Conference | Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages
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Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages
The British Library, London, 28 June 2024
p r o g r a m m e
11.00 Registration and coffee
11.30 Juan Gomis (Valencia) — Visual Recognition Tools for the Study of Spanish Chapbooks, 18th and 19th Centuries
12.25 Lunch break
1.30 Karima Gaci (Leeds) — French Grammar Textbooks Published in England, 18th and 19th Centuries
2.15 Yuri Cerqueira dos Anjos (Wellington) — French Writing Manuals in the 19th Century
3.00 Tea
3.30 Alexandra Wingate (Indiana) — Reviewing the Systems Approach: A General Model for Book and Information Circulation
4.15 Sarah Pipkin (London) — Two Works by Kepler in University College London, De stella nova (1606) and De cometis libri tres (1619), and Their Provenance
The seminar will end at 5.00pm. Attendance is free, but please pre-register by sending your full name to Barry Taylor at barry.taylor@bl.uk and Susan Reed at susan.reed@bl.uk.
Exhibition | The Craft of Tea, 1660–2024
Now on view at the The Goldsmiths’ Centre:
The Craft of Tea, 1660–2024
The Goldsmiths’ Centre, London, 1 May — 27 June 2024
The Craft of Tea, 1660–2024 explores the material history of tea, stylistically and thematically, from 1660 to the present day. It presents remarkable silver objects from the Chitra Collection, an extraordinary private museum of historic teawares, alongside examples by modern and contemporary makers. Over forty notable pieces from the collection will be displayed, spanning the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. They will be exhibited together with loans from the Pearson Silver Collection, the Goldsmiths’ Company Collection, and individual makers. The Chitra Collection team has been a long-term contributor to the Goldsmiths’ Centre’s public and training programmes. The co-curated exhibition is a unique chance for members of the jewellery and silversmithing industry, Londoners and visitors to the Goldsmiths’ Centre to view examples from this incredible collection.
The exhibition is divided into eight themes that take you on a journey from the early beginnings of the tea trade in Europe, through tea taking as ritual, power, and rebellion, to the boundary-pushing teapots of the modern and contemporary period. The exhibits are global in scope, whilst also questioning the preoccupations of UK silversmiths today. Amongst the historical examples in each thematic display, you will find a contemporary counterpart that responds to or extends the ideas under consideration. Whatever your interest—visual, historical, or practical—we hope that you will enjoy this celebration of the craft of making tea.
The Chitra Collection is an unsurpassed private museum of historic teawares. With objects from Europe, Asia, and the Americas, the collection celebrates the global significance of tea and teaware design, from ancient China, through to the present day. In 2011 Nirmal Sethia, philanthropist and chairman of the luxury tea company Newby London, set himself the task of acquiring the world’s greatest collection of teawares to record and preserve tea cultures of the past. Today, the collection, named in honour of his late wife, Chitra, totals almost 3000 objects and is already the world’s finest and most comprehensive of its kind.
Charlotte Dew, Evelyn Earl, Grace Fannon, and Gregory Parsons, eds., The Craft of Tea, 1660–2024 (London: The Goldsmiths’ Centre, 2024), 70 pages, ISBN: 978-0907814450, $16.
Exhibition | Anxiety and Hope in Japanese Art
Now on view at The Met:
Anxiety and Hope in Japanese Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 8 April 2023 — 14 July 2024 (in four rotations)
Suzuki Harunobu, Young Woman Riding a Carp, 1760s, woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper 26 × 20 cm (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, JP1647). Here, the image of a young woman parodies the Daoist immortal Qin Gao, an auspicious figure who rides a carp. On display for rotation 4.
Drawn largely from The Met’s renowned collection of Japanese art, this exhibition explores the twin themes of anxiety and hope, with a focus on the human stories in and around art and art making. The exhibition begins with sacred images from early Japan that speak to concerns about death, dying, and the afterlife or that were created in response to other uncertainties, such as war and natural disaster. The presentation then proceeds chronologically, highlighting medieval Buddhist images of paradises and hells, Zen responses to life and death, depictions of war and pilgrimage, and the role of protective and hopeful images in everyday life. In the final galleries, the exhibition’s underlying themes are explored through a selection of modern woodblock prints, garments, and photographs.
Rotation 1 | 8 April — 13 August 2023
Rotation 2 | 26 August — 26 November 2023
Rotation 3 | 16 December 2023 — 14 April 2024
Rotation 4 | 27 April — 14 July 2024
The exhibition is made possible by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation Fund.
Exhibition | Embracing Color: Enamel in Chinese Decorative Arts
Now on view at The Met:
Embracing Color: Enamel in Chinese Decorative Arts, 1300–1900
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 4 July 2022 — 4 January 2026
Snuff Bottle with Fish, late 18th–early 19th century, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), overlay glass with ivory-and-glass stopper, 6 cm high (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 21.175.280a, b).
Enamel decoration is a significant element of Chinese decorative arts that has long been overlooked. This exhibition reveals the aesthetic, technical, and cultural achievement of Chinese enamel wares by demonstrating the transformative role of enamel during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties. The first transformational moment occurred in the late 14th to 15th century, when the introduction of cloisonné enamel from the West, along with the development of porcelain with overglaze enamels, led to a shift away from a monochromatic palette to colorful works. The second transformation occurred in the late 17th to 18th century, when European enameling materials and techniques were brought to the Qing court and more subtle and varied color tones were developed on enamels applied over porcelain, metal, glass, and other mediums. In both moments, Chinese artists did not simply adopt or copy foreign techniques; they actively created new colors and styles that reflected their own taste. The more than 100 objects on view are drawn mainly from The Met collection.
Rotation 1 | 4 July 2022 — 30 April 2023
Rotation 2 | 20 May 2023 — 24 March 2024
Rotation 3 | 13 April 2024 — 16 February 2025
Rotation 4 | 1 March 2025 — 4 January 2026
This exhibition is made possible by the Florence and Herbert Irving Fund for Asian Art Exhibitions.
Exhibition | The Fuyun Xuan Collection of Chinese Snuff Bottles
Now on view at the Hong Kong Museum of Art:
Art of Gifting: The Fuyun Xuan Collection of Chinese Snuff Bottles
Hong Kong Museum of Art, from 12 April 2024
Double-gourd-shaped snuff bottle with floral design in painted enamals on yellow ground, glass, four-character mark of Qianlong and of the period, 1736–95, 6.1 cm high (Hong Kong Museum of Art).
In 2023, the Hong Kong Museum of Art received a generous donation from Mrs. Josephine Sin of 490 Chinese snuff bottles from the Fuyun Xuan Collection—the most extensive and comprehensive of its kind ever received by a museum in Hong Kong. Established by the late local collector Christopher Sin, the Fuyun Xuan Collection is recognised as one of the most important private collections of snuff bottles in the world. Featuring the gems of Mr. Sin’s lifelong collection, this donation represents a significant gift to Hong Kong from the donor couple. Epitomising the finest skills and artistry of Chinese artisans, the small and delicate snuff bottles became popular among nobles and high-ranking officials since emerging in the early Qing dynasty, and were often given as gifts in diplomatic, official, and social settings. Showcasing all of the 490 donated snuff bottles, the exhibition invites viewers to step into the kaleidoscopic world of these miniature, precious gifts.
The exhibition is one of the activities in the Chinese Culture Promotion Series. The LCSD has long been promoting Chinese history and culture through organising an array of programmes and activities to enable the public to learn more about the broad and profound Chinese culture.
Exhibition | Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China
From the press release for the exhibition (7 March 2024) . . .
奪天工 Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, 14 September 2024 — 6 January 2025
A new exhibition at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens will explore the potential of gardens as spaces that not only delight the senses and nourish the body but also inspire the mind—both intellectually and spiritually. The literati during China’s Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties believed gardens resulted in more ethical connections to all living things. On view in the Chinese Garden’s Studio for Lodging the Mind from 14 September 2024 to 6 January 2025, 奪天工 Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China will exhibit 24 objects, including hanging scrolls, hand scrolls, albums, and books from The Huntington’s collections and those throughout the United States. The exhibition will also feature a participatory artwork by contemporary Chinese artist Zheng Bo that was commissioned by The Huntington.
Growing and Knowing and the Huntington exhibition Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis will run concurrently as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, a regional event presented by Getty featuring more than 60 exhibitions and programs that explore the intersections of art and science, both past and present.
Growing and Knowing will present three key themes: ‘Growing’, ‘Knowing’, and ‘Being’.
Growing
The introductory section to the exhibition, ‘Growing’, will focus on historical horticultural practices in China, many of which are still practiced today. Chinese scholars and gardeners experimented with domestication, grafting, and hybridization to create unusual cultivars (new varieties of plants developed through human intervention). Throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties, these techniques were well documented in horticultural manuals. Some of these books—such as The Secretly Transmitted Mirror of Flowers, completed by Chen Hao 陳淏 (1615–1703) in 1688—remained popular instructional guides in China into the 20th century. The well-known chrysanthemum flower exists as a result of hybridization experiments conducted by scholars and gardeners. Visitors will have the opportunity to view chrysanthemums in full bloom just outside of the exhibition walls in The Huntington’s Chinese Garden. Reproductions of gardening tools from the period will also be displayed.
Knowing
The second section, ‘Knowing’, will present a diverse selection of books and paintings from the Ming and Qing dynasties, showcasing the multiple ways that scholars thought about the plants they cultivated. “The works selected for ‘Knowing’ specifically highlight scholars’ understanding of plants as food, sources of emergency sustenance and pharmaceuticals, and keys to classical literature,” said exhibition curator Phillip E. Bloom, The Huntington’s June and Simon K.C. Li Curator of the Chinese Garden and Director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies. A subtheme of the section will touch on the era’s hierarchies of knowledge—specifically how scholars’ intellectual knowledge of plants was valued over gardeners’ direct, physical knowledge. Gardeners’ bodily insights were largely ignored in historical texts, but they were revealed in visual sources. For example, the Ming dynasty painting Garden for Solitary Pleasure (17th century) shows a scholar lying deep in thought among bamboo and other trees, as nearby laborers bend over plants and carry tools to cultivate the scholar’s garden.
Being
Chinese scholars did not grow and learn about plants just for knowledge’s sake. Growing and knowing were means for them to better understand their place in the world and learn to interact more ethically with other creatures. The last section of the exhibition, ‘Being’, will explore these practices of self-cultivation. “In order to truly understand how nature works, scholars not only contemplated plants but also engaged with and learned from them,” Bloom said. “Caring for plants, observing their habits, taking pleasure in their forms, and ultimately recognizing their commonalities with humans were, in essence, practices whereby people may perfect themselves.” Pursuits of a Scholar, an 18th-century Qing dynasty painting album, dedicates several leaves to the different ways that scholars interacted with plants. One leaf shows a scholar writing observations of a bamboo plant in his study, while another depicts a scholar caring for chrysanthemums.
Ecosensibility Exercise: Fragrant Eight-Section Brocade 生態感悟練習： 聞香八段錦 by Zheng Bo
To invite visitors to develop their own meaningful relationships with their natural surroundings, The Huntington has commissioned the participatory artwork Ecosensibility Exercise: Fragrant Eight-Section Brocade by Hong Kong–based artist Zheng Bo. Fragrant Eight-Section Brocade is inspired by the traditional Chinese mind-body practice qigong 氣功. Building on exercises that date back nearly 900 years and remain widely practiced today, Zheng’s work includes eight exercises that combine simple full-body movements and deep breathing to activate the mind and body. Each exercise is performed with a fragrant plant, encouraging the participants to develop a human-plant connection. Visitors to the exhibition can perform the exercises on their own throughout The Huntington’s gardens at marked stops chosen by the artist. A film documenting the eight exercises will be shown in the gallery. The Huntington is also planning a series of public programs in which the artist will guide visitors through his reinterpreted movements.
Exhibition Catalog
The Huntington will publish an open-access digital catalog edited by Phillip E. Bloom, Nicholas K. Menzies (research fellow in The Huntington’s Center for East Asian Garden Studies), and Michelle Bailey (assistant curator for the Center for East Asian Garden Studies). The book will include seven essays, 16 catalog entries by various scholars, and a conversation with artist Zheng Bo. A paperback version of the catalog will be available at the Huntington Store.
This exhibition is made possible with support from Getty through its PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative.
Call for Papers | A Legacy of Landscape Study
From ArtHist.net:
A Legacy of Landscape Study
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 5–6 December 2024
Proposals due by 1 July 2024
The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) and Oak Spring Garden Foundation (OSGF) share a legacy of landscape study rooted in the collections of Paul and Rachel Lambert ‘Bunny’ Mellon. While the Mellons’ collecting practices differed, they both gathered significant materials in the history of British environments, horticulture, and landscapes. Notable examples include Paul Mellon’s paintings and prints by George Stubbs and J. M. W. Turner and Bunny Mellon’s garden treatises and Humphrey Repton Red Books. From these origins, the YCBA’s extensive collection of British art has encouraged generations of new scholarship on British landscape art, while OSGF has become a leading research institution for the global histories and futures of gardens, landscapes, and plants. Inspired by this legacy of collecting and scholarship, the YCBA and OSGF are hosting a symposium at Yale to bring together new interdisciplinary research on British landscape studies.
By commingling the diversity of approaches to the histories and depictions of landscapes and environments represented by the two institutions, this symposium aims to generate new scholarly conversation about the intersections of British culture, ecology, and land. We invite papers exploring new topics in the study of British landscapes, from art history to cultural geography to environmental studies, and we particularly welcome work exploring the relationship of cultural output to physical landscapes and ecologies. We encourage broad definitions of ‘landscape’ and ‘British’ to open the potential for discussions of the global context of Britain and its former empire, and to consider an international exchange of landscape art, design, and horticulture.
Proposed subjects might include, but are not limited to:
• Extractive, industrial, urban, and neglected landscapes
• Histories of collecting and display (whether art or plants)
• Interconnections of landscape and garden history and art history
• New critical approaches to environments, landscapes, and British identity
• Plant history and humanities broadly, including related subjects such as food history and agrarian history
Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words and a short biography by 1 July 2024, 5pm (ET). The YCBA will provide travel and accommodations for successful applicants.
Call for Papers | The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain
From ArtHist.net:
The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, 27–28 September 2024
Proposals due by 31 May 2024
This summer, Pallant House Gallery presents The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain (11 May – 20 October), a major exhibition exploring the continuing and fundamental relevance of the genre of still life to British art and art history. Historically still life has been viewed as the lowest genre of art, but in fact it has been employed by leading British artists to grapple with some of the most profound themes relating to the human condition, and as a vehicle for experimentation with new forms and ideas. In keeping with Pallant House Gallery’s mission to explore new perspectives on British art from 1900 to now, the exhibition demonstrates how artists working in the 20th and 21st centuries have continually reimagined traditional still life. It questions how still life has been used to explore themes such as mortality and loss, fecundity and love, the uncanny and subconscious, the domestic environment and questions of gender, abundance and waste. Today these themes also extend to climate change and to the legacy of colonialism and empire.
Starting with the introduction of still life in Britain by émigré artists in the 17th century, the exhibition reveals how modern and contemporary artists have engaged with and reinterpreted traditional art history. It then presents a history of modern and contemporary British art as understood through the lens of the still life, showing how the genre sits at the heart of groups and movements including the Bloomsbury Group, Scottish Colourists, Seven & Five Society, Unit One, Surrealism, St Ives and post-war abstraction, Neo-romanticism, pop art, post-war figurative art, conceptual art, and the YBAs. Encompassing painting, prints, photography, sculpture, and installation, The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain includes over 150 works by more than 100 leading artists working in Britain. The exhibition is accompanied by a site-specific installation by Phoebe Cummings.
This symposium will seek to draw out connections between historic and contemporary art, and will provide an opportunity to further explore key themes in the exhibition. The keynote lecture will be delivered by a leading British artist. The two sessions will include papers by art historians and curators concerning artists and themes in historic, modern, and contemporary British art, and artists talking about themes in their work.
We seek contributions that investigate, though are not limited to:
• the reinterpretation and renewal of this traditional genre
• the exploration of gender identity through still life
• how the world’s underlying uncertainties are expressed through a genre traditionally perceived as domestic
• still life as an art form that goes beyond reality to explore symbolism, the sub-conscious, and the uncanny
• the connections between still life and global commerce and its connections to colonialism and the British Empire
• the contribution of émigré and Diaspora artists to the enduring significance of the genre
• still life as a site for the exploration of materiality
To be considered as a speaker, please send an abstract of up to 400 words to curatorial@pallant.org.uk, including your name, affiliation, contact details (phone number and email address), and a short biography with details of any recent publications. The deadline for submissions is 31 May 2024 (12pm). We will aim to contact successful candidates by Monday, 1 July.
The symposium has been generously supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Speakers will be paid a fee of £150. Speakers will be able to claim travel expenses (up to £100) and accommodation costs (up to £100) for the Friday evening. There will be no delegate fee for speakers. Delegate tickets will be £50 full price (£30 for students) and will include refreshments and lunch. Tickets will go on sale via the Pallant House Gallery website nearer the time of the conference.
Workshop | Collecting, Growing, and Exploring
From ArtHist.net:
Collecting, Growing, and Exploring in Early Modernity
EPHE Sorbonne, Paris 11 June 2024
Organized by Maddalena Bellavitis and Catherine Powell-Warren
Registration due by 6 June 2024
The last few decades have produced a number of studies devoted to the relationship between collecting and science, highlighting the relationship between a growing interest in botany and the fascination with the collection of naturalia, especially from the mid-sixteenth century onward. These objects of natural origins aroused the admiration of enthusiasts and scientists alike. Underexplored, however, is the extent to which collecting and scientific experimentation and exploration were related in the early modern period. Thus, this workshop aims to focus attention on the collections of naturalia, on the one hand, and on the attempts to grow exotic plants in Europe and the adventurous journeys that the search for tropical plants and animals they encouraged, on the other. To be included in the list of participants, please send an email to maddalena.bellavitis@gmail.com.
p r o g r a m m e
10.00 Morning Session
• Maddalena Bellavitis (Saprat, EPHE) and Catherine Powell-Warren (Ghent University/FWO) — Welcome and Introductions
• Marie Bigotte (Durham University) — Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Princely Garden Collections of Naturalia
• Madeline White (University of Oxford) — ‘Indian Maiz…in my Garden at Mitcham’: Global Networks, Local Gardens, and Oxford’s du Bois Herbarium
• Baijayanti Chatterjee (University of Calcutta) — The Foundation and Growth of the Calcutta Botanical Garden: Plant Collecting and Botanical Science under the East India Company, 1786–1815
• Anil Paralkar (Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Ruprech-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, WittenLab, Witten/Herdecke University) — The Datura in Gottorf: Botanizing, Ethnographing, and Imagining India in 17th-Century Germany
13.30 Lunch
15.00 Afternoon Session
• Seán Thomas Kane (Binghamton University) — Cosmographic Singularities: André Thevet as a Collector of American Exotica, 1556–1590
• India Cole (Queen Mary University of London) — The Duchess of Beaufort’s Pioneering Collections
• Silvia Papini (Università di Firenze – Pisa – Siena) — Exploring Nature in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany: Mercantile Perspectives in the Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries
• Celia Rodriguez Tejuca (Johns Hopkins University) — Stabilizing Materials across Time and Space: A Natural History Cabinet in 18th-Century Havana
17.15 Discussion and Conclusions
Exhibition | Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art
Opening in November at the Alte Pinakothek:
Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), Nature into Art
Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 26 November 2024 — 16 March 2025
Toledo Museum of Art, 12 April — 27 July 2025
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 23 August — 7 December 2025
Rachel Ruysch, Blumenstrauß / Bouquet of Flowers, 1715 (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek München, 878).
Rachel Ruysch’s deceptively realistic floral still lifes—paintings of exotic plants and fruit, butterflies and insects—were already sought-after and expensive collector’s items during the artist’s lifetime. Demand was so great that the Amsterdam painter could afford to produce merely a few works a year.
As the daughter of the renowned professor of anatomy and botany Frederik Ruysch, the first female member of The Hague’s Confrerie Pictura, a court painter in Düsseldorf, a lottery game winner, and the mother of eleven children, Rachel was an exceptional figure. In November, the Alte Pinakothek will open the world’s first major monographic exhibition of her work. Discover the wondrous world of Rachel Ruysch, who between art and science perfected fine painting and artistic freedom amidst illustrious patrons in Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, and Florence.
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