Medieval Art Research

Call for Session Proposals: Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture Sponsored Session (IMC Leeds 2015)

Call for Session Proposals
Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture Sponsored Session
22 International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 6-9 July 2015
Deadline: 31 August 2014

MMA_Nile_cropped — Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

To encourage the integration of Byzantine studies within the scholarly community and medieval studies in particular, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 22nd International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 6–9, 2015. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.
The thematic strand for the 2015 IMC is “Reform and Renewal.” See the IMC Call for Papers (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/imc2015_call.html) for additional information about the theme and suggested areas of discussion.

Session proposals should be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website site (http://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/22nd-international-medieval-congress/). The deadline for submission is August 31, 2014. Proposals should include:

-Title
-100-word session abstract
-Session moderator and academic affiliation
-Information about the three papers to be presented in the session. For each paper: name of presenter and academic affiliation, proposed paper title, and 100-word abstract
-CV

Successful applicants will be notified by mid-September if their proposal has been selected for submission to the International Medieval Congress. The Mary Jaharis Center will submit the session proposal to the International Medieval Congress and will keep the potential organizer informed about the status of the proposal.

If the proposed session is approved, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse session participants (presenters and moderator) up to $500 maximum for EU residents and up to $1000 maximum for those coming from outside Europe. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided. Eligible expenses include conference registration, transportation, and food and lodging. Receipts are required for reimbursement.

The session organizer may act as the moderator or present a paper. Participants may only present papers in one session.

Please contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

Monumental and Miniature, Light and Sound: Pacino di Bonaguida at Santa Croce

The Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence

Italian Renaissance churches and the museums connected to them house impressive but often overlooked treasures in a variety of media: paint, stone, textile, glass, parchment, and precious metals and gems. Within the walls of the Museum, Archive, and Church of Santa Croce in Florence is a group of artworks created by Pacino di Bonaguida (about 1303-about 1347) and his workshop. Once one looks past the impressive fresco cycles by Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi, Bernardo Daddi and others, and after using a bit of imagination to envision what the church looked like before Giorgio Vasari’s renovations in the 16^th century and the Neoclassical revolution of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, one finally encounters sets of stained glass windows and a pair of choir books that have survived the Black Death, floods, and a world war. In the…

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Conference: Monuments of Power, Canterbury, 5-7 September 2014

This Symposium is to be held jointly by the Church Monuments Society and the Centre for Medieval and Modern Studies, University of Kent. The Symposium will focus on the monuments in the cathedral together with related high status tombs. We will begin on Friday afternoon with an optional visit to the cathedral’s mason’s yard and with an evening reception and dinner, followed by the keynote lecture. Lectures will begin on Saturday morning, and after lunch we will take the coach to the cathedral when delegates will have their own free time to look around or visit the cathedral library. After evensong we will have sole access to the cathedral together with talks on the monuments. On Saturday evening there is a drinks reception and dinner, followed by members’ contributions. On Sunday a varied lecture programme will be delivered, and the Symposium will close with afternoon tea at 4.00. The event is also open to those who wish to attend on a daily basis.

List of speakers

Kent Rowland
Henry VIII’s influence at Canterbury Cathedral

Tim Tatton Brown
The late Medieval monuments and shrines in the eastern arm of Canterbury Cathedral

David Green
The Black Prince

Kenneth Fincham & David Shaw
The Boys monument

Jessica Barker
Margaret Holland and her two husbands

Kim Woods
Effigies in alabaster in Canterbury Cathedral

Sophie Oosterwijk
Copper-alloy tombs in Medieval Europe

Melanie Caiazza
Expeditions and effigies: (re)locating death, burial and family narratives – a closer look at the case of Sir James Hales

Barbara Tomlinson
Commemorating Admiral Sir George Rooke (1650-1708) and his naval contemporaries

Jean Wilson
Lies, damned lies and monuments: two military memorials in Canterbury Cathedral

Anyone wishing to give a short paper under members’ contributions should contact the organiser, Mark Downing.

The Symposium is to be held at the University of Kent, Canterbury, which is about 20 minutes walk from the city centre. Accommodation is in single en-suite bedrooms. The cost for the full Symposium is £250 (£270 for non-members), full board. Alternatively, delegates may choose to attend on a non-residential basis: Saturday – morning lectures, lunch, coach travel to the cathedral and entry (fee: £60, non-members £70), and/or Sunday – lectures including lunch (fee: £45 non-members £55).

For further information on how to book, visit the Church Monuments Society’s website.

Call for ICMA Sponsored Session Proposals (CAA 2016)

Call for ICMA Sponsored Session Proposals
College Art Association, Washington DC, 3-6 February 2016
Deadline: 15 August 2014

The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) seeks proposals for sessions to be held under the organization’s sponsorship in 2016 at the annual College Art Association. Session organizers and speakers must be ICMA members. Proposals for ICMA sponsorship should consist of a title, an abstract, and a CV. Thanks to a generous grant from the Kress Foundation, funds may be available to defray travel costs of sponsored session speakers. Please direct all session proposals and inquiries by Aug. 15, 2014 to the Chair of the Programs Committee: Elina Gertsman, Department of Art History and Art, Case Western Reserve University, email: elina.gertsman@case.edu.

CFP: The Cross in Medieval Art (Kalamazoo 2015)

Call for Papers: The Cross in Medieval Art
International Center of Medieval Art Sponsored Session (Kalamazoo 2015)
Deadline: 15 September 2014

Recent art-historical research has brought us new understandings of the central symbol of Christianity, the Cross, in different places, at different times, in different media, and with different theoretical and conceptual foci. The Cross, its representations and significations, and the appearance and materiality of those representations, features in many areas of current research, but not often as a central subject to be dealt with thematically and comparatively. This session invites considerations of images depicting, representing or referring to the Cross in any media, and across the middle ages, from early to late. The aim of the session is to consider what can be gained at this particular moment in scholarship from a common concentration on the theme of the Cross. Therefore, proposers are invited especially to consider their subject matter in light of theoretical perspectives that have been prominent in recent art-historical scholarship, such as (but not limited to) affect, emotion, movement, medium and materiality.

Please send paper proposals (consisting of a abstract of up to one page, and a completed Participant Information Form (http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#Paper)) to Beth Williamson, University of Bristol (Beth.Williamson@bristol.ac.uk), by September 15, 2014.

Conference: Invention and Imagination in British Art and Architecture, 600-1500

Conference:
Invention and Imagination in British Art and Architecture, 600-1500
London, The British Museum, 30 October – 1 November 2014
A collaborative event organised by the Paul Mellon Centre and The British Museum

This conference will explore the ways in which artists and patrons in Britain devised and introduced new or distinctive imagery, styles and techniques, as well as novel approaches to bringing different media together. It is concerned with the mechanisms of innovation, with inventive and imaginative processes, and with the relations between conventions and individual expression. The conversation will therefore also address the very notions of sameness and difference in medieval art and architecture, and how these may be evaluated and explained historically.   

Topics for discussion can include authorship, creativity, experimentation, envisaging, representation, and regulation by guilds or patrons, as well as casestudies of particular objects, buildings, commissions or practices.

The conference will take place on 30th October – 1st November at The British Museum; it will include collaborations with the museum’s Department of Prehistory & Europe and opportunities to see works from the collection.

List of participants and speakers’ titles & abstracts (A-Z)

Jessica Barker (PhD Candidate : Courtauld Institute of Art)
Effigies of Husband and Wife at Bredon and Lowthorpe: Investigating Unique Iconography on Fourteenth-Century Funerary Sculpture

Paul Binski, Keynote Speaker (Professor of the History of Medieval Art History : University of Cambridge)
Medieval Invention and its Potencies

Kerry Paul Boeye (Assistant Professor of Art History : Loyola University Maryland)
Iconographic Invention in Thirteenth- and early Fourteenth-Century English Psalters

Alexandrina Buchanan (Lecturer in Archive Studies : University of Liverpool)
Gained in Translation: Architectural Drawing and Three-Dimensional Geometry

Andrew Budge (PhD Candidate, Birkbeck College : University of London)
The Fourteenth rebuilding of the Collegiate Church of St Mary Warwick: Risk-taking Innovation or Simple Fashion Statement?

James Alexander Cameron (PhD Candidate : Courtauld Institute of Art)
The Englishness of English Sedilla

Kristen Collins (Associate Curator, Department of Manuscripts : Getty Museum)
Resonance and Reuse: The Reinvention of a Late-Romanesque Vita Christi in Fifteenth-Century East Anglia

Lloyd De Beer (Project Curator, Late Medieval Collections : The British Museum)
The Key of David and the Temple of Justice: An Analysis of the Chichester Seal Matrix

Veronica Decker (Art History Department : University of Vienna)
The Patronage of William of Wykeham: Imagination and Experimentation in Fourteenth-Century Art and Architecture

Emily Guerry (Junior Research Fellow in History of Art, Merton College : University of Oxford)
Picturing the Saints: Relics, Patronage and the “Westminster Court Style” in Gothic Cult Painting

Jack Hartnell (Postdoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin/ Victoria and Albert Museum)
The Wound Man and the English Medical Imagination

James Hillson (PhD Candidate : University of York)
Iterative Invention: Delayed Design in Dynastic Gothic at St Stephen’s Chapel Westminster and Norwich Cathedral Cloister

Aden Kumler, Keynote Speaker (Associate Professor of Art History and the College : University of Chicago)
Envisioning Art as Process in Medieval Britain

Helen Lunnon (Tutor in Art History : University of East Anglia)
Inventio Porticus

Julian Luxford (Reader in Art History : University of St Andrews)
Inscribed Churches in Late Medieval England

John Munns (Lecturer in the History of Medieval Art : University of Cambridge)
Seeing Things: from Art to Apparition in the High Middle Ages

Laura Slater (Post Doctoral Researcher and Teaching Assistant, Department of Art History : University of York)
Inventing and Imagining Place: Jerusalems in England and the Case of Westminster

Roger Stalley (Professor Emeritus of the History of Art : Trinity College)
Reason and Imagination in English Gothic Architecture

For further information, see the conference website: http://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/146/

Research School: Latin Paleography and Medieval Liturgy, University of Ghent, October 2014

Autumn School
Latin Paleography and Medieval Liturgy
University of Ghent, 20 – 22 October 2014
Application deadline: 31 August 2014

This Autumn School is organised for MA and PhD-students in Medieval Studies (art history, history, philosophy, literature, music, etc.) who are required to work with handwritten medieval documents in Latin or with liturgical sources and texts containing liturgical quotations or references.

The Autumn School starts with two days of parallel courses in Latin Paleography and Medieval Liturgy, taught by leading experts in the field.

The sessions about Medieval Liturgy focus, after an elaborate introduction to the various liturgical books, on the liturgical conventions in France and Germany, on liturgy and music, on liturgy and architecture and on books of hours.

The sessions about Latin paleography explain the interactions between paleography, Diplomatics and Codicology, and will then focus on different scripts, the evolution and layout of the page and reading practices, the organisation of the scriptoria and the position of the scribe.

On the third day of the course, workshops are organized for each theme, in which all topics dealt with during the previous days will be brought together in an interactive session.

In the space of three days, students will thus acquire a basic knowledge of either Latin Paleography or Medieval Liturgy as well the skills to implement this knowledge in their own research projects.

For the course on Latin Paleography, students need to have already a basic knowledge of (classical) Latin grammar and vocabulary. For the course in Medieval Liturgy, no previous knowledge is required.

Both courses are delivered in English. Since both courses are taught at the same time, participants can enrol for only one course.

For further information on programme and registration, see here.

Gothic Ivories News: Conference and Publication

I.
Conference Reminder
Gothic Ivories: Content and Context
Saturday 5 July 2014, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Sunday 6 July 2014, The British Museum, London

Jointly organised by The British Museum and The Courtauld Gothic Ivories Project, this event follows on from the successful 2012 conference Gothic Ivories: Old Questions New Directions (V&A – Courtauld). Celebrating new research on Gothic ivory carving, papers will focus on a wide range of topics arising from the study of Gothic ivory carving and Embriachi pieces, related to the themes of content and context.

Themed sessions will be dedicated to questions of iconography, sources and original use and context, research into provenance, relationships with other media, ivory carving in the 16th century, history of collecting in the 19th and 20th century.

For the full programme, see here.
Online booking now available here.

II.
Special Issue The Sculpture Journal
New Work on Old Bones
(with papers from the 2012 Gothic ivories conference)
For the table of contents, see here.

For further news from the world of Gothic ivories, see the news-section on the website of the Gothic Ivories project.

Petition: Save the Warburg Institute!

The Friends of the Warburg Institute have launched the following petition which may be of interest to those who know about the Warburg Institute and have benefited from its wonderful library:

“The Times Higher Education recently reported that the University of London has taken legal action to challenge its own deed of trust concerning the care and integrity of the Warburg Institute. Possible results of this action include the dispersal of the library, or its relocation abroad.

This is not the first time the Institute has been threatened: it was relocated from Hamburg to London in 1933, endangered by Hitler’s rise to power, and although the University of London accepted the collections in 1944 (the agreement currently under review), similar action was considered in 2010.

We call on the University of London to withdraw their legal action and keep the Warburg Institute just as it is, for three reasons:

1. To keep the Warburg Institute’s collections intact. In over 50 years since the library’s resettlement in London, it has grown from 80,000 to 350,000 volumes, 40% of which are unique and not held in the British Library.

2. To preserve Aby Warburg’s intellectual legacy. The Institute’s collections are organised unlike any other in the world – according to a system developed by Warburg as a product of his own research. Dispersal is tantamount to destroying one of Warburg’s greatest works of scholarship – the library itself.

3. To maintain the vibrant intellectual community the Warburg fosters. A one-of-a-kind collection both in content and form, the Warburg has drawn together a world-class scholarly community for decades. Taking the collections outside of the space of the Institute would displace that community of researchers.”

To sign the petition, please follow this link.
For a statement from the Warburg Institute regarding the High Court proceedings, click here.

Conference: Commemoration of the Dead (London, 15 November 2014)

Conference
Commemoration of the Dead: new approaches, new perspectives, new material
London, Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet Street
Saturday, 15 November 2014, 10am – 5pm

Recent years have witnessed a rapid growth in new research and consideration of commemorative brasses and funerary monuments. This one-day joint meeting, sponsored by the Monumental Brass Society and the Church Monuments Society, will explore these developments and, in particular, research techniques that have led to new insights within the broader context of funerary art. Speakers are primarily doctoral and early post-doctoral students.

9.30 Registration

10.00 Welcome by Christian Steer, Hon. Secretary, Monumental Brass Society

10.05 Richard Marks: ‘Brass and Glass’: the medieval tomb window

10.45 Session 1: Reassessing Workshops

Matthew Ward: Late Medieval Style: the Role of Agency and the Workshop
Michael Carter: The Mysterious Mitre on the Monument

11.45 Tea/coffee

12.15 Session 2: Form and Materials

Sanne Frequin: Tournai Stone: an investigation of materiality
Ann Adams: ‘Revealed and Concealed’: Monumental Brasses on High Relief Tombs – the examples of John I, Duke of Cleves and Catherine of Bourbon

13.15 Lunch (own arrangements)

14.30 Session 3: Contextualising Brasses – Politics, Family and Religion

Harriette Peel: Women, Children and Guardian Angels in Late Medieval Flemish Funerary Art
Jessica Knowles: ‘Controlling the Past’: the Medieval Brasses of All Saints North Street, York

15.30 Tea/coffee

16.00 Session 4: Lost Brasses

Robert Marcoux: The Social Meaning and Artistic Potential of a Medium: Brass and the Medieval Tombs of the Gaignières Collection
Christian Steer: ‘A Melting Pot of Death’: Burials and Brasses in the London Grey Friars

17.00 Concluding Remarks: Martin Stuchfield, President, M.B.S., and Jean Wilson, President, C.M.S.

Registration:
It is anticipated that this event will be extremely popular and a pre-booked registration process is necessary for those who would like to attend. There is a strict capacity limit and places will be allocated on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. Early booking is encouraged. The event is free for members of the Monumental Brass Society and Church Monuments Society but members are required to reserve a place by contacting the Hon. Secretary of the M.B.S. (details below) well in advance. Non-members are warmly welcome and to reserve a place should send a cheque for £15.00, made payable to the Monumental Brass Society, to the Hon. Secretary (see below). A special rate of £5.00 is available for student non-members. All delegates must pre-book in advance.

Refreshments:
There will be a morning and afternoon tea and coffee break available for delegates but lunch is not included. This area of Bloomsbury is well served with cafes, restaurants and pubs where lunch can be obtained.

To book:
To book a place, please write/email the Hon. Secretary of the Monumental Brass Society:

Dr Christian Steer
8 Shefford Lodge Newbury, Berkshire RG14 7LR
e: christianosteer@yahoo.co.uk

Please indicate whether you are a member of the M.B.S. or CMS at booking.
Non-members should enclose a cheque for £15.00 (£5.00 for students) made payable to the Monumental Brass Society.

It is intended to publish a list of delegate names and email addresses. Please indicate at the time of booking whether you do not wish your email address to be included.