Empire Builder: Christian Lilly in the Atlantic World 1688-1738

Research Lunch at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Friday  March 1st, 12.30-2.00PM

Emily Mann of the Courtauld Institute of Art will be giving a paper entitled ‘Empire Builder: Christian Lilly in the Atlantic World 1688-1738’.

The spring programme of events at the Paul Mellon Centre includes a series of five research lunches, geared to doctoral students and junior scholars working on the history of British art and architecture. These research lunches, which will normally take place on alternate Fridays, are intended to be informal events in which individual doctoral students and scholars will talk for half-an-hour about their projects, and engage in animated discussion with their peers. A sandwich lunch will be provided by the Centre on these occasions. The hope is that this series, to be maintained in the summer and autumn, will help foster a sense of community amongst PhD students and junior colleagues working in the field, and bring researchers from a wide range of institutions together in a collegial and friendly atmosphere.

Workshop: Art & Death 2 – Death and Dying

10.00 – 12.30, Thursday 21 February

Research Forum South Room, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

This is the second of a series of three workshops being held at The Courtauld Institute of Art in 2012-2013 to explore the inter-relationship between art and death. These workshops have arisen from an informal group of doctoral students with shared interests in funerary monuments. This second workshop, again with diversity in region and period, will focus on the images and objects related to the nature and meaning of death. It will be accompanied by an exhibition by Rachael Allen of miniature models replicating objects from sites of death.

Seminar – ‘Colour as Lure and as Provocation: William Morris’s tapestry, The Woodpecker’

Paul Mellon Centre, Wednesday 6th February 5.30-8pm

Caroline Arscott (Courtauld Institute of Art) ‘Colour as Lure and as Provocation: William Morris’s tapestry, The Woodpecker’. These research seminars are intended to showcase original and stimulating research in all areas of British art and architectural history. They will take the form of hour-long talks, followed by questions and drinks, and are geared to scholars, curators, conservators, art-trade professionals and research students working on the history of British art. We are pleased to announce that the papers given in this first series of research seminars will be delivered by members of The Paul Mellon Centre’s Advisory Council. 

Research Seminar Tomorrow – ‘Architectural Husbandry: ‘Rough Materialls’ and Tough Clients in Eighteenth-Century Britain’

Paul Mellon Centre, London: Wednesday 23rd January 5.30-8pm

Christine Stevenson (Courtauld Institute of Art) ‘Architectural Husbandry: ‘Rough Materialls’ and Tough Clients in Eighteenth-Century Britain’

The second in a seasonal series of five, fortnightly research seminars will be given by distinguished historians of British art and architecture. These research seminars, which take place on Wednesday evenings, are intended to showcase original and stimulating research in all areas of British art and architectural history. They will take the form of hour-long talks, followed by questions and drinks, and are geared to scholars, curators, conservators, art-trade professionals and research students working on the history of British art. The papers given in this first series of research seminars will be delivered by members of The Paul Mellon Centre’s Advisory Council. 

Peter Lely at the Courtauld

This autumn two exhibitions at the Courtauld Gallery explore Peter Lely’s role as painter, draughtsman, and collector in early modern England. The first, which opened on 24th September is Peter Lely: the draughtsman and his collection. In addition to achieving renown as a painter Lely amassed one of England’s first great collections of drawing and this display presents a selection of drawings from the painter’s collection. Alongside his collected works, a selection of Lely’s own drawings also make up the display. Primarily hand and drapery studies, these delicate sketches provide a glimpse into Lely’s practice as a portraitist. A special highlight is his Two heralds in ceremonial dress, a beautiful and highly detailed costume study of figures in a procession of the Order of the Garter. Taken together, these drawings reveal a more private side of Lely, as worthy of exploration as his sparkling paintings.

Call for Papers: Beyond the Western Mediterranean – Trade and Exchange of Materials, Techniques and Artistic Production, 650–1500

Conference 20 April 2013 at The Courtauld Institute of Art; Call for Papers deadline: 3rd September 2012

The notion of a shared Mediterranean culture has become a central tenet in the study of medieval art history (see also the Mediterranean Mobilities website). Growing out of the Roman mare nostrum, the Mediterranean as a conduit of communication, dissemination, and transmission throughout the Middle Ages is shaping the scope of our discipline. Yet the investigation into the Mediterranean remains unbalanced, and while the northern and eastern edges of the basin are well investigated, historiographical and political considerations have limited the study of the sea’s southern shores, not to mention the exchanges across that other sea – the sea of sand – that lies beyond those territories’ southern borders.

Call for Papers:Art and Its Afterlives

Fourth Early Modern Symposium: The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 17 November 2012. Proposals due by 1 July 2012

Art and Its Afterlives aims to address the ways in which the work of art continues to resonate after its creation. While much art history takes as its focus the initial facture of the work of art, this one-day symposium explores what happens to early modern art after the moment of its making. How did early modern works continue to be created in their display, preservation, and reception from the moment of their creation on? Papers will examine how art is shaped by its afterlives – whether these collect, curate, cut up, cut out, copy or correct it – and the ways in which art both persists and changes through time as a material object, a field of generative meaning, and a subject of debate and interpretation. Material, technical and social histories as well as theoretical approaches drawn from the discipline of art history and other fields of the humanities are welcome. Accounts from curatorial practice and the field of museology are also encouraged.

Call for Papers: Moving in Three Dimensions @ Courtauld Institute of Art

Final Call for Papers: Re-Writing the Objects and Histories of Sculpture – A Conference on Sculpture and Change at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, Friday 11 and Saturday 12 May 2012; Call for Papers Deadline 23 March 2012

Papers are invited for the conference Moving in Three Dimensions: Re-writing the Objects and Histories of Sculpture, the concluding event of the Courtauld Institute of Art’s Research Forum project on sculpture and change, Three Approaches to Three Dimensions. Although it provides an opportunity to explore some of the issues raised by the preceding workshops, participation in the earlier stages of the project is not necessary in order to present a paper at the conference. The Conference will be structured around three themes, addressing some of the motivations for changes to sculpture and its contexts, their outcomes and the new approaches to writing their histories which they call for. Contributions are sought from those who pursue the art-historical investigation of sculpture, those concerned with its curation and display and those responsible for its conservation and technical examination. Each session will be thematically focused, without bias to either period or discipline, drawing on a wide range of methodologies and expertise.

Conference: Mondrian, Nicholson and 20th Century Abstraction

Saturday, 3 March 2012, 9.30 – 18.00 , Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN (with registration from 09.00)

In 1936 Alfred H. Barr Jr’s history-making-and-shaping survey Cubism and Abstract Art put Piet Mondrian and Ben Nicholson together as the older and younger leaders of ‘geometrical abstraction’ in the Western World. It also announced that ‘geometrical abstraction’ was in decline, a judgement Mondrian immediately dismissed. For him, writing to Nicholson, ‘geom. abstr.’ was always in the ascendant.

This conference will respond to the stimulus offered by the exhibition Mondrian/Nicholson: In Parallel, to explore the issues raised by the kind of non-figurative art for which Mondrian and Nicholson stood in the 1930s and after. What was specific to this kind of art both in the particular achievements of these two artists and more generally? How could it assert its importance in the 1930s, and what could it mean in a decade in which Utopian optimism met anxiety and fear in the descent towards war? Was there, despite Barr’s judgement, a future for what he dubbed ‘geometrical abstraction’, even beyond Mondrian’s death in 1944 and beyond the Second World War?

Symposium: Showcasing New Research at the Courtauld Institute of Art

Thursday 8th March 10.00-18.00 and Friday 9th March 13.00-18.00, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London

The 2012 Courtauld Postgraduate Symposium will bring together third year research students working on art across a range of periods, themes and media. From Moscow to Mexico and from cathedrals to artists’ collectives, the symposium will provide a platform for the diverse work carried out by the Courtauld’s doctoral researchers. Papers will be organised into thematic, cross-period sessions, creating opportunities for exchange and dialogue between these emerging scholars. Speaker(s) include Jocelyn Anderson, Tom Balfe, Julia Bischoff, Elizaveta Butakova, Mary Camp, Rodrigo Canete, Glyn Davies, Amanda Delorey, Amanda Dotseth, Katie Faulkner, Jacopo Galimberti, Susan Green, Roo Gunzi, Jack Hartnell, Sara Knelman, Emma Luker, Lesley Milner, Geoffrey Nuttall, Lois Oliver, Anita Sganzerla, Miranda Stern, Pei-Kuei Tsai Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission. The conference is organised by: the Research Forum Postgraduate Advisory Group and PhD students. The full programme can be downloaded here.