JOB: Conservator Hortamuseum

In het Brusselse Hortamuseum is er een vacature voor de positie van conservator.

De oproep is hier terug te vinden (in het Frans, hoewel men tweetalige kandidaten zoekt die eveneens over een uitstekende kennis van het Engels beschikken). Men kan appliceren tot 18 februari 2018.

EXH: Baudelaire >< Brussel

'Baudelaire >< Brussel'
Museum van de Stad Brussel (Brussel, België)
7 september 2017 - 11 maart 2018

Op het einde van zijn leven bracht Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) twee jaar door in Brussel, van 1864 tot 1866. Een periode van bitterheid, ziekte en berooidheid die de auteur van Les Fleurs du Mal ertoe bracht een (tijdens zijn leven ongepubliceerd gebleven) virulent en brutaal pamflet te schrijven tegen België en vooral tegen Brussel, met als titel Pauvre Belgique!

Tussen twee vogelnamen of beledigingen door, nodigt de tentoonstelling de bezoeker uit om met Baudelaire als gids de Belgische hoofdstad van de jaren 1860 te komen ontdekken. Het Brussel van de slotjaren van het koningschap van Leopold I, van de Zenne, van de zwarte zeep en de eerste foto's. De sombere visie van de auteur wordt gemilderd door special guests: vrienden of kennissen van Baudelaire die het portret van deze stad aanvullen, zoals Nadar, Victor Hugo, de gebroeders Stevens, Camille Lemonnier, Georges Barral.

De tentoongestelde werken komen vooral uit de collecties van de stad Brussel, zowel van musea als van archieven. Een onuitgegeven onderdompeling in miskende werken van de 19de eeuw. Een primeur daarbij is het grote drieluik waarvan het middenpaneel de 'wegeniswerken' van de overwelving van de Zenne (1868-1871) voorstelt. Dankzij de samenwerking tussen het Museum van de Stad Brussel en het Félicien Ropsmuseum in Namen, kon de schilder geïdentificeerd worden als Louis Ghémar (1819-1873). Van hem zijn ook de prachtige, wat mysterieuze foto's van de Zenne die op de tentoonstelling te bewonderen zijn. Een toevalstreffer voor het Ropsmuseum, dat in het najaar van 2018 een tentoonstelling organiseert rond Ghémar en de "zwans".

EXH: De droom van anderen: Léon Spilliaert, illustrator van Verhaeren, Maeterlinck, Hellens...

'De droom van anderen. Léon Spilliaert, illustrator van Verhaeren, Maeterlinck, Hellens…'
Het Spilliaert Huis (Oostende, België)
19 november 2017 - 2 april 2018

De vierde thematentoonstelling georganiseerd door Het Spilliaert Huis belicht Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946) als illustrator. Bij de meeste kunstliefhebbers zijn ze vrijwel onbekend: zijn illustraties in uitgaven van het werk van Belgische schrijvers als Emile Verhaeren, Maurice Maeterlinck, Franz Hellens, Paul Neuhuys en vele anderen. Spilliaert illustreerde hun dichtbundels en theaterstukken, en zelfs een kinderboek, met tekeningen in Oost-Indische inkt en aquarelverf, of liet zijn inspiratie de vrije loop bij het visualiseren van de droomwereld van de auteurs. Dit rijke deelgebied van zijn kunst wordt door curator Anne Adriaens-Pannier voor het publiek ontsloten. Zij bracht een ruime selectie werken samen die zelden aan het publiek zijn getoond. Naast de gedrukte uitgaven zijn er ook autonome tekeningen en aquarellen te zien die rechtstreeks verband houden met de literaire invloedssfeer.

Met de tentoonstelling gaat een catalogus gepaard, gerealiseerd door Uitgeverij Van de Wiele in samenwerking met Het Spilliaert Huis.

COUR: Belgian Fin de Siècle 1880-1914 [extended deadline]

'Summer Course for the Study of the Arts in Flanders: Belgian Fin de Siècle 1880-1914' Coordinated by the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Mu.ZEE Ostend and the Flemish Art Collection
June 24 - July 4, 2018

In the summer of 2018, several Flemish research centres, universities and art museums will collaboratively organise the fourth edition of the Summer Course for the Study of the Arts in Flanders. This edition zooms in on Belgian Fin de Siècle Art between 1880 and 1914. The target group are master and PhD-students in (art)history from all over the world.

The aim of the summer course is to bring to Flanders, annually, a select group of 20 national and international, highly qualified young researchers and to present them with an intensive 11-day programme of lectures, discussions, and on-site visits. The theme varies annually, with a focus on a different art-historical period each year. The aim is to provide the participants with a clear insight into the Flemish art collections from the period at hand, as well as into the available and most suited research methods, the state of the research and the research needs. After the course, the candidates will be ambassadors for the Flemish arts abroad.

The fourth edition of the summer course is titled Belgian Fin de Siècle 1880-1914 and will take place from June 24 through July 4, 2018. Its content is coordinated by the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Mu.ZEE Ostend and the Flemish Art Collection. This edition includes excursions to Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, Brussels, Paris, Namur and Antwerp. The language of the Summer Course is English. Some lectures may be in French.

The deadline has been extended. You may apply now through January 7, 2018 [extended deadline].

For practical information as well as the application procedure, please refer to the course website.

CONF: Studiedag XIX - 8 December 2017

Interuniversitaire en -museale studiedag
Georganiseerd door XIX Werkgroep negentiende-eeuwse kunst
Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis (KMKG), Jubelpark, Brussel
8 december 2017

Op vrijdag 8 december 2017 organiseert XIX een interuniversitaire en -museale studiedag. Deze gaat door in de Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis in het Jubelpark te Brussel, vanaf 9u30.

Het voormiddagprogramma voorziet vijf prikkelende lezingen door Herwig Todts & Siska Beele (KMSKA), Davy Depelchin (Open Universiteit), Johan De Smet & Cathérine Verleysen (MSK Gent), David Vergauwen (Amarant Gent & Free: Interdisciplinaire Onderzoeksgroep Vrijmetselarij VUB) en Laurens Dhaenens (KUL). Na een vrije lunch leidt curator Werner Adriaenssens ons door de Wolferswinkel, de nieuwe zaal van de KMKG met het door Victor Horta in 1912 ontworpen interieur van de boetiek Wolfers Frères. Er worden topstukken van de art-nouveau- en art-decocollectie geëxposeerd, waarvan velen nooit eerder aan het publiek zijn getoond.

Inschrijven kan tot en met 23 november via werkgroepXIX@gmail.com, mits overschrijving van 15 EUR voor de gehele dag (3 EUR voor alleen de voormiddag en 12 EUR voor alleen de namiddag). Gelieve er rekening mee te houden dat de plaatsen beperkt zijn.

Voor het rekeningnummer en andere praktische info verwijzen we u graag naar het volledige programma hieronder.

Wij hopen leden en sympathisanten talrijk te verwelkomen.

COUR: Belgian Fin de Siècle 1880-1914

'Summer Course for the Study of the Arts in Flanders: Belgian Fin de Siècle 1880-1914'
Coordinated by the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Mu.ZEE Ostend and the Flemish Art Collection
June 24 - July 4, 2018

In the summer of 2018, several Flemish research centres, universities and art museums will collaboratively organise the fourth edition of the Summer Course for the Study of the Arts in Flanders. This edition zooms in on Belgian Fin de Siècle Art between 1880 and 1914. The target group are master and PhD-students in (art)history from all over the world.

The aim of the summer course is to bring to Flanders, annually, a select group of 20 national and international, highly qualified young researchers and to present them with an intensive 11-day programme of lectures, discussions, and on-site visits. The theme varies annually, with a focus on a different art-historical period each year. The aim is to provide the participants with a clear insight into the Flemish art collections from the period at hand, as well as into the available and most suited research methods, the state of the research and the research needs. After the course, the candidates will be ambassadors for the Flemish arts abroad.

The fourth edition of the summer course is titled Belgian Fin de Siècle 1880-1914 and will take place from June 24 through July 4, 2018. Its content is coordinated by the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Mu.ZEE Ostend and the Flemish Art Collection. This edition includes excursions to Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, Brussels, Paris, Namur and Antwerp. The language of the Summer Course is English. Some lectures may be in French.

You may apply now through December 1, 2017.

For practical information as well as the application procedure, please refer to the course website.

REMINDER: CFP: Male Bonds in Nineteenth-Century Art

'Male Bonds in Nineteenth-Century Art'
Organized by Ghent University and the European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art (ESNA), in cooperation with the University of Antwerp and the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent
Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium
15-16 May 2018
Submission deadline: 15 October 2017

Male Bonds is a two-day international conference that aims to explore the place of male bonds in nineteenth-century artistic practice and visual arts. Male homosociality - i.e. social relationships between men - helped structure nineteenth-century European and American society. However, over the course of the century, change was instigated by the increasingly rigorous conception of same-sex sexualities and by other challenges to traditional notions of manhood. The conference strives to probe, challenge and expand upon the academic narrative of male homosociality through the lens of art history. It is to establish a multifaceted survey of the male bonds that underpinned nineteenth-century art, and to consider the theoretical and methodological implications of the study thereof. In so doing, it seeks to build a bridge between traditional art-historical scholarship and the fields of gender and gay and lesbian studies: an interdisciplinary exchange of which the full potential for scholarship on the nineteenth century remains to be exploited.

Please refer to the conference website for more information, including the full call for papers.

CFP: European Revivals Conference 2017: Cultural Mythologies around 1900

'European Revivals Conference 2017: Cultural Mythologies around 1900'
A partnership between: University of Edinburgh, University of Helsinki, National Galleries of Scotland and Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki
1-2 December 2017 at Hawthornden Lecture Theatre, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, European artists began to express a new and profound interest in their unique local pasts and cultural inheritances. This was a discourse that was largely shaped by the desire within several countries for cultural and artistic, and ultimately social and economic, independence. Historical scholarship on the subject has been broadly established in many European countries, but research has been dominated by nationalist perspectives that have emphasised the cultural specificity of each country. The European Revivals research project (initiated by the Finnish National Gallery in 2009) aims to stimulate debate on a wider scale. From this perspective, late nineteenth-century cultural revivals appear as a set of complex and interconnected phenomena that are transnational, inherently modern, and with far-reaching consequences.

The topic of the 2017 conference is Cultural Mythologies around 1900. Its aim is to examine issues such as authenticity, ‘rewriting’ and reinterpretation in relation to the production and assimilation of national styles, symbols and cultural narratives in late nineteenth century European art and literature. The conference will draw attention to the constructed and imaginary nature of national identities and the role of various mythical traditions and ‘reinventions’ within this context. Papers are invited that examine this European-wide phenomenon in relation to one of the following three themes:

Reinvention and ‘authenticity’
In the late nineteenth century Europe artists and designers frequently drew inspiration from mythical history, legend and vernacular traditions; they were also inspired by the forms and mysterious symbols of ancient ‘national’ art or recent archaeological ‘finds’. As artists adapted the narratives and symbols of the past to their own aesthetic, political or nationalist agendas, the original meaning was often lost and the concept of authenticity and originality became a key issue. This session takes a critical perspective on the topic, examining the reinvention and reconstruction of our mythical past.

Rewriting and reinterpretation
This session examines the impact of the national revival through the translation and rewriting of ancient myths and legends. The nineteenth-century saw the revival of ancient sagas such as the Poetry of Ossian, the Kalevala, or the mythical and heroic narratives of the Poetic Edda, while gifted female scholars such as Lady Guest and Lady Augusta Gregory translated the Welsh and Irish legends. This session examines the way in which the myths and legends of the past were rewritten and reinterpreted by European writers and artists, often guided by different national, political and ideological agendas.

Spiritualism and secret societies
Spiritualism and esoteric traditions had a significant place in the European cultural arena around the year 1900. This subject has become an increasingly central topic of research in recent years, but its relationship with national revivals has not been fully examined. Yet, it is well known that these two phenomena were often deeply interconnected. For instance, Celtic mysticism had direct links with spiritualism, theosophy and other occult movements, as did the mystical interpretations of the Kalevala that were popular among Finnish artists, writers, and musicians.

Please send a 500-word abstract to Marja Lahelma (marja.lahelma@helsinki.fi) and Frances Fowle (frances.fowle@ed.ac.uk or ffowle@nationalgalleries.org) by 15 September 2017.

EXH: Nature's Mirror: Reality and Symbol in Belgian Landscape

'Nature’s Mirror: Reality and Symbol in Belgian Landscape'
The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College (Brighton, Massachusetts) 
September 10 – December 10, 2017

Fernand Khnopff (1858–1921), Memory of Bruges. The Entrance of the Beguinage, 1904, Hearn Family Trust.

Since the Renaissance, art in the region of Belgium and the nearby Netherlands has been known for innovations in realistic representation of visual appearances and for an extraordinary fluency in symbolism. The development of landscape as an independent genre was fostered by new market forces and artistic concerns in Belgium in the sixteenth century, and landscape emerged as a major focus for nineteenth-century realist and symbolist artists. Nature’s Mirror: Reality and Symbol in Belgian Landscape traces these landmark developments with a rich array of seldom-seen works.

Illustrating the birth of landscape art, Nature’s Mirror opens with important prints and drawings by artists like Pieter Bruegel, Hieronymus Cock, Paul Brill, and Roelandt Savery. The exhibition then explores the evolving dialogue between subjective experience and the external world by featuring major modern works by artists from the School of Tervuren and symbolists including Fernand Khnopff and William Degouve de Nuncques.

Displaying more than 120 works, many from the leading private collection of Belgian art in America, the Hearn Family Trust, Nature’s Mirror examines the wealth of artistic expression that bloomed in the regions of Belgium in an unprecedented fashion.

Organized by the McMullen Museum, Nature’s Mirror has been curated by Jeffery Howe and underwritten by Boston College with major support from the Patrons of the McMullen Museum and Mary Ann and Vincent Q. Giffuni.

Exhibition catalogue
Edited by Howe, Nature’s Mirror is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by American and Belgian specialists Anne Adriaens-Pannier, Albert Alhadeff, Alison Hokanson, Howe, Catherine Labio, and Dominique Marechal. They examine artists such as Fernand Khnopff, Henri De Braekeleer, and Léon Spilliaert within the regional contexts that influenced them, the transition of Belgian realism to symbolism, George Minne’s poetic illustrations, and themes of industrialization and labor. Nature’s Mirror presents more than 120 paintings, prints, and drawings in chronological order, from the Renaissance through the First World War, illuminating the evolution of Belgian art in this fruitful period.

CFP: Male Bonds in Nineteenth-Century Art

'Male Bonds in Nineteenth-Century Art'
Organized by Ghent University and the European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art (ESNA)
In cooperation with the University of Antwerp and the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent
15-16 May 2018, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium
URL of the conference website

Aimé-Jules Dalou, Brotherhood (La fraternité), 1883, plaster. Paris, city hall of the Xth arrondissement. Credit: Coyau / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Male Bonds is a two-day international conference that aims to explore the place of male bonds in nineteenth-century artistic practice and visual arts. The conference invites participants to reflect on the ways in which changing notions of masculinity and male sexuality impacted forms of sociability between men in the artistic scene of the long nineteenth century. In so doing, it seeks to build a bridge between traditional art-historical scholarship and the fields of gender and gay and lesbian studies: an interdisciplinary exchange of which the full potential for scholarship on the nineteenth century remains to be exploited.

Male homosociality helped structure nineteenth-century European and American society. Its pre-eminence at that time follows, inter alia, from the general separation between men and women in social roles if not in social spheres, and from the lack of a strictly binary view of male sexual orientation. The personal lives and careers of men bore the marks of their relations with other men: with brothers, friends, colleagues, pupils, business associates and many others. Such relations were characterized both by the dynamics of comradeship and by the hierarchies of class, age, race, professional status, etc. They were both established between individuals and in collectivities, especially as fraternal organizations flourished from the late eighteenth century onwards. So intense could men’s relations be that they seem to have included possibilities of a romantic and erotic kind that are foreign to normative relationships between men today, even if male-male intimacy relied upon women’s bodies for its consolidation.

Especially in the fast-paced decades around the turn of the century, changes arose in Europe and the United States that affected male homosociality to varying degrees. Categories such as ‘inversion’ (i.e. the reversal of masculine gender identity) and ‘homosexuality’ came into being through the interplay of increasingly visible queer subcultures and of a discursive explosion emanating from the fields of medicine, psychiatry, law, etc. The increasing conception of same-sex sexualities coincided and intermingled with other challenges to traditional notions of manhood - e.g. fears of degeneration, women’s entry into education, politics and the work force - to such an extent that scholars have described a wide-ranging fin-de-siècle “crisis of masculinity”. Men’s answers to these challenges altered the ways in which they related to other men, establishing for instance a “rough and tough” hegemonic masculinity and what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has designated a “male homosexual panic”.

This conference strives to probe, challenge and expand upon this academic grand narrative of male homosociality through the lens of art history. It aims to establish a multifaceted survey of the male bonds that underpinned nineteenth-century art, and to consider the theoretical and methodological implications of the study thereof. Gender studies, queer theory and gay and lesbian studies have made available a great many histories and concepts with which to critically examine the specificity of gender and sexuality in art: an exchange through which all disciplines involved stand to be enriched. We welcome papers that undertake this interdisciplinary endeavor, and mark men in art history as gendered historical subjects.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Friendships, professional ties and family relations
- The artist’s society, the brotherhood, the academy, the studio
- Links with architecture, music, literature, applied arts, etc.
- Links with politics, law, religion, medicine, sports, the military, etc.
- Intersectionality and the role of class, race, sexuality, age, power, etc.
- Ethnicity, colonialism, orientalism and intercultural encounters
- Homophobia and homoeroticism, same-sex desire, queerness
- Women among men, as solvent and/or detractor of men’s bonds
- Male bonds as an artistic theme, the portrait and Freundschaftsporträt, the male nude

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers in English, to be sent to malebonds@ugent.be by October 15. Please combine in one single pdf file: a 300-word abstract, 1 or 2 images, and a 100-word bio. We also welcome proposals for presentations in French and German, but - if accepted - ask that the accompanying PowerPoint be in English. Selected speakers will be contacted in the course of December. Following the conference, a selection of papers will be peer reviewed and published in a journal or edited volume.

Confirmed keynote speakers: Anthea Callen (University of Nottingham and the Australian National University) and Michael Hatt (University of Warwick)

Organizing committee: Thijs Dekeukeleire (Ghent University), Henk de Smaele (University of Antwerp), Rachel Esner (University of Amsterdam), Peggy Hobbels (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent), Katharina Pewny (Ghent University), Lisa Smit (Van Gogh Museum), Marjan Sterckx (Ghent University)

Scientific committee: Jan Dirk Baetens (Radboud University Nijmegen), Gert Buelens (Ghent University), Anthea Callen (University of Nottingham and the Australian National University), Johan De Smet (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent), Thijs Dekeukeleire (Ghent University), Henk de Smaele (University of Antwerp), Stefan Dudink (Radboud University), Rachel Esner (University of Amsterdam), Michael Hatt (University of Warwick), Mayken Jonkman (RKD-Netherlands Institute for Art History), Katharina Pewny (Ghent University), Jenny Reynaerts (Rijksmuseum), Abigail Solomon-Godeau (University of California, Santa Barbara), Lisa Smit (Van Gogh Museum), Marjan Sterckx (Ghent University), Maite van Dijk (Van Gogh Museum), Catherine Verleysen (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent), Kaat Wils (University of Leuven)

Call for PhD proposals UGent-Verona

De call voor het gloednieuwe UGent-Verona joint PhD programma is online geplaatst. Passende voorstellen voor doctoraatsonderzoek zijn welkom!

Alle info via deze link. 

EXH: Walther Vanbeselaere, Verzamelaar voor de staat 1948-1973

'Walther Vanbeselaere, Verzamelaar voor de staat 1948-1973'
Sint-Martens-Latem, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, i.s.m. het KMSKA
2 juli 2017 – 1 oktober 2017

Deze zomer presenteert het museum Dhondt-Dhaenens van 2 juli tot 1 oktober de moderne kunstcollectie van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, voor een belangrijk deel samengebracht onder hoofdconservator Walther Vanbeselaere tussen 1948 en 1973. Zijn ideeën over de moderne Vlaamse kunst waren bijzonder invloedrijk en hebben de kunstgeschiedschrijving en de canon in België in de 20ste eeuw meebepaald. Ook op de vorming van de verzameling Dhondt-Dhaenens had Vanbeselaere een zeer grote invloed. Door de belangrijke rol die hij in deze instellingen heeft gespeeld, kunnen tussen beide collecties parallellen getrokken worden.

De tentoonstelling brengt werk van Belgische moderne topkunstenaars zoals James Ensor, Henri Evenepoel, Léon Spilliaert, Edgard Tytgat, Jean Brusselmans en Rik Wouters – kunstenaars die Vanbeselaere bijzonder hoog in het vaandel droeg. De conservator had evenwel ook oog voor de internationale kunstcontext van die tijd. De rijke collectie Belgische kunst werd door Vanbeselaere aangevuld met werk van kunstenaars als Edgar Degas, Hans Hartung, Karel Appel, Ben Nicholson en Giacomo Manzù.

Voor de presentatie van deze tentoonstelling werden drie hedendaagse kunstenaars uitgenodigd om de museumruimte naar hun hand te zetten. Kunstenaars Oleg Matrokhin, Bart Lodewijks en Jacqy duVal treden in dialoog met de collectie Vanbeselaere a.d.h.v. architecturale, coloristische en tekenkundige ingrepen.

Kunstenaars in de tentoonstelling
Henri De Braekeleer, Jan Stobbaerts, James Ensor, Henri Evenepoel, Léon Spilliaert, Valerius De Saedeleer, Gustave Van de Woestyne, Jakob Smits, Albert Servaes, Frits Van den Berghe, Gust. De Smet, Constant Permeke, Hippolyte Daeye, Edgard Tytgat, Jean Brusselmans, Henri-Victor Wolvens, Rik Wouters, Edgar Degas, Hans Hartung, Karel Appel, Ben Nicholson, Odilon Redon, Georges Grard, Giacomo Manzù en Marino Marini.

Publicatie
Ter gelegenheid van de tentoonstelling, verschijnt ook een publiekscatalogus. Met teksten van o.a. Tanguy Eeckhout (curator Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens), Dr. Herwig Todts (conservator KMSKA), Evita Piscador, Thijs Dekeukeleire, Pepa De Maesschalck, Katrien Denayer, Céline Vermeire, en Eline Stoop.

CONF: Food, glorious food: Food at the heart of nineteenth-century art

'Food, glorious food: Food at the heart of nineteenth-century art'
Organized by ESNA (European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art)
Antwerp, MAS (Museum Aan de Stroom)
June 8-9, 2017

Check out the full programme and registration details for this year's ESNA conference here.

Organized in conjunction with the exhibition 'Antwerp à la carte' at Antwerp's MAS, this 2-day international conference examines the various and complex relations between food, the experience of eating, and 19th-century art. Modern phenomena such as industrialization, liberalization of the market, urbanization, rise of the middle class, issues of nationality and gender, leisure time and economic upheaval affected the gastronomic field as well as the depiction of it in the visual arts. This new fascination for food was reflected in the entire panoply of the artistic field, ranging from recipes, food literature, decorative arts and interior design to works of art and art criticism.

Organizing committee: Leen Beyers (MAS, Antwerp), Allison Deutsch (University College London), Maite van Dijk (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), Mayken Jonkman (RKD-Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague), Lisa Smit (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).

Scientific committee: Jan Dirk Baetens (Radboud University Nijmegen), Leen Beyers (MAS, Antwerp), Ilja van Damme (University of Antwerp), Allison Deutsch (University College London), Maite van Dijk (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), Rachel Esner (University of Amsterdam), Mayken Jonkman (RKD-Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague), Jenny Reynaerts (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Lisa Smit (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), Marjan Sterckx (Ghent University).

Registration
Regular: € 60 (both days) - € 40 (1 day)
Student: € 40 (both days) - € 25 (1 day)
Tickets are available via the RKD webshop

CFP: Revisiting Rediscovery: Early Netherlandish Art in the Long 19th Century

'Revisiting Rediscovery: Early Netherlandish Art in the Long 19th Century'
Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference, Ghent, Belgium
May 24-26, 2018

Panel Chairs: Edward Wouk, Assistant Professor, The University of Manchester; Alison Hokanson, Assistant Curator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Francis Haskell famously argued that the “rediscovery” of early Netherlandish painting in the nineteenth century was central to the notions of history and culture that undergirded the rise of the modern nation-states of Belgium and the Netherlands. This view has been enriched by recent scholarship on the medieval and Renaissance revivalist movements that took hold in both countries from about 1840 through the early years of the twentieth century. Yet the complex relationship between artistic and literary practices of the period and the emergence of a distinctly northern European history of art remains largely unexamined, and its implications unacknowledged.

As Léon de Laborde, Camille Lemonnier, Émile Verhaeren, Hippolyte Fierens-Gevaert, and, slightly later, Johan Huizinga published pioneering investigations into the world of Van Eyck, Memling, and Rubens, a similar retrospective spirit animated the artistic imagination. Painters from Henri Leys to Fernand Khnopff and writers from Charles De Coster to Maurice Maeterlinck embraced northern precedents as a key source of inspiration for works that were at once contemporary and rooted in a rich regional heritage.

This panel aims to explore the interplay between the visual arts and the nascent field of art history in Belgium and the Netherlands. It seeks twenty-minute papers which address how artists, critics, historians, and others working in the Low Countries and abroad developed diverse perspectives on their past that continue to shape our understanding of the subject. Papers addressing specific instances of revivalism and historicism are welcome, as are broader studies of historiographical and literary trends, which offer insight into how one era may mediate and even define our vision of another.

To submit a proposal for consideration, please send a 250 word abstract, a 100 word bio, and a 1-2 page CV to rediscoveryhna@gmail.com by June 1, 2017. Papers must be based on ongoing research and unpublished. Participants must be HNA members at the time of the conference.

GEN: Doorstart werkgroep XIX

XIX, de werkgroep 19de-eeuwse kunst, maakt na een korte radiostilte een doorstart.

De groep brengt onderzoekers uit het academische en museale veld samen en stimuleert het onderzoek naar de kunst van de lange 19de eeuw in België en daarbuiten. XIX organiseert zelf onder meer studiedagen, seminaries en rondleidingen voor zijn leden, en deelt andere initiatieven via dit online platform.

Wij willen via deze weg alvast de oprichters van de werkgroep en alle vorige bestuursleden van harte danken voor hun jarenlange inzet. Dankzij hen groeide XIX uit tot een succesvolle netwerkgroep met talrijke leden, die garant staat voor een gevarieerde uitwisseling binnen het gemeenschappelijke onderzoeksdomein.

Om op de hoogte te worden gehouden van de activiteiten van XIX, en om relevante berichten te delen, kan men steeds contact opnemen met werkgroepXIX(at)gmail.com

Met vriendelijke groeten,

Werner Adriaenssens (voorzitter)
Thijs Dekeukeleire, Ko Goubert, Stefan Huygebaert (bestuursleden)

CONFERENCE GOTHIC MODERNISMS

ANNOUNCEMENT: CONFERENCE GOTHIC MODERNISMS

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 29-30 June 2017

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

GOTHIC MODERNISMS: 29 & 30 June, 2017, The Rijksmuseum: A two-day international conference discussing the legacies, histories and contested identities of European Gothic/early-modern visual cultures in (global) modernity, in particular in modernism and the avant-gardes.

More information here; registration here.

Fee (125€; 40€ for students) includes access to the Rijksmuseum Collections on both days, a guided visit to the exhibition Small Wonders, coffee, tea, lunch, snacks and drinks. Questions and comments can be directed to dr. Tessel M. Bauduin, University of Amsterdam: t[dot]m[dot]bauduin[at]uva[dot]nl

This conference is part of a trilogy. For earlier events see ‘Visions of the North’.

CFP: Representations of ‘Nature’ in Nineteenth-century Art: the Ecological Paradigm

Call For Papers:

UAAC (Universities Art Association of Canada) Conference in Banff,

2017 Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada,

October 12-15, 2017.

Representations of ‘Nature’ in Nineteenth-century Art: the Ecological Paradigm

Chair: Joan E. Greer, Professor, Art & Design, University of Alberta, Canada

The word “oecology”, coined by the German zoologist and artist Ernst Haeckel in 1866, brought together the study of living organisms with their environments. As discussed by Greg Thomas in his chapter “The Ecological Paradigm” in Art and Ecology in Nineteenth Century France (2000), the term ‘nature’ was coming to be recognized as “an abstract concept defined by its difference from the human”. Recently, nineteenth-century representations of the natural world and its inhabitants have been the subject of renewed interest, with a range of art historical and cross-disciplinary theoretical writings including those dealing with the Anthropocene, Animal Studies, and the History of Science, informing these studies and exhibitions. This session welcomes papers that contribute to this discussion, including those that consider representations of natural environments, of non-human species within their environment (including in scientific imagery), and the relationship between the two.

Please send your paper proposal by Friday, May 12, directly to the Session Chair, Joan E. Greer, University of Alberta: jegreer@ualberta.ca

Submissions must include: the name and email address of the applicant; the applicant’s institutional affiliation and rank; the paper title; an abstract (300 words maximum); and a brief bio (150 words maximum).

Deadline for submissions: Friday, May 12, 2017

For complete UAAC program see http://www.uaac-aauc.com/en/conference

Studiedag "Het atelier opengesteld", Brussel, vr. 24 mrt. 2017

CONF: Gothic Modernisms - Rijksmuseum Amsterdam - 29-30 June 2017

Gothic Modernisms is a two-day international conference, taking place on 29 & 30 June, 2017, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, NL. Organized by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Coventry University; the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture, in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; the Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, and Radboud University, Nijmegen.

Gothic Modernisms will focus on the (global) legacies, histories and contested identities of Northern European Gothic/early-modern visual cultures in modernity and, in particular, on identities of modernism, including avant-gardes. It builds on two preceding, related conferences on ‘Primitive Renaissances’ (The National Gallery, London, 2014) and ‘Visions of the North’ (Compton Verney Museum, 2016), which have opened new scholarship on 19th- and early 20th-century responses to Northern Renaissance and early Germanic art. Gothic Modernisms will expand this field of enquiry and its temporal scope. It explores the pivotal, yet still understudied, reception, construction and invention of Northern Gothic art and reception in the period spanning the 1880s to the 1950s, extending interest in Latin and Germanic Gothic to the ‘Nordic’ world. We term these artistic and cultural reinventions ‘gothic modernisms’.

The conference thus aims to develop both a broad perspective in relation to gothic modernisms and a deepening of the issues—methodological, theoretical, aesthetic, archival—pertinent to this subject.

Conference Organizers:

Prof. Dr Juliet Simpson, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Coventry University, UK

Dr Tessel Bauduin,  Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture, University of Amsterdam

Steering Committee:

Prof. Dr Juliet Simpson, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Coventry University, UK

Dr Tessel Bauduin,  Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture, University of Amsterdam

Prof. Dr Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, Ateneum Art  Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

Dr Jan Baetens, Radboud University, Nijmegen

Dr Jenny Reynaerts, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Registration

When: 29 and 30 June 2017
Where: Auditorium, Rijksmuseum

Early bird student fee: € 30
Early bird regular fee: € 110
Late student fee: € 40
Late regular fee: € 125

Early bird registration ends 31 March

Registration link

More information about the conference and full program

Causerie “A Tale of Two Cities: Rechtsiconologische vergelijking van de decoraties voor het Hof van Assisen van Antwerpen (1885-1893) en Brabant (1908-1914)"

7 Maart 2017 – Causerie “A Tale of Two Cities: Rechtsiconologische vergelijking van de decoraties voor het Hof van Assisen van Antwerpen (1885-1893) en Brabant (1908-1914)" door Stefan Huygebaert (UGent)

Op dinsdag 7 maart 2017 om 16u00 geeft Stefan Huygebaert in de vergaderzaal van het Instituut voor Rechtsgeschiedenis van de UGent een rechtshistorische causerie met als titel “A Tale of Two Cities: rechtsiconologische vergelijking van de decoraties voor het hof van assisen van Antwerpen (1885-1893) en Brabant (1908-1914). 

Hoewel beide steden slechts vijftig kilometer van elkaar verwijderd liggen, kan het verschil tussen de monumentale schilderingen in de hoven van assisen van Antwerpen en Brabant omzeggens niet groter zijn. Dit verschil gaat zowel op voor de artistieke middens en hun specifieke symbiose van kunst en recht, als voor de gekozen iconografie. De Antwerpse casus speelt zich zo’n tien jaar na de inauguratie van het Antwerpse justitiepaleis af. Eind 1885 neemt rechtbankvoorzitter Théophile Smekens het initiatief om schilders Pieter Van der Ouderaa, Karel Ooms en de gebroeders Juliaan en Albrecht De Vriendt de muren van Antwerpse assisenhof te laten decoreren, bijgestaan door stadsarchivaris Pieter Génard. Twintig jaar later krijgt Jean Delville, na herhaaldelijke oproepen uit de hoek van Edmond Picard, als idealistisch kunstenaar de opdracht voor de decoratie van het hof van assisen van Brabant, een ruimte in het hart van Brusselse Justitiepaleis die in 1944 volledig verloren ging. Op basis van archiefonderzoek, 3D-reconstructies en iconologische analyse tracht deze lezing beide decoratieprogramma’s comparatief te kaderen binnen de laatnegentiende-eeuwse evoluties van het strafrecht en de Belgische kunst. 

Aanmelden kan via Stefan.Huygebaert@UGent.be.

Van Gogh Museum onderzoeksbeurs

Ben je in de afgelopen drie jaar afgestudeerd op het gebied van 19de-eeuwse, West-Europese kunstgeschiedenis? Dan kom je in aanmerking voor de Van Gogh Museum Onderzoeksbeurs van € 5.000.

Het Van Gogh Museum stelt met de Van Gogh Museum Onderzoeksbeurs recent afgestudeerde kunsthistorici in staat onderzoek te doen naar een onderwerp dat gerelateerd is aan het collectiegebied van het museum, ten behoeve van een publicatie.
De beurs bedraagt € 5.000 en kun je gebruiken voor het bewerken van een afstudeerscriptie of ander lopend onderzoek tot een publicatie, bijvoorbeeld een artikel of essay.

Ben je een getalenteerde onderzoeker en ben je niet langer dan drie jaar afgestudeerd? Dan kun je solliciteren. Schrijf een onderzoeksvoorstel van maximaal 1.500 woorden. Stuur dat samen met een curriculum vitae inclusief publicatielijst, een exemplaar van je afstudeerscriptie en een referentiebrief naar blok@vangoghmuseum.nl.

Je onderzoeksvoorstel moet gaan over een onderwerp uit de West-Europese kunstgeschiedenis uit de periode 1830-1914.

De deadline voor aanmelding is 1 april 2017. Een selectiecommissie beoordeelt het voorstel op geschiktheid. De onderzoeksbeurs gaat in op 1 juni 2017. Vóór 1 oktober 2017 laat je het resultaat aan het Van Gogh Museum weten.

Meer info hier: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/nl/kennis-en-onderzoek/van-gogh-museum-academy/onderzoeksbeurs