New Book | The Rise of Heritage: Preserving the Past
From Cambridge UP:
Astrid Swenson, The Rise of Heritage: Preserving the Past in France, Germany and England, 1789–1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 432 pages, ISBN: 978-0521117623, $99.
Where does our fascination for ‘heritage’ originate? This groundbreaking comparative study of preservation in France, Germany and England looks beyond national borders to reveal how the idea of heritage emerged from intense competition and collaboration in a global context. Astrid Swenson follows the ‘heritage-makers’ from the French Revolution to the First World War, revealing the importance of global networks driving developments in each country. Drawing on documentary, literary and visual sources, the book connects high politics and daily life and uncovers how, through travel, correspondence, world fairs and international congresses, the preservationists exchanged ideas, helped each other campaign and dreamed of establishing international institutions for the protection of heritage. Yet, these heritage-makers were also animated by fierce rivalry as international tension grew. This mixture of international collaboration and competition created the European culture of heritage, which defined preservation as integral to modernity, and still shapes current institutions and debates.
Astrid Swenson is Lecturer in European History at Brunel University, London. Her previous publications include From Plunder to Preservation: Britain and the Heritage of Empire, c.1800–1940 (co-edited with Peter Mandler, 2013).
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C O N T E N T S
Introduction
Part I. National Heritage Movements
1. In search of origins
2. The heritage-makers
Part II. International Meeting-Points
3. Exhibition mania
4. ‘Peace and goodwill among nations’
Part III. Transnational Campaigns
5. ‘A Morris dance ’round St Mark’s’
6. ‘A yardstick for a people’s cultural attainment’
Conclusion
Bibliography
Conference | Travel and the Country House
From the conference programme:
Travel and the Country House: Places, Cultures, and Practices
University of Northampton, 15–16 September 2014
Registration due by 31 August 2014
Keynote speakers: Roey Sweet (University of Leicester) and Margot Finn (University College London)
Travel has long played a vital role in shaping the country house, opening up horizons and exposing both house and owner to a variety of external influences. Travel impacted upon values, tastes, material culture and money, and helped to articulate the flow of ideas, information, goods and capital. The importance of the Grand Tour and Empire to the country house has long been recognised, but domestic tourism and travel for more mundane purposes—to visit family or friends, engage in political life or go to town—were also significant. In this conference, we wish to explore a wide range of travel experiences and consider how these impacted on the country house. How were travel choices made and how were impacts articulated? How did new influences mesh with existing tastes and goods? What impact did its status as a place to visit have upon the country house? And how do we communicate the importance of travel to those visiting country houses today?
This conference addresses these questions and others, drawing together research from Sweden, Hungary, the Netherlands and Ireland as well as all corners of England. It thus offers a comparative perspective on the relationship between travel and the country house, and an opportunity for academics, curators and managers to discuss the ways in which travel continues to shape the ways in which country houses are interpreted, presented and experienced.
For more details and a booking form, contact Professor Jon Stobart at jon.stobart@northampton.ac.uk or visit the Consumption and Country House website.
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M O N D A Y , 1 5 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4
10.00 Registration and coffee
10.40 Welcome and introduction
10.45 Keynote: ‘The Italian Grand Tour and the 18th-Century Country House’, Roey Sweet (University of Leicester)
11.45 Session 1: The Practicalities and Pleasures of Travel
• ‘Visiting London for business and pleasure in the years 1599–1623: On the road (and the Thames) with William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Cavendish’, Peter Edwards (University of Roehampton)
• ‘Travelling for Pleasure: Carriages and the country house’, Lizzy Jamieson (Independent Scholar)
• ‘“Wintering in the ‘shires”: Foxhunting and travel’, Mandy de Belin (University of Leicester)
1.00 Lunch
2.00 Session 2: European Travel, Networks, and Influences
• ‘The Grand Tour and Episcopal domesticity: The case of Martin Benson, Bishop of Gloucester (1735–52)’, Michael Ashby (University of Cambridge)
• ‘“Antiquity mad”: The Earl Bishop and the translation of continental style in an Irish context’, Rebecca Campion (National University of Ireland at Maynooth)
• ‘Centre and periphery: The world brought to the ironmasters’ mansions’, Marie Steinrud (Stockholm University)
• ‘The English Rothschild family and their country houses: A distinctive style’, Nicola Pickering
3.45 Tea and coffee
4.15 Session 3: Views of England from Overseas Travellers
• ‘The English country house as (proto) museum: Dutch travel accounts explored, 1677–1750’, Hanneke Ronnes (University of Amsterdam)
• ‘“… enjoying country life to the full—only the English know how to do that!”: Appreciation of the British country house by Hungarian aristocratic travellers’, Kristof Fatsar (Corvinus University of Budapest)
• ‘Stourhead: All roads lead to Rome—and back again’, John Harrison (Open University)
• ‘A Dutch view on the English country house and landscape garden’, Hélène Bremer (University of Leiden)
6.30 Reception
7.30 Dinner
T U E S D A Y , 1 6 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4
9.30 Session 4: The Mobile House
• ‘Manors, towns and spas: A household on the move in late 18th-century Sweden’, Göran Ulväng (University of Uppsala)
• ‘The travels of an aristocratic family in the early 19th century: The Braybrookes of Audley End, Essex’, Andrew Hann (English Heritage)
• ‘Moving households: Problems, choices and new possibilities facing the country house family in the 1820s and 1830s’, Pamela Sambrook (Independent Scholar)
10.45 Tea and coffee
11.15 Session 5: Travel, Tourism, and Guides
• ‘Domestic tourism, the country house, and the making of respectability in the travel journals of Caroline Lybbe Powys’, Freya Gowrley (University of Edinburgh)
• ‘Country house visiting and improvement at Herriard House in Hampshire, 1794–1821’, Nicky Pink (Independent Scholar)
• ‘Arthur Young’s Tours: Architecture, painting, sculpture, and the art of adorning grounds’, Jocelyn Anderson (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
• ‘The representation of the country house in individual books and guides, 1720–1845’, Paula Riddy (University of Sussex)
1.00 Lunch
2.00 Keynote: ‘Duleep Singh and the Country House Tradition: Making and Unmaking the Victorian Global Home’, Margot Finn (UCL)
3.00 Session 6: Looking beyond Europe
• ‘Travel to the East- and West-Indies and Groningen country house culture in the 18th Century’, Yme Kuiper (University of Groningen)
• ‘Appuldurcombe House and the ‘Museum Worsleyanum’: Sir Richard Worsley’s forgotten collection’, Abigail Coppins (Independent Scholar)
• ‘Diaries, decoration and design: The Courtaulds’ travels and the effects on Eltham Palace’, Annie Kemkaran-Smith (English Heritage)
4.15 Closing comments and discussion
New Book | Bluestockings Displayed
From Cambridge UP:
Elizabeth Eger, ed., Bluestockings Displayed: Portraiture, Performance and Patronage, 1730–1830 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 323 pages, ISBN: 978-0521768801, £60.
The conversation parties of the bluestockings, held to debate contemporary ideas in eighteenth-century Britain, were vital in encouraging female artistic achievement. The bluestockings promoted links between learning and virtue in the public imagination, inventing a new kind of informal sociability that combined the life of the senses with that of the mind. This collection of essays, by leading scholars in the fields of literature, history and art history, provides an interdisciplinary treatment of bluestocking culture in eighteenth-century Britain. It is the first academic volume to concentrate on the rich visual and material culture that surrounded and supported the bluestocking project, from formal portraits and sculptures to commercially reproduced prints. By the early twentieth century, the term ‘bluestocking’ came to signify a dull and dowdy intellectual woman, but the original bluestockings inhabited a world in which brilliance was valued at every level and women were encouraged to shine and even dazzle.
Elizabeth Eger is Reader in Eighteenth-Century Literature at King’s
College London.
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C O N T E N T S
Introduction, Elizabeth Eger
I. Portraits
1. Romantic bluestockings: From muses to matrons, Anne Mellor
2. ‘To dazzle let the vain design’: Alexander Pope’s portrait gallery, or, the impossibility of brilliant women, Emma Clery
3. Virtue, patriotism and female scholarship in bluestocking portraiture, Clare Barlow
4. Anne Seymour Damer: A sculptor of ‘republican perfection’, Alison Yarrington
5. The blues gone grey: Portraits of bluestocking women in old age, Devoney Looser
II. Performance
6. Sacred love: Eliza Linley’s voice Joseph Roach
7. The learned female soprano Susan Staves
8. Roles and role models: Montagu, Siddons, Lady Macbeth Shearer West
9. Hester Thrale: ‘What trace of the wit?’ Felicity A. Nussbaum
III. Patronage and Networks
10. Reading practices in Elizabeth Montagu’s epistolary network of the 1750s, Markman Ellis
11. The queen of the blues, the bluestocking queen, and bluestocking masculinity, Clarissa Campbell Orr
12. Luck be a lady: Patronage and professionalism for women writers in the 1790s, Harriet Guest
Reworking the Family Portraits of Schloss Grafenstein
In this sitting room, drawers painted with faux bois woodgrain and labelled with family estates are from the denuded archive shelves in the next room. On the chair is an unsigned oil portrait of Count Vinzenz Ferrerius Orsini-Rosenberg (1722–1794), an ancestor of Count Ferdinand used as the basis for a new work by Armin Guerino, titled 20130630-001. Photography by Fritz von der Schulenburg.
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This instance of recycling eighteenth-century source material for subsequent artistic production might fall somewhere between the collages of James Northcote (the subject of an exhibition this fall at the YCBA) and the work of Ai Weiwei (I’m thinking, for example, of Painted Vases). The article mentions an exhibition, but I could find nothing about it online and don’t know if it’s already happened or might still take place. –CH
From WoI’s Facebook page and the print edition of the article:
Michael Huey, “Relative Freedom,” The World of Interiors (August 2014): 70–79.
Original: Artist, Date, Sitter unknown, 69 x 55 cm. Revision: Alina Kunitsyna, Mlle Sphæræ, 2013
Seeking works of art to fill newly renovated living quarters, Austrian count Ferdinand Orsini-Rosenberg turned to the 90-odd ancestral portraits deteriorating in his ruined schloss next door. But instead of merely dusting off his forebears’ likenesses, he gave a crew of contemporary artists free rein to ‘refresh’ the originals.
Ferdinand Orsini-Rosenberg, second son of the late Prince Heinrich, presides over about 1,500 state square meters of what is basically storage space in the form of Schloss Grafenstein, the Carinthian palace built by his seventh great-grandfather and enlarged a century later—around 1730—by his fifth. Grafenstein, with is impressive facade and ruined interior, makes up part of his title and much of his patrimony, and in this way he is bound to it for life. At times the attachment is akin to being chained to a cadaver, and he is often sleepless as a result. “If an earthquake reduced it to rubble overnight,” he says, “I would thank God.” . . .
After an initial phase of consolidation [of family portraits], during which a local historian aided him in sorting, photographing, identifying and documenting the paintings, he assembled (with curatorial guidance) a group of 35 artists to whom they would be offered as raw material. Each artist would be allowed to select a single portrait to use as the basis for a new work—no strings attached and with a modest fee for the commission. The results would be gathered together for a summer exhibition in the colonnaded inner courtyard at Grafenstein and later hung in Ferdinand’s rooms in the granary. . . .
While his courageous, uncompromising idea did lead to a few crass and brazenly ruthless results, it also gave rise, at the other end of the spectrum, to a handful of marvels—works both highly moving and of considerable aesthetic relevance by Alina Kunitsyna, Armin Guerino, Manfred Bockelmann, Helmut Grill, Johanes Zechner, Siegfried Zaworka and Alex Amann among others. . .
A regular contributor to The World of Interiors, Michael Huey, as an artist himself interested in issues of archives and loss, is an interesting part of the story.
Exhibition | Picture Talking: James Northcote and the Fables
Samuel William Reynolds, after James Northcote, Lion and Snake (detail), 1799, mixed method engraving (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection)
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The prints Northcote used in the collages date from the eighteenth century. Press release from the YCBA:
Picture Talking: James Northcote and the Fables
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2 October — 14 December 2014
Curated by Mark Ledbury and A. Cassandra Albinson
The first exhibition solely dedicated to James Northcote’s art and career, Picture Talking: James Northcote and the Fables will present a fascinating look at one of Britain’s most imaginative and eccentric painters.
William Daniell, after George Dance, James Northcote, between 1798 and 1819, graphite and red chalk on medium, slightly textured, cream wove paper mounted on moderately thick, moderately textured, beige laid paper (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection)
Northcote (1746–1831) has been remembered primarily as a memoirist, a writer on art and artists, and a conversationalist whose strong opinions on diverse topics were often repeated in print. A pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first president of the Royal Academy, Northcote enjoyed a popular reputation in his time for painting portraits of historical subjects, scenes from Shakespeare’s plays, and animals. This subsequently was overshadowed by his prominence as a source of information on his contemporaries. This exhibition, drawn exclusively from the rich holdings of the Yale Center for British Art, will redress that imbalance by presenting an array of Northcote’s art: paintings, drawings, prints, and, at its center, a practically unknown manuscript for Northcote’s One Hundred Fables, Original and Selected (1828).
Northcote wrote and illustrated these fables for adults during the last twenty years of his life. They convey moral lessons, often with themes comparing the similarities of humans to animals. Using techniques well ahead of his time, Northcote created collaged illustrations for the Fables by cutting humans, other animals, and background details from his collection of historical engravings, then reassembling them into chimerical scenes. This exhibition will explore the translation of Northcote’s highly original designs from collages to their ultimate form as wood engravings for two series of Fables, the first published in 1828, the second, posthumously, in 1833. The wood engravings provided simplified, but highly popular, interpretations of the original fables for mass production and consumption. Picture Talking will consider the questions of originality versus pastiche and image versus text through careful consideration of Northcote’s art. It will argue that in his earlier work as a history painter and print designer, Northcote worked through the process of borrowing and collage. Thus, the fables represent a culmination of his career.
Picture Talking: James Northcote and the Fables has been organized by the Yale Center for British Art. The co-curators are Mark Ledbury (Power Professor of Art History and Visual Culture and Director of the Power Institute at the University of Sydney) and A. Cassandra Albinson (Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art).
Opening Lecture
Mark Ledbury | Inspiration and Eccentricity: The Ups and Downs of James Northcote
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1 October 2014, 5:30
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From Yale UP:
Mark Ledbury, James Northcote, History Painting, and the Fables (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2014), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-0300208139, $65.
The artistic accomplishments of James Northcote (1746–1831) have tended to be overshadowed by his role as a biographer of Joshua Reynolds, first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, with whom Northcote apprenticed. Here, Mark Ledbury constructs a very different image of Northcote: that of a prolific member of the Royal Academy and an active participant in the cultural and political circles of the Romantic era, as well as a portrait and history painter in his own right. This book focuses on Northcote’s One Hundred Fables (1828), a masterpiece of wood engraving, and the unconventional, collaged manuscripts for the volume. The Fables, extensively published here for the first time, were an early experiment in what is now a familiar multimedia practice. Idiosyncratic, personal, and visionary, One Hundred Fables serves as a lens through which to examine Northcote’s long, complex, and fruitful artistic career.
Mark Ledbury is Power Professor of Art History and director of the Power Institute at the University of Sydney.
Call for Papers | 2015 Wallace Seminars on Collections and Collecting
From The Wallace:
2015 Wallace Collection Seminars on the History of Collections and Collecting
The Wallace Collection, London, 4th Monday of the Month
Proposals due by 30 September 2014
The seminar series has been established as part of the Wallace Collection’s commitment to the research and study of the history of collections and collecting, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Paris and London. In 2015, as in previous years, we plan to organise a series of around 10 seminars. We are keen to encourage contributions covering all aspects of the history of collecting, including:
• Formation and dispersal of collections
• Dealers, auctioneers and the art market
• Collectors
• Museums
• Inventory work
• Research resources
The seminars, which are normally held on the 4th Monday of every month during the calendar year, act as a forum for the presentation and discussion of new research into the history of collecting. Seminars are open to curators, academics, historians, archivists and all those with an interest in the subject. Papers are generally 45–60 minutes long and all the seminars take place at the Wallace Collection between 5.30 and 7pm. If interested, please send a brief text (500–750 words), including a brief CV and an indication of which month you free to speak at, by 30 September 2014. For more information and to submit a proposal, please contact collections@wallacecollection.org.
Research Grant | The Andrew Wyld Research Support Grant
From The Paul Mellon Centre:
The Andrew Wyld Research Grant for the Study of Works on Paper
Applications due by 15 September 2014
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art is delighted to announce that it will administer a new category of award from September 2014 on behalf of the Andrew Wyld Fund.
Andrew Wyld was a well-known and much respected London art dealer, specialising in eighteenth and nineteenth-century British watercolours. After his death in 2011, a group of friends and family decided to set up a fund in his memory; its aim is to enable students to do exactly as he did, namely to look at, and judge, works of art on paper for themselves. Andrew Wyld Research Support Grants of up to £2,000 will be offered annually to gradute, doctoral and undergraduate students (undertaking dissertation research) working in the field of British works of art on paper of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Grants may be used towards expenses incurred in visiting prints and drawings collections, galleries, museums, sale rooms and other institutions for the purpose of studying British works of art on paper.
More information is available here and at The Paul Mellon Centre.
Reviewed | Judith Bonner on ‘The Coast and the Sea’
Linda S. Ferber, The Coast and the Sea: Marine and Maritime Art in America (New York and London: New-York Historical Society in association with D. Giles Limited, 2014), 104 pages, ISBN 978-1907804311, $30 / £20.
Reviewed for Enfilade by Judith H. Bonner
The New-York Historical Society, that city’s oldest museum, is celebrating its recent reopening after its lengthy renovation with a traveling exhibition and accompanying catalogue by Linda S. Ferber.1 The exhibition features more than 60 artworks and artifacts, primarily paintings, including portraits, genre scenes, and marine and maritime scenes. Overall, the images document the development of the New York area with its harbor and its close relationship with the Atlantic Ocean, the great maritime highway for trade and immigration.
Works selected for the exhibition have their origins in the eighteenth century, beginning in 1728 and ending in 1904. Maritime-related artifacts include a vintage spyglass, scrimshaw, snuff boxes, and an 1816 silver presentation soup tureen commemorating acts of bravery during the War of 1812. The provenance of each artwork documents the development of the New-York Historical Society, as well as the city’s art collectors, their tastes, and their interests.
The exhibition features work by artists whose names are familiar, as well as those who are unfamiliar. The painters include Thomas Birch, Thomas Buttersworth, Carlton Theodore Chapman, Thomas Cole, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Julian Oliver Davidson, Mauritz Frederick Hendrick De Haas, James Guy Evans, Robert Havell Jr., John Frederick Kensett, Rembrandt Peale, Francis Augustus Silva, and John Vanderlyn.
Several artists had nautical experience that informed their art in subject, rigging, and construction of the vessels. Buttersworth served in the British navy, while De Haas held an artist’s commission in the Dutch navy. James Guy Evans possibly served in the American navy. Chapman ran away to sea as a teenager; and Davidson sailed the globe, making sketches that provided visual sources for many years. Evident in these artists’ works is their understanding of the action of waves and atmospheric effects over the seas at different times of the day or season.
The marine subjects include frigates engaged in famous sea battles, working vessels and bustling port scenes, marine recreation scenes, portraits of heroic sea captains, and pioneering merchants. Marine scenes focus on recreation, shipwrecks, disasters, and military encounters, particularly those in the War of 1812 and Civil War. The exhibition spreads its reach down the East Coast, swinging farther south to the Battle of Mobile Bay in the Gulf of Mexico and the Battle of Port Hudson up the Mississippi River about 100 miles above New Orleans.
Portraitists range from eighteenth-century painter John Wollaston to early nineteenth-century painters John Vanderlyn and Rembrandt Peale, the latter of whom executed a portrait of naval hero Commodore Stephen Decatur in dress uniform and set against a dramatic stormy sky. Wollaston’s circa-1750 portrait of wealthy colonial merchant-shipbuilder Captain John Waddell, who owned a fleet of ships, sets the stage for the succession of ships’ portraits seen throughout the catalogue. Early portraits include personages having distinguished careers or an association with maritime enterprises. The sitter is often shown near an open window through which one views a conventionalized seascape or harbor scene with masted vessels. Other sitters are shown with maps, globes, compass, a spyglass, or other maritime instruments.
The catalogue is well researched and documented with a select bibliography. Explanations of the marine scenes are succinct yet vivid; the prose is fluid and often poetic. Ferber distinguishes between marine scenes—which focus on the pure seascape, its coast and environs—and maritime paintings. The latter, Ferber explains, emphasize human activity and other enterprises on shore or at sea. Her knowledge of nautical terminology and national history is evident throughout. She traces visual conventions from their development in seventeenth-century Holland, their passage into the British school of marine painting, and subsequent introduction into English colonies in the New World.
Ferber consistently places artworks within a broader historical context and, when appropriate, within a cultural narrative. Brief biographical sketches of artists trace their artistic development within the maritime tradition. Ferber discusses allegorical themes in paintings, as well as the effect that nostalgic longing for historically simpler times had upon the proliferation and re-creation of popular scenes celebrating heroic national victories and spirited naval encounters.
The book invites readers to the repeated examination of the images, some of which, like those illustrating the America’s Cup, are iconic. Truly memorable is a painting by Howard Pyle, A Privateersman Ashore (1893), shown in historically correct clothing and accouterments. The privateer stands near the Battery and Castle Clinton at the time of the War of 1812, posed and preening, with smoke from his cigar curling upward from the corner of his mouth as townspeople in the distance look toward him with disdain. The latter is a comment about the disapprobation citizens held for such freebooters, who preyed upon British ships.
Closing this maritime jaunt through history are two paintings. The first, by Andrew Meyer, shows President Grover Cleveland reviewing a naval parade in New York Harbor as the setting for opening ceremonies of Chicago’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, with the Statue of Liberty clearly visible, as though she also stands in review of the parade. Lastly, in 1904 Chapman portrays the Great East River Bridge (now Brooklyn Bridge) over the East River, celebrating New York’s location on the rim of the Atlantic, the gateway to America.
1. Venues for exhibition include: The Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida (25 January — 9 March 2014); The Baker Museum of Art, Naples, Florida (19 April — 6 July 2014); Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine (January — May 2015); The Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut (6 June — 13 September 2015); and The New York State Museum, Albany, New York (24 October 2015 — 22 February 2016).
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Judith H. Bonner is Senior Curator and Curator of Art at The Historic New Orleans Collection.
Call for Panels, Papers, and Posters | ISECS 2015, Rotterdam
From the Call for Papers:
14th International Congress for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS 2015)
Rotterdam, 26–31 July 2015
Proposals due by 1 September 2014 (Panel Sessions) / 12 January 2015 (Individual Papers and Posters)
The Congress of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS) is the world’s largest meeting of specialists on all aspects of the eighteenth century, and takes place every four years. Recent ISECS conferences have been held in Dublin (1999), Los Angeles (2003), Montpellier (2007) and Graz (2011). The 14th ISECS Congress will be organized in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, from 26 to 31 July 2015. It is organized by the Dutch-Belgian Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (DBSECS – Werkgroep 18e Eeuw) and is hosted by the Erasmus University Rotterdam on Campus Woudestein. We can welcome more than one thousand participants.
The theme of the 14th ISECS Congress is Opening Markets: Trade and Commerce in the 18th Century. The program will include theme-related keynote lectures and sessions, as well as panels and round tables on all topics related to the long eighteenth century (1670–1830). The conference will also facilitate poster presentations. We are looking forward to inspiring lectures, debates and presentations on the conference theme and on all issues regarding the Age of Enlightenment and Sensibility.
Online registration is now open for:
• Submission of proposals for panel sessions and round table sessions. The online Call for Panels is open from February 2014 until September 1, 2014.
• Submission of proposals for individual papers or poster presentations. The online Call for individual Papers & Posters is open from June 2014 until January 12, 2015.
• Pre-registration: You can e-mail the organizers (info@isecs2015.com) a request for pre-registration. By pre-registering, you subscribe to a newsletter that will keep you regularly informed about the organization of the ISECS 2015 Congress, including planned sessions, round tables and other meetings. The online Registration for the ISECS 2015 Congress will open from September 1, 2014 until April 30, 2015.
Don’t hesitate to distribute this call among interested colleagues and networks! If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact the local host committee via info@isecs2015.com or visit the conference website. ISECS 2015 is open to all persons interested in topics and issues having to do with the long eighteenth century and the Age of Enlightenment. Membership of an ISECS constituent or affiliated organization is not necessary for registration. The online Registration for the Early Career Eighteenth-Century Scholar Seminar will open in September 2014.
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Instructions for Panel Session Submissions
Proposals due by 1 September 2014
The ISECS 2015 Committee invites those interested to organize thematic meetings in the program of the Conference to submit proposals for panel sessions and round tables. The submission of proposals for panels will be open until September 1, 2014. Panel organizers are requested to complete the online form. Organizers are asked to supply information about the theme of the proposed panel and the panel members along with an abstract of their contribution to the panel meeting. Panels have a duration of one and a half hours, and should consist of 3–4 speakers (depending on the amount of discussion time the panel organizer wants to provide). It is also possible to submit a panel suggestion without concrete panelists or partly filled with panelists. In the coming months, we will present a list with panels accepting proposals on our website. Open panels will also be promoted through our newsletter.
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Instructions for Individual Paper Proposals
Proposals due by 12 January 2015
The submission of proposals for papers is open until January 12, 2015. Participants in the ISECS 2015 Congress can submit one proposal for an individual paper. In the menu available through the website, you will find a dropdown box with submitted panels that are open for paper submissions. Here, you can indicate which panel your paper could be part of. Paper proposals are reviewed by the scientific committee and by the panel organizers. The ISECS 2015 Scientific Committee is responsible for organizing the panels in which the papers and posters will be presented. Only registered participants can present individual papers and posters. Participants who intend to submit more than one paper proposal are requested to contact the organizers of the ISECS 2015 Conference (info@isecs2015.com).
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Instructions for Poster Proposals
Proposals due by 12 January 2015
Are you involved in an interesting project or in an area of work that you would like to discuss with or show to other Conference attendees? Why not present your work in the ISECS Poster Sessions? Your topic could be described on a printed poster or by photographs, graphics and pieces of text that you attach to the presentation panel. Posters in both English and French are welcome. Presenters of posters will be expected to be present on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 28–30 July, in order to explain their posters and to hand out any leaflets, or other information materials they have available for viewers. Each presenter can therefore only present one poster. Any organization that submits more than one application should indicate a priority to their submissions.
It is important that applicants describe how they intend to illustrate the project in the poster format. The poster has to be an experience in itself for the one who looks at it and should show awareness of the poster format. Special consideration will be given to ensure that a variety of topics and geographical/cultural range will be represented. The deadline is January 12, 2015. After the deadline, applications will no longer be accepted.
A jury representing the ISECS Organizing Committee will review all submissions and at the Conference they will select the winner of the ISECS Poster Award 2015 based on the criteria below. The topic of the poster should:
• Look lively, interesting and/or inspiring
• Lend itself to a poster session and not be too abstract
• Present new ideas
• Be clearly explained
• Not duplicate another poster, nor have the same presenter as another poster
• A presenter must be present during the poster session to explain the poster to viewers
• Have a relationship to the theme of the 2015 ISECS Conference
• Describe a project that is ongoing or near completion rather than one not yet started
For useful tips and tricks on how to design a poster, see this guide by Aimee Roundtree.
Exhibition | Christophe-Paul de Robien and the Age of Libertinism
Phallus of blown glass.
From the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes:
Cabinet de Curiosités: Le Temps des Libertinages
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, 13 June 2014 — 4 January 2015
Vincennes Porcelain Manufactory, Le Flûteur
(The Flute Lesson), ca. 1752–53
(Paris: Musée National de la Céramique de Sèvres)
Christophe-Paul de Robien (1698–1756) possédait dans son cabinet douze objets érotiques dont certains qualifiés d’obscènes dans les inventaires. Il s’agit là de peu de chose pour en faire un érotomane, mais c’est plus que ce que possédait Caylus ou Calvet à la même époque.
Cette exposition accompagnant la réouverture du cabinet de curiosités tentera de remettre dans son contexte les objets érotiques de Robien à partir d’autres objets qui lui sont contemporains : des raretés venues de Guimet, du Louvre et des Arts décoratifs délimiteront les contours d’un érotisme longtemps occulté parmi les collections d’amateurs que la seconde moitié du XVIIIème polarisera entre bon gout et vulgarité.
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Sandra Dufils provides a summary here»
Jean-Baptiste Gandon provides a summary here»
Information on Christophe-Paul de Robien’s collection generally is available here»
And finally, the museum’s website provides this impressively extensive bibliography on eroticism, sexuality, and libertinism
(as a PDF File).
Enfilade 
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