CFP ESNA conference 2016: City of Sin: Representing the Urban Underbelly in the Nineteenth Century

ESNA Congress 2016
City of Sin: Representing the Urban Underbelly in the Nineteenth Century
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum
19-20 May 2016

The pageant of fashionable life and the thousands of floating existences - criminals and kept women - which drift about in the underworld of a great city […] all prove to us that we have only to open our eyes to recognize our heroism […]. The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. – Charles Baudelaire, Salon of 1846



In the spring of 2016 Amsterdam will host two major exhibitions: Easy Virtue: Prostitution in French Art, 1850-1910 (Van Gogh Museum, previously Musée d’Orsay) and Girls in Kimono: The Breitner Variations (Rijksmuseum). Both exhibitions explore the depiction of women in the margins of urban life – the prostitute, the model, working (class) women, and the women of the entertainment industry. In cooperation with the two museums, ESNA (European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art) will take this occasion to organize its annual two-day international conference around the topic of the “urban underbelly” and its depiction in nineteenth-century art. The conference seeks to broaden the perspective of the two exhibitions by inviting papers that deal with urban marginality in the widest sense.

The conference takes as its motto Baudelaire’s 1846 call to artists to open their eyes to the darker side of nineteenth-century metropolitan life, not usually a topic of serious art historical study. In this sense, the conference aims to form a countercanon that will provide a fuller picture of the “painting of modern life”. Rather than the daylight scenes featuring the typical flâneur so well known to the broader public, the conference will focus on the depiction of things that occur in the shadows. Topics to be explored may include, but are certainly not limited to: crime and punishment; criminals and their pursuers; gambling and other clandestine activities; female and male prostitutes; alcoholics and drug addicts; hobos and bohemians; the homeless and those who care for them; the (working) urban poor and the unemployed; the insane and the hysterical; the ill and the dying; the gay community, dandies, cross-dressers and transgenders avant-la-lettre; and practitioners and practices considered sexually morally deviant. Contributions may deal with images in any medium, created in any urban center and at any time during the (long) nineteenth century (we especially welcome papers focusing on the early nineteenthcentury).
Please send proposals (max. 300 words) for a 20-minute paper (in English) for this conference to esnaonline@hotmail.com by 18 December 2015 at the latest. Selected speakers will be contacted in the course of January 2016.

Organizing committee: Rachel Esner (University of Amsterdam) and Jenny Reynaerts (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam); Lisa Smit (Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam)

Scientific committee: Nienke Bakker (Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam); Richard Thomson (University of Edinburgh); Marjan Sterckx (Ghent University); Rachel Esner (University of Amsterdam); Jenny Reynaerts (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam); Jan Dirk Baetens (Rijksuniversiteit Nijnmegen); Mayken Jonkman (RKD); Maite van Dijk (Van Gogh Museum)

http://www.esnaonline.wordpress.com

CFP: Negotiating art ǀ Dealers and museums 1855-2015 1-2 April 2016

Deadline for submissions: 18 September 2015

This two-day conference on the relations between art dealers and museums, organised by the National Gallery in collaboration with the University of Manchester and the University of Liverpool, will be held at the National Gallery, London.

This joint conference, which has its origins in the acquisition of the Thos. Agnew & Sons archive by the National Gallery, aims to explore the relationship between art dealers and museums, in the UK and worldwide, and across a wide chronological period. Although there will be a focus on the London and British art market in the late 19th century, we wish to include papers that span the period 1855-2015 and across a range of geographical areas, in order to establish connections and assess contrasts between places and periods.

Many fundamental topics are implicated by the subject of this conference. For example, the relationship between consumption and culture; the creation, separation and ethical remits of professional specialisms; the nature and role of art institutions; and the multifaceted – and conflicting – roles of art collecting. We have singled out four key themes, which we envisage will comprise discrete conference sessions, and we invite paper proposals that engage with some aspect of them:


Mechanics of the relationship: How did the relationships between dealers and art museums work? Were these business relationships, advisory roles, or both? Which sources can we use to establish such relationships? Can quantitative evidence like pricing be used to illuminate these relationships further? Can any shifts in these dynamics be identified or measured over a geographical or chronological range?


Biographies: Who were/are the main dealers associated with art museums? Can the personal and institutional biographies of specific dealers, agents, curators and other associated players assist in the reconstruction of the dealer-museum relationship, either in the historical or contemporary domains?
Collaboration and conflict: How close was/is the relationship between various dealers and art museums? To what extent can these relationships be construed as successful or otherwise? Are there examples of conflict, such as failed deals, arguments over pricing or the breakdown of relationships?
How were successful cases, such as acquisitions mediated by dealers, negotiated? What happens when dealers are in competition with each other? And what happens when museums are in competition with each other?


Works: How can case studies of single artworks or groups of pieces help us to understand better the model of dealer-museum interaction? How do the previous histories of works, their provenance, and the manner of their acquisition (e.g. private treaty or auction sale) affect their afterlife in the museum?


How to submit
Papers should be a maximum of 20 minutes in length, and preference will be given to proposals which stimulate dialogue and engage with broader topics. Please send enquiries and proposals of no more than 300 words, indicating which session your paper relates to, by 18 September 2015, to research.centre@ng-london.org.uk (marked for the attention of Alan Crookham).