life-work balance as part of a roundtable aimed at early-career scholars. Please send a CV and a short (100 words or less) statement of interest to Elizabeth Bacon Eager.

F A C I L I T A T O R S

Breakout Session Facilitators
Chair: Jessica Fripp, Texas Christian University, j.fripp@tcu.edu

We are seeking scholars at all career stages to facilitate breakout sessions discussing the keynote addresses and the conference proceedings more generally. We anticipate appointing approximately 20 facilitators to lead groups of 10–15 people; facilitators will formulate initial questions and guide discussion. Please send a CV and a short (100 words or less) statement of interest to Jessica Fripp.

R E S E A R C H  P A N E L S

Research by Emerging Scholars
Chair: Christopher Johns, Vanderbilt University, christopher.johns@vanderbilt.edu

This session will showcase short (10 minute) presentations of outstanding research by early-career scholars — graduate students and recent PhDs in non-tenure-stream positions. Please send a CV and a 300-word proposal to Christopher Johns.

Things Change
Chairs: Wendy Bellion, University of Delaware, wbellion@udel.edu; and Kristel Smentek, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, smentek@mit.edu

Objects seldom survive in their original states. Broken and restored, lost and found, reused and displaced, material things transcend their earliest uses, sites, and appearances. We invite proposals for papers that explore reinvention, relocation, and related issues in eighteenth-century decorative arts and material culture. Please send a CV and a 300-word proposal to both chairs.

People, Places, and Things in the Global Eighteenth Century
Chair: Nancy Um, Binghamton University, nancyum@binghamton.edu

Increasingly broad in its definition, the ‘global eighteenth century’ is often used to point to the widened geographic scope of the field, particularly in instances of visual exchange that push past perceived cultural boundaries or hinge upon the movement of artists, art objects, and visual practices across extended distances. This panel aspires to a more rigorous notion of the global eighteenth century: one that questions stable and enduring associations between people, places, and things; examines interactions, movements, and exchanges that are multi-sited rather than binary; and/or takes into account the structures and institutions that facilitated, but also encumbered, eighteenth-century travel, trade, and exchange. Please submit a proposal using this form.

Art and Political Authority in the Long Eighteenth Century
Chairs: Meredith Martin, New York University, msm240@nyu.edu; and Aaron Wile, University of Southern California, awile@usc.edu.

The transition from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century is often seen as marking a crucial transformation in the relation between art and political authority in Europe and around the globe. During the seventeenth century, absolute rulers pressed art into the service of the state, using painting, sculpture, architecture, and spectacle to reinforce their power and instill obedience in their subjects. But the emergence of new political and cultural regimes in the next century, along with new publics, institutions, markets, and aesthetic discourses, put the alliance between art and statecraft under strain. This panel seeks both to enrich and complicate this familiar story. How did art function as a political agent during the long eighteenth century? How did rulers use visual media as a tool of government, and what were the limits to that approach? How was art used to undermine or resist authority? Please send a CV and a 300-word proposal to both chairs.

Apprehending the Spatial: Methods and Approaches
Chair: Christopher Drew Armstrong, University of Pittsburgh, cda68@pitt.edu

The panel invites scholars to present scholarly projects (research or teaching) that are fundamentally spatial in character (such as architecture and urbanism, travel and collecting). We particularly encourage proposals that integrate digital applications or computer methods into the study of eighteenth-century culture, or that otherwise extend or challenge established scholarship and conventional approaches to instruction (undergraduate or graduate levels). How do new methods and areas of inquiry reveal knowledge, provide insights, or open paths of inquiry? Please send a CV and a 300-word proposal to Christopher Drew Armstrong.

Carte Blanche
Chair: Denise Baxter, University of North Texas, Denise.Baxter@unt.edu

Your work doesn’t fit the categories above? This panel will present research on any topic in the visual arts in the long eighteenth century. Surprise us. Please send a CV and a 300-word proposal to Denise Baxter.