London Art Week 2024

From the press release for London Art Week, with selected highlights including the following:

British Women Artists, 1750–1950
Karen Taylor Fine Art, London Art Week, 28 June — 5 July 2024

Penelope Cawardine (1729–1804), Portrait of a Lady Looking in a Mirror, black and red chalk on laid paper, oval 15.3 × 11.5 cm. More information is available here»

Karen Taylor Fine Art’s exhibition British Women Artists, 1750–1950 coincides with the exhibition of the Tate Britain’s Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920. It will include a number of scientific works by Sarah Stone and others; portraiture, which provided the livelihood for many female artists from the 18th century to Laura Knight; and landscapes from a wide range of female artists.

Karen Taylor is a private dealer in British and topographical art, principally works on paper, with a particular interest in works of historic and geographical importance and British women artists. She works by appointment in London and is proud to include major institutions in the USA, UK, and Europe amongst her regular customers. Karen worked in the British drawings department at Sotheby’s and after 10 years moved to Spink, where she ran the picture department. In 1999, she established Karen Taylor Fine Art, and regularly exhibits at fairs in London and holds exhibitions during London Art Week.

The related catalogue includes an introduction by Paris Spies-Gans.

Exhibition | Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920

From the press release for the exhibition:

Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920
Tate Britain, London, 16 May — 13 October 2024

Tate Britain presents Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920. This ambitious group show charts women’s road to being recognised as professional artists, a 400-year journey that paved the way for future generations and established what it meant to be a woman in the British art world. The exhibition covers the period in which women were visibly working as professional artists, but went against societal expectations to do so.

Featuring over 100 artists, the exhibition celebrates well-known names such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Gwen John, alongside many others who are only now being rediscovered. Their careers were as varied as the works they produced. Some prevailed over genres deemed suitable for women like watercolour landscapes and domestic scenes. Others dared to take on subjects dominated by men like battle scenes and the nude, or campaigned for equal access to training and membership of professional institutions. Tate Britain will showcase over 200 works, including oil painting, watercolour, pastel, sculpture, photography, and ‘needlepainting’ to tell the story of these trailblazing artists.

Now You See Us begins at the Tudor court with Levina Teerlinc, many of whose miniatures are brought together for the first time in four decades, and Esther Inglis, whose manuscripts contain Britain’s earliest known self-portraits by a woman artist. The exhibition then looks to the 17th century. Focus is given to one of art history’s most celebrated women artists: Artemisia Gentileschi, who created major works in London at the court of Charles I, including the recently rediscovered Susanna and the Elders 1638–40, on loan from the Royal Collection for the very first time. The exhibition also looks to women such as Mary Beale, Joan Carlile, and Maria Verelst who broke new ground as professional portrait painters in oil.

Maria Cosway, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire as Cynthia from Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’, 1781–82, oil on canvas (The Devonshire Collection).

In the 18th century, women took part in Britain’s first public art exhibitions; these artists included overlooked figures such as Katherine Read and Mary Black; the sculptor Anne Seymour Damer; and Margaret Sarah Carpenter, a leading figure in her day but little heard of now. The show looks at Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, the only women included among the Founder Members of the Royal Academy of Arts; it took 160 years for membership to be granted to another woman. Women artists of this era are often dismissed as amateurs pursuing ‘feminine’ occupations like watercolour and flower painting, but many worked in these genres professionally: needlewoman Mary Linwood, whose gallery was a major tourist attraction; miniaturist Sarah Biffin, who painted with her mouth, having been born without arms and legs; and Augusta Withers, a botanical illustrator employed by the Horticultural Society.

The Victorian period saw a vast expansion in public exhibition venues. Now You See Us showcases major works by critically appraised artists of this period, including Elizabeth Butler (née Thompson)’s monumental The Roll Call 1874 (Butler’s work prompted critic John Ruskin to retract his statement that “no women could paint”), and nudes by Henrietta Rae and Annie Swynnerton, which sparked both debate and celebration. The exhibition will also look at women’s connection to activism, including Florence Claxton’s satirical ‘Woman’s Work’: A Medley 1861, which will be on public display for the first time since it was painted; and an exploration of the life of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, an early member of the Society of Female Artists who is credited with the campaign for women to be admitted to the Royal Academy Schools. On show will be the student work of women finally admitted to art schools, as well as their petitions for equal access to life drawing classes.

The exhibition ends in the early 20th century with women’s suffrage and the First World War. Women artists like Gwen John, Vanessa Bell and Helen Saunders played an important role in the emergence of modernism, abstraction and vorticism, but others, such as Anna Airy, who also worked as a war artist, continued to excel in conventional traditions. The final artists in the show, Laura Knight and Ethel Walker, offer powerful examples of ambitious, independent, confident professionals who achieved critical acclaim and—finally—membership of the Royal Academy.

The exhibition guide is available here»

Tabitha Barber, Tim Batchelor, Carol Jacobi, eds., Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920 (London: Tate Publishing, 2024), 224 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1849769259, £40.

Conference | The First Public Museums, 18th–19th Centuries

From ArtHist.net:

Publics of the First Public Museums: II. Literary Discourses, 18th–19th Centuries
Durham University, 23–24 May 2024

Organized by Carla Mazzarelli and Stefano Cracolici

The workshop Publics of the First Public Museums (18th and 19th Centuries), II. Literary Discourses is an integral part of the research project Visibility Reclaimed: Experiencing Rome’s First Public Museums (1733–1870), An Analysis of Public Audiences in a Transnational Perspective (SNSF 100016_212922). The second of three encounters, this workshop delves into the examination of literary discourses vital to understanding the experiences of early museum-goers. Travel literature has long represented a privileged source for investigating the origins of the first public museums and the practices of access to public and private collections in Europe. However, in the light of recent studies aimed at deepening the material history of the museum and the encounter of the public with the institutions, these sources deserve a closer scrutiny in both methodological and critical terms. Following the inaugural Rome session that focused on institutional sources, the Durham workshop turns its gaze towards the rich literary narratives with the aim of analysing them also in a comparative perspective with the primary sources. As museums sought to define and engage their public, literature often became both a mirror and a mould, reflecting and shaping societal perceptions. With a spotlight on interdisciplinary and transnational approaches, the Durham workshop calls for a deeper probe into the visual and material realms of museums, emphasizing the interplay between literary discourses and artworks, collections, display, space, audiences ‘narrated’ in the museum and the evolving institutional norms of the 18th and 19th centuries. Information and streaming on request: visibilityreclaimed@gmail.com.

Principal investigator
Carla Mazzarelli, Università della Svizzera italiana, Accademia di architettura di Mendrisio, Istituto di storia e teoria dell’arte e dell’architettura

Project Partners
Giovanna Capitelli, Università Roma Tre
Stefano Cracolici, Durham University
David García Cueto, Museo del Prado
Christoph Frank Università della Svizzera Italiana
Daniela Mondini, Università della Svizzera Italiana
Chiara Piva, Sapienza Università di Roma

Organising Secretary
Gaetano Cascino (Università della Svizzera italiana)
Lucia Rossi (Università della Svizzera italiana)

t h u r s d a y ,  2 3  ma y

9.00  Welcome by Ita MacCarthy (Durham University, Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Director)

9.15  1 | Methodological Reflections
This session serves as an introduction to the workshop, providing a shared reflection on the current state of research and the future prospects. It will focus on the comparative, interdisciplinary, and intermedial analysis of literatures within the field of museum studies.
Chair: Christoph Frank (Università della Svizzera italiana)
• Carla Mazzarelli (Università della Svizzera italiana) — Letterature e pubblici del Museo: fonti o modelli?
• Stefano Cracolici (Durham University) — Musei d’Arcadia
• Marco Maggi (Università della Svizzera italiana) — ‘Tutta l’arte del buon governo trastullando imparare in un passeggio’: A Literary Rearrangement of the Duke of Savoy’s Great Gallery

11.15  2 | Museums at Hand
This session will analyse literary genres for museum visitors, like guidebooks, and the role of periodicals in broadening museum audience engagement. Discussions will cover the evolution of these texts and new reading approaches introduced by Digital Humanities.
Chair: Giovanna Capitelli (Università Roma Tre)
• Damiano Delle Fave (Sapienza Università di Roma) — Pubblici dei musei a Roma nelle guide dell’Ottocento
• Gaetano Cascino (Università della Svizzera italiana) — ‘I Romani non frequentano le gallerie di Roma’: discussioni e stereotipi sui visitatori dei musei di Roma nella stampa di secondo Ottocento
• Pietro Costantini (Università di Teramo) — Viaggio in Abruzzo: Vincenzo Bindi e I Monumenti storici ed artistici degli Abruzzi

12.30  Keynote Address
• Carole Paul (University of California, Santa Barbara) — The Museum Going Public in 18th-Century Italy

13.15  Lunch Break

14.15  3 | Museums on the Beaten Track
This session focuses on museum experiences in travel literature, including correspondence, diaries, and travel accounts. Discussions will specifically examine the unique perspectives of visitor-narrators and how published literary accounts of museum visits compare or contrast with unpublished sources.
Chair: Mauro Vincenzo Fontana (Università Roma Tre)
• Rosa Maria Giusto (Napoli, CNR) — La ‘città-museo’ e i resoconti dei viaggiatori: le Notizie di Roma scritte dal Sig.re Aless.o Galilei
• Luca Piccoli (Università della Svizzera italiana) — Reise nach Italien dell’architetto Simon-Louis Du Ry: resoconti pubblici e privati sui musei in Italia a confronto
• Ludovica Scalzo (Università Roma Tre) — ‘The torch, like Promethean fire, makes every statue live’: visite a lume di fiaccola nei musei romani dai resoconti di viaggio della prima metà dell’Ottocento

15.30  Coffee Break

15.45  4 | Varieties of Sightseeing
This session explores the variety of visiting spaces, perspectives, and geographies in the 18th and 19th centuries, including museums, monuments, private palaces, and studios. Discussions will focus on what these diverse viewpoints reveal about sociocultural dynamics.
Chair: David García Cueto (Museo Nacional del Prado)
• Daniel Crespo-Delgado (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) — Los monumentos y las colecciones de arte en la literatura de viajes española (y por España) de la Ilustración
• Victoria Arzhaeva (EPHE-PSL, laboratoire Histara) — Les pensionnaires russes au Vatican: l’expérience muséale à travers la correspondence artistique et les journaux intimes du XIXe siècle
• Michele Amedei (Università di Pisa) — ‘The Studio was a monument of his intelligent taste and æsthetic
culture’: l’atelier dell’artista nei resoconti e diari di viaggio di visitatori nordamericani nella Toscana dell’Ottocento

17.00  Keynote Address
Christoph Frank (Università della Svizzera italiana) — In the Shadow of the Americas: The Humboldts and Schinkel in the Rome of the Early 1800s

f r i d a y ,  2 4  m a y

9.00  5 | Literary Landscapes
This session aims to reflect on how literature provides a multifaceted view of the museum experience, extending the analysis to landscape traversal. It will consider the poetic charm of narrative evocations that capture the emotions of a setting and the ekphrastic descriptions that articulate artworks in written words.
Chair: Ita MacCarthy (Durham University)
• Cecilia Paolini (Università di Teramo) — Il Controcanto di Clio: George Sand e l’inascoltata interpretazione del paesaggio italiano tra spazio barocco e romanticismo progressista
• Elizaveta Antashyan (Sapienza Università di Roma) — ‘A Walk through the Hermitage’: Russia’s First Public Museum and Its Reflections in Literature during the Reign of Alexander II (1855–1881)

10.00  6 | Museum Tales
This session is dedicated to literary texts that transform museum visits into narratives. It explores how notions of time and space during such visits compare with the temporal dynamics of literary narration and how the perception of the visited places differs from travel accounts.
Chair: Sara Garau (Università della Svizzera italiana)
• Lucia Rossi (Università della Svizzera italiana) — Il ‘Museo di Roma’ tra esperienza, ricordo e costruzione narrativa: I Miei Ricordi e le Lettere di Massimo d’Azeglio
• Meghan Freeman (Yale University) — The Intimacies of Art Travel in Henry James
• Corinne Pontillo (Università di Catania) — ‘S’arrestò davanti alla Gioconda’: visitare il Museo del Louvre attraverso la letteratura

11.15  Coffee Break

11.30  7 | Sensory Visits
This session explores how the concept of the museum as a space to ‘read’ differs from its traditional perception as a space to ‘visit’. It will examine, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the implications of this distinction in literary and museological discourses, with a special focus on the sensory dimension of navigating through texts and the museum.
Chair: Marco Maggi (Università della Svizzera italiana)
• Isabelle Pichet (UQTR, Trois Rivières) and Dorit Kluge (VICTORIA | International University, Berlin) — Experiencing 18th-Century Art Exhibitions in Paris and Dresden: A Sensory Interplay between Exhibition and Text
• Sofia Bollini (Università Luigi Vanvitelli, Napoli / Università della Svizzera Italiana) — Il preparato anatomico come oggetto museale e letterario nella cultura tardottocentesca
• Laura Stefanescu (Villa I Tatti, Harvard University) — Vernon Lee’s Gallery Diaries: An Aesthetic Bodily Experience of Italian Museums in the Early 20th Century

12.30  Discussion and Conclusion

 

Exhibition | Fanciful Figures

Soane office hand, RA Lecture Drawing of the Portico of Holkham Hall, Norfolk, 1806–19
(London: Sir John Soane’s Museum 17/1/20)Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Museum)

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

Now on view at Sir John Soane’s Museum:

Fanciful Figures
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, 22 March — 9 June 2024

Fanciful Figures turns visitors’ attention to ‘staffage’, the small human and animal figures in architectural drawings, which became increasingly popular during the eighteenth century. Drawing on the drafting practices of past and present, the exhibition illustrates staffage’s ability to animate architects’ visions, both for built projects and unrealised designs.

The Georgians placed these figures—whether beautifully dressed, sociable, or industrious—into their drawings to animate, add intrigue, and enhance the aspirational appeal of their designs. They also played, and continue to play, an important role in indicating the scale and function of architectural elements and drawing attention to the special features of designs. Just as architects today use staffage to help prospective buyers imagine a life in and around new developments, these historic scenes were created to market new possibilities to audiences. They have, therefore, taken on a new significance as a means of signalling shifts in style, demographics, work, and culture. Between the city traders and happy families, street-side boxing matches and children riding in dog-carts, the figures celebrated in this exhibition help piece together a vibrant picture.

The exhibition draws largely from the Museum’s own collection, including a very early instance of staffage by figure artist Leonard Knyff from 1695. This is shown alongside works by Soane’s favourite draughtsman Joseph Gandy and a series of never-before-seen prints by Benedict Van Assen, both pioneers in this practice.

A specially commissioned film, on display in the Museum’s Foyle Space, explores the representation of figures and communities in contemporary architectural drawing, illustrating the roles that these figures play in reflecting the values, priorities, and aspirations of architects and their projects. The film discusses this subject with four prominent architectural practices: Nimtim, Muf, Office S&M, and OMMX. At the cutting edge of their field, these architects question who is represented in architectural designs and what the impact of this representation of our shared spaces has on how we live.

 

Call for Articles | Fall 2025 Issue of J18: Clean

From the Call for Papers:

Journal18, Issue #20 (Fall 2025) — Clean
Issue edited by Maarten Delbeke, Noémie Etienne, and Nikos Magouliotis

Proposals due by 1 October 2024; finished articles will be due by 1 April 2025

This issue of Journal18 asks: what we might see if we regard the eighteenth century as possessed by a cleaning frenzy? Cleaning, as a process of removing excess matter to get to the essential or the original, engaged an eighteenth-century obsession with origins and etiology. This type of removal took place in a time of formulations and nebulous debates about race, class, and ethnicity and intersected with attempts to ‘purify’ the urban and rural environment as well as society itself. Cleanliness suggested a particular aesthetic that resonated with the tenets of neoclassicism but also with racialized notions of whiteness, as the opposite of ‘impure’, non-white races, cultures, and objects. In the increasingly disenchanted worldview of elites, cleaning artworks was also a way to annihilate any living presence connected to these objects, from bugs and microorganisms to ancestral spirits to immanent beliefs.

In eighteenth-century Europe, political, cultural, and religious authorities sought to clean artworks and monuments from anything that ‘soiled’ them, whether that was actual dirt, natural traces of use and time, or (hu)man-made ephemera, immaterial rituals, and ideological beliefs. These actions were symptoms of a power struggle between religious institutions and the state and between different cultures and countries, but also between local populations and an increasingly centralized administration. Even when presented as neutral measures of maintenance, such acts of cleaning often led to conflict. This was the case, for example, in late eighteenth-century Naples, when the German painter Jacob Philip Hackert was accused by local artists of disrespecting a number of Italian paintings he had cleaned. What for one cultural milieu diminished artistic value could be, for another, an integral part of the artwork.

This issue of Journal18 invites essays on acts of and discourses around cleaning in the long eighteenth century, particularly cases that address issues of authority and ownership. Who was entitled to touch, handle, modify, or clean an artwork, relic, building, or monument? What/who was allowed to reside within such buildings and objects, and what/who had to be erased or exterminated? What was the significance of defining the ‘pure’ or ‘original’ state of such artworks? What line of separation did actors draw between cleaning and destruction? Was cleaning gendered, and, if so, how? Who was expected to do the cleaning, and who was allowed to produce dirt? What are the connections between racialized ideologies that led to the devastations of ethnic cleansing and eighteenth-century aesthetics of cleaning and cleanliness? Is there a way to contrast the ‘messiness’ of the early modern multi-modal ‘entangled’ historiography with the streamlined ‘cleanliness’ of eighteenth-century historical writing?

Proposals for issue #20 Clean are now being accepted. The deadline for proposals is 1 October 2024. To submit a proposal, please send an abstract (250 words) and brief biography to editor@journal18.org and nikolaos.magouliotis@gta.arch.ethz.ch. Articles should not exceed 6000 words (including footnotes) and will be due by 1 April 2025. For further details on submission and Journal18 house style, see Information for Authors.

Issue Editors
• Maarten Delbeke, ETH, Zurich
• Noémie Etienne, University of Vienna
• Nikos Magouliotis, ETH, Zurich

Call for Papers | The Secularization of Religious Assets

From the Call for Papers, which includes the French Appel à communication:

The Secularization of Religious Assets in Enlightenment Europe: Urban Development, Architecture, and Art Works
La sécularisation des établissements religieux dans l’Europe des lumières: Ville, architecture et œuvres d’art
Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, 27 November 2024

Organized by Ronan Bouttier, Gernot Mayer, and Raluca Muresan

Proposals due by 30 June 2024

The suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773 marks the last step of the Order’s progressive dissolution initiated fifteen years earlier, in Europe and in its colonies. This act of suppression was the culmination of a broader secularisation movement concerning religious congregations across Europe, from the 1760s to the French Revolution. In most cases, the State intended to take over the management of properties belonging to religious congregations described as useless for the common interest. Whether driven by reformatory or by economic interests, all acts of suppression and secularisation had the same consequences: a large number of movable assets and real property, estates and art works were either reallocated to other religious congregations or put on sale, when not confiscated altogether.

Several studies have already investigated the dispersal of abolished congregations’ assets in different parts of Enlightened Europe, but a broader overview is yet to be drawn. Furthermore, it is necessary to define common characteristics of confiscation procedures and real properties’ functional transformations during the three decades before the nationalisation of Church property undertaken in France in 1789. Besides, change of religious buildings’ ownership often led to their reconversion, and eventually to their architectural transformation. Rehabilitation, dispersal or destruction procedures of seized properties also must be taken into consideration. It is also important to broaden this inquiry to the transformation of the surroundings of these former religious properties because this process precipitated changes in the overall urban fabric as well as in the appropriation of urban space. Eventually, these changes of ownership involved movable assets and art works of the dissolved religious congregations. In this regard, one need also pay attention to works’ functional alterations, as they were attributed to other religious communities or to secular institutions and individuals. Therefore, our inquiry extends to the consequences of the largescale sales of art works on the collecting market.

We welcome proposals on following themes:
• Issues and procedures of architectural property confiscation in Europe and in its overseas territories
• Inhabiting and exploiting seized religious properties
• Dismantling seized properties and movable assets: procedures of architectural dismantling, networks and procedures of sale

Each paper should be 20 minutes long; the accepted languages are French and English. The conference will take place on 27th November in Paris, at the INHA (Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art). We look forward to reading your submissions of a maximum of 250 words, along with a CV and publications list. We require the contributors to send their submissions to secularisations@gmx.fr, and to entitle their submitted files as following: NAME_FORNAME_prop secularisations and NAME_FORNAME_CV. The submission deadline is 30 June 2024.

Organizers
• Ronan Bouttier, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
• Gernot Mayer, University of Vienna
• Raluca Muresan, Sorbonne Université

Scientific Committee
• Jean-Philippe Garric, Professor, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, HiCSA
• Richard Kurdiovsky, Interim Director of the Department of Art History, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna
• Olga Medvedkova, Director of Research, CNRS, Centre André Chastel
• Émilie d’Orgeix, Director of Research, École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE)

Exhibition | Emulating Books

Now on view at The Met:

Emulating Books: Book Objects from the Lynn and Bruce Heckman Gift
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 18 April — 16 July 2024

Box with Tulip and Hearts Motif in Book Form, 1714, carved wood (possibly European walnut), 9 × 7 × 3 cm (NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Lynn and Bruce Heckman, N7433.3 .B69 1714).

Creating objects in book form has been an artistic practice for a millennium. These personal, inventive objects are ubiquitous in many cultures. They have been made for various purposes by people from all walks of life and skill levels. Whether precious or plain, useful or symbolic, they all benefit from their connection to the book. For example, the book-style relic of the ship Eurydice, which sank in 1878, killing over 300 sailors, was carved from a piece of the ship, and serves as an emblem documenting the history of the event, as well as a memorial book honoring the dead.

An object made in the form of a book translates the meaning of the type of book it emulates, therefore imbuing the object with the emotional, material, or spiritual values of the original or imagined book. These objects can express feelings of love, enlightenment, humor and faith, and sometimes the mere experience of holding a book object, as with a treasured tome, can comfort its owner, as in the case of the solid wood Holy Bible which will never open, but comforts just the same. As a result of the book’s power, traditions of making specific types of book objects, such as book safes and game boards, have evolved and flourished. Examples of these traditions, made during the eighteenth to twentieth centuries can be seen in this exhibition.

The Heckman collection is a gift to the Thomas J. Watson Library from Lynn Geringer Heckman, who began collecting objects in book form with her late husband Bruce Heckman in 1989, eventually amassing over 1,000 works. The Watson gift is a select group chosen from the larger collection. The objects on display will be available for consultation in our Reading Room at the conclusion of the exhibition.

Call for Papers | Discovering Dalmatia X

From the Institute of Art History – The Cvito Fisković Centre in Split:

Discovering Dalmatia X: Travel Narratives and the Fashioning of a Dalmatian Artistic Heritage in Modern Europe, c. 1675–1941
Online and in-person, Split City Museum – Old City Hall, 12–14 December 2024

Proposals due by 15 July 2024

Travel narratives encompass travel experiences presented in books, illustrated books, magazines, personal or official reports, diaries, letters, drawings, paintings, prints, and photographs. These are among the most frequently used sources in history, literature, art history, anthropology, and a range of other disciplines. But, due to their diversity and complexity as texts, travel narratives have tended to elude definition or easy categorisation across the spectrum of disciplines that draw on travel as valuable primary source materials.

Travelogues about Dalmatia, both visual and textual, have played a considerable role in the construction of its European identity, grounded in a curiosity about the region’s unique artistic heritage. The reasons for this lie with Dalmatia’s geographical position on the border between East and West, between the Christian and Islamic cultural worlds—the long history of which is richly recorded in the art and cultural expression of the region. The dichotomy of ‘East’ and ‘West’ in Dalmatia has meant a hybridisation of cultural, artistic, and geographical borders, all of which have made Dalmatia a particularly attractive destination for study trips from the early modern period.

The key period for the diffusion of travelogues about Dalmatia in Europe began in the late seventeenth century, and lasted until the mid-twentieth century. This era saw extraordinary popularisation and internationalisation of the travel genre in Europe, prior to the rise of organised tourism. This was likewise a crucial period for modern art history, during which processes of disciplinary transition and modernisation took place, both in Dalmatia and throughout the continent of Europe as a whole. Dalmatia was ‘exotic’ and yet simultaneously accessible to the classically-oriented Western European cultural imaginary.

With this conference, we aim to bring together historical and theoretical research on the travel genre as experiences transformed into textual and visual forms (irrespective of the geographical area), with a re-evaluation of the role of travel narratives in shaping the cultural identity of Dalmatia.

We, therefore, pose, two key questions:
• What does ‘travel narrative’ encompass?
• How did travelogues influence perceptions of Dalmatia’s artistic heritage in modern Europe?

Historians and theorists of art, architecture, urbanism, literature, anthropology, ethnology, and those engaged with travel narratives, are warmly invited to participate in scholarly presentations and discussion at the conference. We hope to contribute, on the one hand, to fostering an understanding of travel as an autonomous multidisciplinary and multimedia practice, and, on the other, to understanding the formation of perceptions of Dalmatia in the European imaginary. We are looking forward to considering a wide range of travel narratives for the conference—varying in genre characteristics, recording media, authors’ origins, and travel motives.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers. Proposals consisting of a 250-word abstract and a short CV in Croatian or English should be sent via email as a PDF attachment to discoveringdalmatia@gmail.com by 15 July 2024.

We plan to enable participation at the conference both in person in Split and via online platforms to facilitate international involvement. Registration will take place on the evening of the 11th of December, the closing address will take place on the 14th of December, and the hosts will organise coffee and refreshments for the conference participants during breaks. No participation fee will be charged for this conference. The organisers do not cover travel and accommodation costs. The organisers can help participants to find reasonably-priced accommodation in the historical city centre. Papers and discussion will be conducted in English. The duration of a spoken contribution should not exceed 20 minutes. Presentations will be followed by discussions. We propose to publish a collection of selected papers from the conference.

The conference is organized as part of the Croatian Science Foundation project Travelogues Dalmatia IP-2022-10-8676.

Scientific Committee
Basile Baudez (Princeton University, Department of Art and Archaeology)
Joško Belamarić (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Mateo Bratanić (University of Zadar, Department of History)
Iain Gordon Brown (Honorary Fellow, National Library of Scotland)
Hrvoje Gržina (Croatian State Archives)
Katrina O’Loughlin (Brunel University London)
Cvijeta Pavlović (University of Zagreb, Department of Comparative Literature)
Frances Sands (Sir John Soane’s Museum)
Marko Špikić (University of Zagreb, Department of Art History)
Ana Šverko (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Elke Katharina Wittich (Leibniz Universität Hannover)

Organizing Committee
Joško Belamarić (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Tomislav Bosnić (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Mateo Bratanić (University of Zadar, Department of History)
Ana Ćurić (Institute of Art History)
Matko Matija Marušić (Institute of Art History)
Katrina O’Loughlin (Brunel University London)
Cvijeta Pavlović (University of Zagreb, Department of Comparative Literature)
Ana Šverko (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)

New Publication | Close Encounters: The Low Countries and Britain

As noted at Art History News, the following essays are all available for free through the RKD’s website:

Karen Hearn, Angela Jager, Sander Karst, Rieke van Leeuwen, David Taylor, and Joanna Woodall, eds., Close Encounters: Cross-Cultural Exchange between the Low Countries and Britain, 1600–1830 (The Hague, Gerson Digital X, 2024, produced by Rieke van Leeuwen). Proceedings of the International Conference Held at the RKD, The Hague, 22–23 September 2022

Samuel van Hoogstraten, Perspective Portrait of a Young Man Reading in the Courtyard of an Imaginary Building, 1662–67 (Dordrecht: Dordrechts Museum, inv./cat.nr. DM/023/1525).

1  Refugees and Fortune Seekers: Artists from the Low Countries in Britain, An Overview in Numbers — Rieke van Leeuwen
2  Nicholas Stone the Elder (c. 1587–1647) and his Circle — Adam White
3  Between Two Courts: Gerard van Honthorst and Stuart Patrons in London and The Hague — Michele Frederick
4  Fire and Plague: Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Career in England — John Loughman
5  The Van de Velde Studio at the Queen’s House — Allison Goudie and Imogen Tedbury
6  Dutch Terminology in Artists’ Workshops in London — Ulrike Kern
7  Leatherwork and Kwab Frames: 17th-Century Auricular Picture Frames and their Anglo-Dutch Context — Gerry Alabone
8  Copying the Cartouche: Anglo-Dutch Encounters in Cartography and Slavery — Eleanor Stephenson
9  John van Collema: A Dutch India Goods Merchant in London — Amy Lim
10  The Print Collection of William Cartwright (1606–1686): A Reconstruction — Ellinoor Bergvelt
11  Thomas Worlidge’s Claim to Fame: An Approach to Rembrandt’s Printed Tronies in 18th-Century England — Rebecca Welkens
12  The Griffier Family of Painters and the Young Thomas Gainsborough — Rica Jones
13  Willem van de Velde’s Fame in 18th-Century England — Remmelt Daalder
14  In the Wake of the Old Masters: Dutch Modern Artists in Britain, 1780–1830 — Quirine van der Meer Mohr

Funding News | Mellon Centre Publication and Digitisation Grants

The Mellon Centre recently announced changes to its publication grants and the introduction of digitization grants:

Paul Mellon Centre Funding: Publication and Digitisation Grants
Applications accepted 5 August — 30 September 2024

Ahead of the opening of the autumn 2024 round of funding opportunities we have made some alterations to simplify and improve our Publication Grants. Our Publication Grants continue to be one of our most heavily subscribed awards, and in 2023 received over ninety applications. Therefore we have decided to streamline the process; instead of having the single Publication Grant, for which authors and publishers could apply separately or together, from autumn 2024 there will be three distinct grant categories:

Author Grants (Large)

Awards of up to £6,000 which can only be applied for by authors, editors or individuals working on a long-form piece of written work (e.g. monograph, catalogue etc.). This award is designed to support costs incurred by the author relating to the publication, such as image purchasing and copyright, commissioning of new photography or graphics, marketing/publicity costs and supporting publisher subventions.

Author Grants (Small)

Awards of up to £1,000 which can only be applied for by individuals working on a short-form piece of written work (e.g. article, chapter etc.) for a scholarly journal or edited volume. This award is primarily designed to support costs incurred by the individual for images use associated with their piece of writing (e.g. copyright costs, image purchasing, commissioning of new photography or graphics).

Exhibition Publication Grants

Awards of up to £6,000 which can only be applied for by organisations, institutions or publishers working on a publication associated with an exhibition on British art or architectural history. The publication could be due to be published to coincide with the exhibition or as a direct result of an exhibition. This award is primarily designed to support the practical costs incurred by the organisation, institution or publisher when publishing the work (e.g. printing, binding, image rights, commissioning new photography or images, indexing, copy-editing, production costs, marketing and publicity etc.). If a publisher is interested in applying for a grant for a publication not relating to an exhibition we would encourage them to speak to the author or editor so they can apply for an Author Grant (Large).

Applications will open on 5 August and close 30 September. Please do contact the Grants & Fellowships Manager if you have any questions relating to these changes. Multiple applications across these schemes, for the same publication, will not be accepted. If an applicant is interested in digitising a publication then we would encourage them to look at our new Digitisation Grant which is due to be introduced in autumn 2024.

Supporting the field of British art history publishing has been an important strand of grantmaking for Paul Mellon Centre since its inception in 1970. These changes to the structure of the publications grants will not impact on the overall amount awarded to publication annually, and we will endeavour to support as many projects as possible.

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Digitisation Grants

The Mellon Centre is pleased to be able to introduce Digitisation Grants, a new funding opportunity that will be offered for the first time in our autumn 2024 round. Our Digital Project Grant was introduced in 2015 and since then has supported a variety of fascinating and innovative digital projects; however, since its inception we have noticed that many applicants are looking for funding to support more straightforward digitisation projects, and we hope this new grant will help.

The Digitisation Grant is an award of up to £5,000 and is specifically designed to help organisations make materials from their collections freely available for users online via digital methods. The grant may be used towards the practical costs of in-house digitisation (e.g. equipment and software), hiring an external digitisation service and personnel costs for cataloguing or research purposes.

Materials to be digitised could include:
• photographic collections
• archival collections of letters, index cards, notes etc.
• bound volumes (e.g. diaries, magazines, newspapers, albums, sketchbooks, published books etc.)
• objects, paintings or assets
• publications

Please note that organisations can only apply for this award to digitise items in their own collections.

We hope this grant will help to make materials concerning British art and architectural history available to a wider audience and continue Paul Mellon Centre’s mission to champion new ways of understanding British art history and culture.