International Study Days (Paris, Musée du Louvre, Centre Dominique-Vivant Denon, 30 June – 1 July 2025; Toulouse, Université de Toulouse, IUT Paul Sabatier, 2–3 October 2025)
The Musée du Louvre, the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, the Université de Toulouse, and the research group Patrimoines en partage are organising two events focusing on the challenges of presenting sculptures from mostly vanished religious buildings in the permanent collections of museums. These events aim to address audiences who may be unfamiliar with such works and who require interpretive keys for a more accurate and enjoyable appreciation of medieval monumental sculpture.
This inquiry stems from the experiences of the Musée des Augustins, which has experimented with various presentations of its medieval collections over time. These collections primarily consist of sculptures from three lost Romanesque cloisters. The museum’s reflections have been enriched by discussions with the OCMI (Ontology of Medieval Christianity in Images) research programme at the INHA, led by Isabelle Marchesin and Mathieu Beaud. The museum’s ongoing renovation project presents an opportunity to share these concerns more widely. In an effort to account for different audiences and foster interdisciplinary perspectives, the event will give significant space to contributions from museology and information and communication sciences.
Key Issues
The exhibition of fragments and detached works of medieval monumental sculpture presents several specific challenges.
- Presentation Out of Context: One of the main issues, which is not unique to sculpture, is how to present an artwork removed from its original setting, where its visibility is altered (in terms of distance, lighting, and spatial or iconographic order). The loss of sacred, liturgical, and communal markers further complicates its interpretation. This problem is exacerbated when the original buildings no longer exist, have been significantly altered, or when fragments are dispersed, come from older archaeological contexts, or have been sold on the art market without clear provenance.
- The Role of Conservation Status and Provenance: Differentiating between preserved, altered, and lost contexts—whether due to vandalism, collecting, art market dynamics, changing tastes, or mere chance—is crucial for understanding these works. When archaeological excavations have taken place, how can a meaningful dialogue be established between archaeology and art history? How can visitors grasp a lost context and the interdisciplinary perspectives required to interpret it? Should the priority be an archaeological or topographical reconstruction, and to what end?
- Fragmentation and Meaning: The condition of the sculptures themselves poses another challenge. A significant proportion of preserved works consist of capitals, historiated or decorated pillars, lintel sections, impost blocks, bases, and plaques. Should these fragments be considered as standalone artworks? What level of intelligibility should they be given?
- Museums as a Lens of Prestige: Museums confer an aura of importance—some works gain status as masterpieces because they are housed in prestigious institutions, being frequently published, loaned, and analysed, while their counterparts that remain in situ receive far less attention. What factors influence this discrepancy, and are there exceptions worth examining?
- Maintaining Links to Original Structures: When multiple pieces come from the same architectural complex, how should their relationship to the original structure be conveyed? Through narratives, plans, drawings, or digital tools? How can a balance be struck between highlighting the individuality of each piece and preserving its connection to a broader whole?
- Mediation Tools: What interpretative tools should be employed, ranging from traditional methods to innovative digital solutions, and for which audiences? Museums allow close scrutiny of sculptures in ways that were not possible in their original settings. How can these new conditions best serve the transmission of technical, stylistic, and iconographic knowledge?
- Tailoring Interpretation to Visitor Diversity: How can responses to these questions be prioritised within a single exhibition space, given visitors’ diverse expectations based on age, socio-professional background, educational level, and interests?
- Medievalism and Popular Perceptions: It is important to consider visitor experiences and desires, incorporating insights from information and communication sciences (ICS) to study the reception of scholarly discourse and mediation strategies. Additionally, how should museums respond to the widespread fascination with a romanticised, fictionalised Middle Ages found in popular culture, from video games to films and television? Can medievalism offer lessons for museum practices?
Translating Academic Discourse for Museum Audiences
How should the scholarly discourse of art history—whether within or outside the museum—be translated into exhibition narratives and mediation strategies? This shift involves moving from the specialised discourse found in academic research (often in theses and niche publications) to more accessible exhibition interpretations and mediation tools.
Information and communication sciences have explored various museological approaches, as outlined by Jean Davallon: object-based museology, idea-based museology, and viewpoint-driven museology. The rise of new museology has placed greater emphasis on audience engagement and community collaboration, encouraging participatory, immersive, and interactive exhibition formats.
Since the 1980s, museums have increasingly embraced communication strategies, leading to an explosion of temporary exhibitions seen as media in their own right (Jean Davallon, Daniel Jacobi). This shift has also spurred the development of numerous mediation tools, some more innovative than others, designed to enhance visitor comprehension (Patrick Fraysse). These changes inevitably influence public expectations for permanent collections.
These current debates have generated significant scholarly discussions, such as the recent call for papers by Géraldine Mallet and Sylvain Demarthe for the online journal exPosition on Displaying Medieval Collections. Our proposal aims to complement this by analysing the specific case of medieval monumental sculpture in museums, with an emphasis on audience inclusion, knowledge democratisation, and the insights provided by information and communication sciences.
Call for Papers
Proposals, which may include theoretical approaches or case studies, should be submitted by 1 March 2025 to sculptures@louvre.fr. Submissions should consist of a 3000-character abstract, accompanied by a biography of the speaker(s) and a short bibliography (maximum five references).
If you are only available for one of the two events (Paris or Toulouse), please indicate this in your submission. Selected papers will be announced in early April, with their allocation to Paris or Toulouse determined based on the proposals and speaker availability.
A publication of the conference proceedings is under consideration.
Organisers
- Musée du Louvre (Sophie Jugie, Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, Department of Sculptures)
- Musée des Augustins, Toulouse (Charlotte Riou)
- Laboratory for Applied Research in Social Sciences, Université de Toulouse (Patrick Fraysse)
- Patrimoines en partage research group, directed by Sylvie Sagnes, supported by the CNRS Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences
- In collaboration with Mathieu Beaud, Associate Professor at the Université de Lille
Provisional Programme
Paris, Musée du Louvre: From Monument to Museum Audience
The first session, held at the Centre de recherche Dominique-Vivant Denon, will explore general exhibition issues and case studies, with contributions from art historians, curators, and museum mediators. Topics include:
- Restitution of original contexts: utility, challenges, and methods
- The role of chronological and period-based classifications
- Technical and administrative constraints of exhibition spaces
- The uniqueness of exhibited works: strength or limitation?
- Materials and techniques: insights into medieval craftsmanship
- Creating networks between disparate works: typological and iconographic possibilities
- The critical apparatus: balancing text and imagery around artworks
- Limits of contextualisation, explanation, and interpretation
- Can we reconstruct medieval emotional responses to these works?
A museum visit in Paris will be included.
Toulouse: Scientific Content – Mediation – Evaluation
The second session will focus on the content and audience reception, examined through interdisciplinary perspectives. Topics include:
- Guiding visitor perception: how to present the whole and the details?
- Engaging visitors as active participants
- The role of style and iconography in interpretation
- Mediation tools and public expectations
- Structuring exhibitions through chronology and periodisation
- Balancing scholarly discourse with accessible mediation
- Evaluating visitor experiences: qualitative data analysis
- Addressing religious contexts and Christian iconography in museums
A visit to the Musée des Augustins collections (depending on renovations) is planned.
Practical Information
Toulouse, Université de Toulouse, IUT Paul Sabatier: 2–3 October 2025
Paris, Musée du Louvre, Centre Dominique-Vivant Denon: 30 June – 1 July 2025
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Hello! Please can you send this over to: medievalartresearch@gmail.com
Dear Roisin Astell,
I would like to suggest for the Medieval Art Research list to share a call for abstract from Ca’ Foscari’s (Venice) art history journal Venezia Arti https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/venezia-arti/, whose thematic strand for 2025 is “Threshold”. I include the complete call here below after my signature.
Many thanks in advance for your kind attention, and please let me know if you need any further information.
Kindest regards, Giulia Puma Associate Professor in Medieval Art History, Université Côte d’Azur, France
Call for papers Venezia Arti 2025, vol. 34
Thematic call: Soglia / Threshold and ALIA ITINERA miscellaneous section
In medieval art, the theme of the threshold, as the passage from one dimension to another, is crucial from a symbolic point of view and involves both spatiality and temporality (T. Bawden, Die Schwelle im Mittelalter, 2014). The definition that Christ gives of himself in the Gospel had great resonance in the realm of the sacred: “I am the door; if anyone enters through me, he will be saved” (Jn 10:9). Hence the high significance that Christianity attributes to the boundary between the human and the transcendent, between sin and salvation. Within the domain of representation, this message is conveyed both on a figurative level and in instances where lines of demarcation are drawn between the earthly world and the hereafter (P. Florenskij, Iconostasis, 1996). It is expressed also in architecture, as witnessed by the density of inscriptions and artistic expressions at the entrances to places of worship (M. Pastoureau, Tympans et portails romans, 2014) and, within them, between the space reserved for the faithful and the presbytery. The concept of the threshold is also linked to the temporal structuring of festivities, from the anxious anticipation on the eve to the celebration itself. A prime example of this can be found in the rite of baptism and the significance attributed to the spaces in which it takes place (R.M. Jensen, Living Water, 2011). These spaces are meticulously constructed and embellished with great creative effort, with multisensory mises-en-scène playing a pivotal role in the experience. The monumentalisation of entrances, rites of passage, and liminal zones exerts an influence on the secular world, manifesting in the form of urban infrastructure, such as city walls, as well as in the entrances to princely residences and military fortresses. Nor, on the other hand, would it be fair to separate the secular dimension from the religious one: suffice it to consider the fact that in Byzantium Iconoclasm began in 726 with the order – given by Leo III the Isauric – to remove the effigy of Christ on the Chalke, the gate of the imperial palace in Constantinople.
In the Early modern period until the Enlightenment, the European cultural universe has expanded and transformed beyond the borders of the Pillars of Hercules (F.A. Yates, Astrea. The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century, 1975). The introduction of unprecedented objects, naturalia and mirabilia to the European continent, as evidenced by a prolonged process extending throughout the 17th century, significantly influenced the prevailing mentalities of the era, thereby facilitating new forms of experimentation and figurative elaboration. The dissemination of knowledge from unknown civilisations, as exemplified by renowned Jesuits such as the geographer, mathematician and cartographer Matteo Ricci of Macerata and later Athanasius Kircher, who pioneered a form of Egyptology, resulted in the generation of new ways of contamination and unprecedented cross-fertilisation at the intersection of the ‘imaginary’ and the ‘imagined’ East. The encounter with the ‘other’ thus becomes a crucial interpretative framework, imbued with political and propagandistic connotations, and alternative forms of knowledge that are articulated through diverse media (an example of this is the encounter/clash with the infidels of the faith, in a paradigm where the image of the Turk become a symbol of the evil, following the political instability of the Mediterranean region – see for example, Images in the Borderlands, eds I. Čapeta Rakić, G. Capriotti, 2022). In this sense, the concept of threshold can be considered as a flexible framework that can be applied at will when exploring the ‘history’ of a cultural product in the broadest sense, as the outcome of a process of double-edged correspondence between one civilisation and another. Early modern period is in itself a season in which crossing a threshold becomes crossing a limit, whether geographical or cultural and esthetical as well, towards a “new unexplored worlds”. This development was significantly furthered by the revolution that followed the scientific discoveries of Galileo (1564-1642). Once considered insurmountable and as a limit (be it for political, religious, philosophical or technological reasons), the threshold is transformed, metaphorically speaking, into a springboard towards the globalised world (T. Brook, Vermeer’s Hat. The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World, 2006).
In more recent times, the out-of-frame device has prompted a heated debate in the arts, spanning from painting (V. Stoichita, A Short History of the Shadow, 1997) to cinema (A. Bazin, What is Cinema?, 1967; D. Morgan, The Lure of the Image, 2021). In the context of the ongoing development of virtual, immersive and interactive spaces, the distinction between image and reality is increasingly blurring (P. Conte, Unframing Aesthetics, 2020; A. Pinotti, Alla soglia dell’immagine, 2021). At the same time, the vanishing boundary between human contribution and generative development is the object of studies investigating the historical, aesthetical and ethical ramifications of artificial intelligence (R. Pedrazzi, Futuri possibili, 2021; M. Pasquinelli, The Eye of the Master, 2023; L. Manovich, E. Arielli, Artificial Aesthetics, 2024). In the context of the Cultural Cold War Studies, the concept of the threshold comes into play by questioning an alleged impenetrability of the Iron Curtain, whose points of contact are instead probed as generators of cultural, artistic and exhibition practices. Thresholds is the title of the exhibition hosted in the German pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale in 2024 as the debut, in the history of German participation, of a venue outside Giardini, in line with that ‘expanded format’ to multiple possibilities – physical or virtual – that characterises the format of Biennials on a global scale (C. Jones, The Global Work of Art, 2017). Finally, the concept of trespassing, in the sense of insisting on demarcation lines and on their political, social and cultural implications, is the object of artistic and curatorial practices that can be ascribed to the broader interdisciplinary field of the Border Studies.
As is now customary, the 2025 issue will also welcome a number of contributions outside the monographic theme, in the specific section Alia itinera.
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: Abstract of approx. 2000 characters (including spaces), in the language of the article, with a title proposal. Only proposals from scholars holding a Ph.D may be considered.
ABSTRACT DEADLINES: Abstracts deadline: 31 March 2025 Notification of accepted abstracts: 14 April 2025
CALL FOR SELECTED PAPERS: Admissible length: between 30,000 and 40,000 characters, including spaces and footnotes (not included in the final count: abstract, captions, bibliography). The essay must be written according to the editorial standards of the journal https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/venezia-arti/info#guidelines .
The essay must also include -an abstract in English of approx. 1000 characters including spaces; -5 keywords in English; -a final, complete bibliography, written in alphabetical order according to Edizioni Ca’ Foscari editorial standards https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni4/static-page/norme-redazionali/ ; -image captions including photo credits.
Illustrations: max 10 images, in Jpeg format, 300 dpi resolution, with specification of credits already paid or authorised. Languages allowed: Italian, English, French.
DEADLINES FOR ARTICLES Deadline for the final version: 31 August 2025
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION Please contact venezia.arti@unive.it.