The latest issue of British Art Studies (an open access, online Art History journal published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art), is entirely devoted to Medieval Britain. The content is derived from a conference held at the British Museum in 2014: Invention and Imagination in British Art & Architecture, 600-1500.
It opens with an editorial by guest editors Sandy Heslop and Jessica Berenbeim, followed by twelve articles in traditional format:
- Paul Binski, Medieval Invention and its Potencies
- Roger Stanley, Innovation in English Gothic Architecture: risks, impediments and opportunities
- James Hillson, Imagining Invention: the character of the “Gothic architect” and England, 1200–1400
- Alexandra Buchanan and Nicholas Webb, Creativity in Three Dimensions: an investigation of the presbytery aisles of Wells Cathedral
- Helen Lunnon, Inventio Porticus—Imagining Solomon’s Porches in Late Medieval England
- Laura Slater, Imagining Place and Moralizing Space: Jerusalem at Medieval Westminster
- James Cameron, The Englishness of English Sedilia
- Jessica Barker, Legal Crisis and Artistic Innovation in Thirteenth-Century Scotland
- Veronica Decker, In the Vineyard of the Lord: Art, Imagination, and the Stained Glass Commissions of William of Wykeham in Fourteenth-Century English Colleges
- Lloyd de Beer, The Temple of Justice and the Key of David: Anachronism and Authority in the Chichester Seal Matrix
- Kristen Collins, Resonance and Reuse: The Fifteenth-Century Transformation of a Late Romanesque Vita Christi
- Jack Hartnell, Wording the Wound Man
Thanks to the digital platform, it is possible to reference the articles to the nearest paragraph using the DOI link. The platform’s scope is further tested through the Conversation Piece and Handling Digital Objects portions of this special issue:
- The Conversation Piece: Disciplining the Digital: Virtual 3D Reproduction, Pilgrim Badges, and the Stuff of Art History, for which eleven of scholars have published short responses to 4 waves of a provocation on the theme of 3D digital reproduction of art (using the Digital Pilgrim Project’s 3D models of the British Museum’s pilgrim souvenirs and secular badges as a point of departure).
Another innovative feature is a virtual simulation of the object sessions held at the 2014 conference. In actuality, these took the form of guided sessions with objects in the seminar rooms at the conference venue. In the journal, they are recreated via four interactive 3D models of objects, each accompanied by a short essay:
- Introduction to ‘Handling Digital Objects‘ by British Museum curators Naomi Speakman and Lloyd de Beer.
- Three models and accompanying essays for an ivory staff terminal, medieval badge, morse and pilgrim ampulla by Sandy Heslop, Amy Jeffs and Michael Carter.
