Academic Conference Center, Prague, 16–17 October 2025

Medieval women were not isolated figures in society. As part of a complex system of relations – personal, ideological, or material –, they lived and worked within various networks. The terms “communication, cooperation and confrontation” can served as analytical categories for comprehending how women exerted influence and power, gained support for the realization of their goals, and navigated around their social, economic and other obstacles. With this conference, we seek to apply these lenses to the investigation of the manifold relations between medieval women and material culture in the broadest sense. The conference focuses on three main areas depending on the nature of these relations:

1. Women and their public image

As widely demonstrated in scholarship, women frequently shaped their own public image and used different media to achieve that goal. We are interested in the communication strategies women were choosing to promote their agenda and to overcome diverging interests, and within this scope, we wish to give particular attention to artwork commissions by women: architecture, altarpieces, books, seals and other types of objects. How were these inscribed or imprinted, for example, with tension in such cases as problematic succession or contested authority, either religious or secular, or with the politics of fama when women had to face various accusations?

2. Women and their entourages

To a large extent, women in the Middle Ages exercised agency through a specific engagement with material culture. Within those negotiations in which they could actively take part, women often participated in the exchange of gifts such as jewels, books and artworks, combining cultural and political influence. We wish to investigate with particular attention the instances in which women sought through donations to secure or strengthen cooperation in various social circles with which they were involved: families, households, noble courts, religious houses etc. We also hope for a comparative discussion of such acts in different situations and contexts: Can some be characterized as products of long-term strategy while others, perhaps, as tactical or even ad hoc, reactive measures?

3. Women and their artists

While the scarcity of sources typically precludes an examination of the entire process behind works commissioned by women, its details are often worth inquiring into. We invite discussions of the various modes of interaction and cooperation between the commissioners, the artists (e.g. painters, sculptors, architects, goldsmiths, writers, poets, musicians) and, where relevant, also the go-betweens. On what grounds were decisions and choices made? What factors influenced the choice of a particular artist or workshop? How important were the material and social constraints or the personal networks involved? When faced with obstacles in their pursuits, how did women react, what course of action did they take, and what other agents did they, perhaps, seek to collaborate with?

Within these three areas, we invite contributions from various fields of research: art history, history, literary studies, musicology archeology and others.

The language of the conference proceedings will be English and each paper should be a maximum of twenty-minutes long and include a slide presentation.

We are able to cover accommodation expenses in Prague for the conference speakers.

If you wish to take part, please let us know by 20 April 2025, sending the title of your paper with an abstract (one standard page long at most) and specifying your affiliation.

Please write jointly to all three of the conference organisers:

• Helena Dáňová (danova@udu.cas.cz);
• Klára Mezihoráková (mezihorakova@udu.cas.cz)
• Věra Soukupová (soukupova@ucl.cas.cz)

This international conference will be the third meeting in a row on the topic “Queens, Noblewomen, and Burgher Women in the Middle Ages” organized by the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences with the support of the Strategy AV 21 Programme – Anatomy of European Society: History, Tradition, Culture, Identity. The aim of the conference continues to be the development of an international platform for research on the topic of women patrons, their social standing and way they presented themselves in medieval Europe. In connection with the conference, a volume on the topic will be published by the Institute of Art History, Prague.

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.

1. 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.
   
2. 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?
   
3. 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?
   
4. 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?
   
5. 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?
   
6. 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?
   
7. 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?
   
8. 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

November 24th, 2025 — Paris, INHA, salle Vasari | November 25th, 2025 — Université de Lille, IRHiS

“Continuity is undeniable; the first Gothic master builders or architects were raised in the Romanesque world. They naturally drew inspiration from it, but this continuity is a living and dynamic one; it is similar to life itself, where heredity, education, and the past weigh on each individual without compromising the emergence of freedom.”
— Jacques Henriet

By questioning continuity and its intentionality in medieval production, Jacques Henriet highlights a widely observed process whose parameters have rarely been examined. Indeed, art history often analyzes its subject through the lens of innovation. This epistemological bias has led to the marginalization of the issues of permanence in the historiography of medieval artistic production, despite their essential role in understanding this period.

The study of this theme has also suffered from an almost exclusive focus on the legacy of antiquity in medieval art. While this question is crucial, it limits our overall perception of conservative forms and practices. An interest that may have seemed novel twenty years ago now appears to be a central concern in medieval studies.

These study days aim to explore the relationship between permanence and continuity in the use of models and forms specific to medieval culture. In particular, his perspective seeks to examine the existence of a genuine aesthetic conservatism, understood as a fertile artistic dynamic. We will address these notions through the lens of innovation, dissemination channels, creative contexts, and the various intellectual processes at work.

Theme 1: Permanence, Continuity, and Innovation

During this period, creation was often developed and justified by clerics according to a principle of continuity—one may recall the expression “dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants” which John of Salisbury attributed to his master Bernard of Chartres, and which he claimed as the only worthy path to intellectual creation. Therefore, we must question the originality of medieval works through the notion of borrowing from older formulas and the reactivation of past models. This unique relationship with temporality may be explored through the process of creating an artwork, such as an illuminated book or the reinterpretation of monumental works. This approach aims to critically assess the singularity of certain continuities, such as the Franco-Insular style of the Second Bible of Charles the Bald (BnF, Latin 2, c. 871-877), which may invoke notions of archaism and conservatism or even historicism, and reaction, whose relevance to the Middle Ages needs to be interrogated.

Theme 2: Networks and Agents of Dissemination

Understanding the phenomena of continuity requires analyzing the cultural context of these artistic productions. Indeed, continuity may find expression in the long-term realization of artistic programs, as seen in homogeneous projects spanning decades. Another approach involves questioning the notion of tradition; whether it is linked to a specific artistic practice, a defined space, or a particular milieu. Tradition may also exist within a network of actors, particularly institutional ones, that facilitate the dissemination of models, such as repertoires of forms within monastic orders, like the model books circulated in the Cistercian context. Therefore, we will examine the means of transmission and circulation of models and expertise among these various agents, particularly through apprenticeships..

Theme 3: Modalities of Reception

Were these phenomena as prominent to medieval contemporaries as they are to contemporary art historians? This final theme will explore the intentionality behind the use of forms or processes perceived as representative of an earlier period of creation. More specifically, it will examine the role of heritage, understood as the unconscious reproduction of knowledge acquired through education, and that of tradition, considered a deliberate citation of an ancient form, comprehensible only within a given context—such as the memorial project of Saint-Louis de Poissy (c. 1297-1331), for example. This element of intentionality invites us to refine the definition of aesthetic preferences in the medieval era, when the past was considered an aesthetic category in itself.

Submission Guidelines and Timeline

These study days aim to explore these transmission pathways through original case studies. Our intention is to bring together presentations covering all media of the medieval period (5th–15th centuries). Presentations should be 20 to 25 minutes long. A publication is planned.
Proposals for conference contributions may be submitted in French or English. They should take the form of a summary (approximately 300 words) with a title and be accompanied by a short biography.

Submissions should be sent to jepl.medieval@gmail.com by April 15, 2025. Feedback to authors will be provided by June 30, 2025.

Scientific Committee

• Mathieu Beaud, Associate Professor of Medieval Art History, UMR 8529 IRHiS, University of Lille.
• Étienne Hamon, Professor of Medieval Art History, UMR 8529 IRHiS, University of Lille.
• Anne-Orange Poilpré, Professor of Medieval Art History, UR 4100 HiCSA, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
• Ambre Vilain, Associate Professor of Medieval Art History, UMR 6566 CReAAH, LARA Laboratory, Nantes University.
  

Organizing Committee

• Hugo Dehongher, PhD Candidate in Medieval Art History, UMR 8529 IRHiS, University of Lille.
• Angèle Desmenez, PhD Candidate in Medieval Art History, UMR 8529 IRHiS, University of Lille.
• Max Hello, PhD Candidate in Medieval Art History, UR 4100 HiCSA, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
• Pierre Moyat, PhD Candidate in Medieval Art History, UR 4100 HiCSA, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Call for papers in English revised by Allyson Tadjer, PhD, Georgia State University, Professor of English at the University of Lille.

NORDIK 2025 conference, Helsinki, 20-22 October 2025

This session aims to critically examine the art historical hierarchy that traditionally positions certain figures or centers as the primary sources of artistic influence in the Nordic countries. Since the 1970s, and particularly throughout the 1980s, a shift in perspective emerged with social and technical studies revisiting established ideas about borders, centers, and peripheries in Medieval northern art. However, some forces have resisted this shift, and there remains a tendency to revert to national perspectives.

Today, there is a timely opportunity for a comprehensive, renewed view of Medieval Nordic art, prompted by the emergence of global art history, advancements in technical art history, and an increasing distance from earlier art historical paradigms.

This session seeks contributions that offer fresh perspectives on Medieval Nordic art. We welcome submissions that address:

• Art Historiography: Topics illuminating the contributions of the early generation of scholars as well as the contemporary currents that resist or challenge a radical reassessment of art historical traditions.
• Defining “Nordic” in Medieval Art: Studies exploring the concept of “Nordic” within the discipline, notions of being localised “inside” or “outside” the region and the implications of horizontal art history.
• Cross-Disciplinary Case Studies: Investigations merging art history with conservation science, where material studies either challenge or reinforce traditional assumptions about the boundaries of Nordic art.
• Network Studies: Research on artistic networks, clusters, and interactions between agents and “actors” within the Nordic region’s art production and trade.

Session chairs:
Kristin Kausland, kristin.kausland@niku.no Julia Trinkert, trinkert@hhu.de

Please submit your proposal to session chairs by 28th of February 2025.

Find out more here.