The Itinerant Shrine: Art, History, and the Multiple Geographies of the Holy House of Loreto
Drawing on the recent scholarly interest in the cult of the Holy House, this conference endeavors to serve as an important milestone for academic discourse on Loreto, bringing together scholars working in a variety of disciplines and employing diverse methodological approaches.
Organised by Matteo Chirumbolo (The Courtauld Institute of Art; Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut), Erin Giffin (I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies) and Antongiulio Sorgini (Johns Hopkins University).
Clive’s conference is kindly supported by Dr Nicholas Murray and Mr William Sharp in loving memory of Mr Clive Davies.
Fashion: Visual & Material Interconnections Book Series ‘Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women’ Launch
We are proud to announce the launch of a new book series – a collaboration between Bloomsbury Publishing and The Courtauld Institute of Art that brings together scholarly and innovative approaches to understanding the relationship between the visual and material in forming fashion and dress cultures. In the first critical history of French readymade fashion, Alexis Romano examines an array of sources, including surviving garments, fashion magazines, film, photography and interviews, to weave together previously disparate historical narratives. The resulting volume – Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women – situates the readymade in wider postwar discourses of gender, art, design, urbanism, technology and the everyday.
Unravelling Threads: Tracing and Transforming Violence and Trauma through Fashion
This two-day conference, hosted by London College of Fashion and The Courtauld Institute of Art, seeks to explore the wide-ranging and nuanced relationships between fashion, violence, and trauma. It aims to understand how violence and trauma manifest upon the body, as well as how fashion offers the prospect of processing, resolving, and overcoming violent and traumatic experiences.
Ukrainian Modernism and the Architecture of Standardization
Christina E. Crawford (Assistant Professor, Art History, Emory University) provides historical context to situate present-day destruction of architecturally rich Kharkiv, the first capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (1919-34). Following Prof. Crawford’s lecture, we will be joined by two Ukrainian architectural preservation experts, Olena Mokrousova and Kateryna Kublytska, via Zoom. They will discuss the current architectural situation and preservation efforts on the ground in Kyiv and Kharkiv, sharing their perspective and thoughts on what will be needed to sensitively repair Ukrainian cities in the future.
Memento mori Imagery and the Limits of the Self in Late Medieval Europe
Objects bearing memento mori themes were abundant in Europe in the decades immediately around the year 1500. The material properties of these objects – the matter from which they were formed, the apparent care or negligence with which they were fashioned, and the ways their physical condition betrays signs of heavy use or careful conservation – can point us toward a better understanding of the diversity of interests that inspired their creation and use. These motivations range from pious apprehensions about the fate of one’s soul to arguably less anxious ruminations on the nature of image-making and the role of an emerging sense of aesthetic engagement. Taken together, they encapsulate one of the central fascinations and anxieties of their age: in an era committed to the notion that deep truths could be conveyed through surface appearances and that individual identity could be captured, communicated, and preserved through static imagery, memento mori objects resisted the notion of a stable self, reminding their viewers of the anonymity that awaits us all in the grave.
Speaker: Professor Stephen G. Perkinson – Professor of Art History and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Bowdoin College.
The Itinerant Shrine: Art, History, and the Multiple Geographies of the Holy House of Loreto
Drawing on the recent scholarly interest in the cult of the Holy House, this conference endeavors to serve as an important milestone for academic discourse on Loreto, bringing together scholars working in a variety of disciplines and employing diverse methodological approaches.
Organised by Matteo Chirumbolo (The Courtauld Institute of Art; Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut), Erin Giffin (I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies) and Antongiulio Sorgini (Johns Hopkins University).
Clive’s conference is kindly supported by Dr Nicholas Murray and Mr William Sharp in loving memory of Mr Clive Davies.
Watch Now
American Art Archives in Britain
‘American Art Archives in Britain’ explores the stories of, and stories contained in, archival records and documents generated by American artists, artworks and artworld activities in Britain. Few UK holdings match the breadth and depth of material on American artists in US archives, and so this project facilitates consideration of what constitutes an archive, the meaning of scarcity as opposed to abundance of information, and the ways small details add to, frame, and disrupt established narratives. The project also provides opportunity to reflect on the nature of archival research in transatlantic art histories.
American Art and the Political Imagination
This conference originated from a single question: In what ways have art and visual culture contributed to the formulation of the American political imagination? Since its beginnings, the nation’s fractious political identity has been developed and perpetuated throughout its visual economy, playing out on picture planes, splashed across mural panels, and made matter in sculptures and monuments. As such, visual and material culture are a critical locus through which the nation’s political constituents — its voters, parties, politicians, and dissenters — imagine, perform, and organise themselves. It is through the creation, manipulation, dissemination, and destruction of images and objects that these constituents have formed their political identities, asserted assent and dissent, and articulated their desire to end political regimes or their yearning to revisit them.
The Art Collector in Early Modern Italy
Lorenzo Lotto’s famous portrait of Andrea Odoni in the Royal Collection may be the canonical image of the Renaissance art collector. Monika Schmitter presents her recent book which investigates who Odoni was and how and why he amassed an impressive collection of antiquities, modern sculpture, paintings, and naturalia in his relatively modest Venetian palace.
Decals of Love, or, The One True Imposter, a Lyric Lecture With/Through Some Queer Love Poems
In this lyric lecture on queer love poems, a perhaps-too-close reading, Sophie Seita treats poetic lines taken from Wendy Lotterman’s poetry as if they were part of their ongoing dialogue and epistolary friendship.
Sophie Seita is a London-based artist, writer, and educator whose work explores text in its various translations into book objects, performances, videos, or other languages and embodiments. More info on her performances, publications, and other projects can be found here.
Queer Ecologies: Artist Adham Faramawy
Adham Faramawy is an artist of Egyptian descent based in London. They have been shortlisted for the 2021 Jarman Award, having previously been shortlisted for that award in 2017. Faramawy has recently exhibited in group shows at Somerset House, London (2020) and Science Gallery, London (2020) as well as Art Night 2021. In 2019 the artist presented Skin Flicks at a screening dedicated to their work at Tate Britain. Faramawy was a 2018/2019 fellow at Broadway’s Near Now, Nottingham and has had solo exhibition at Cell Projects, London and The Bluecoat, Liverpool. Organised by Dr Edwin Coomasaru (The Courtauld and Edinburgh University) and Dr Rachel Warriner (The Courtauld)
Decolonizing Art History with Mexico’s “Tenth Muse,” Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Charlene Villaseñor Black is Professor of Art History and Chicana/o Studies and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and founding editor-in-chief of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (LALVC, UC Press). She publishes on a range of topics related to the early modern Iberian world, Chicanx studies, and contemporary Latinx art. Organised by Professor David Peters Corbett (The Courtauld).
Painting Pairs 2021/22: Collaborative Research in Conservation and Art History - Second Presentations
Painting Pairs presents collaborative research undertaken by graduates in conservation and art history focussing on paintings currently in the conservation studios at the Courtauld. The paintings that form the focus for investigation by each a pair of graduates are from different periods and pose a range of questions related to their history, conservation and display.
Considering Collecting: The Future of Public Collections
The sixth and final event in the ‘Considering Collecting’ 2021/22 series will look to the future. Having looked at some of the key issues affecting those who collect art and who work with collections today, we will think about what needs to happen next: can collecting become a more democratic, representative activity, particularly for those institutions and organisations which serve the public?
Open Courtauld Hour - Episode 7, S6: Art and Scent
What does it mean to smell art history? This Open Courtauld Hour will explore how The Courtauld can use aromatic stimuli, perfumes and fragrances, to transport people to places, moments and feelings (without using written or visual languages). Join The Courtauld Community to learn more about how we are taking visitors on an olfactory journey, designed to reflect the inspirations and illustrations in the artworks on our walls.
Imagining the Apocalypse: Art and the End Times
What are the politics of picturing the end times? This panel discussion will celebrate the launch of Imagining the Apocalypse: Art and the End Times with Courtauld Books Online.
Image, Pattern, Repetition: The Craft of Romanesque Sculpture in Southwest England
Speaker: Dr Alex Woodcock Organised by the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland.
Considering Collecting: Women and Collecting
Women have been making, selling, and collecting artworks and artefacts for centuries, but few have reached the status and renown of many of their male counterparts. While many men collecting art have gone on to found internationally famous museums, galleries and institutions to house their collection, there are fewer women collectors who have been in such a privileged position historically.
Where artworks, documentation, and objects relating to the lives of men are often carefully collected, catalogued and preserved by collections of all sizes, there has been much work to do to restore this balance to uncover and share stories of – and by – women connected to the visual arts. In the fifth event in the ‘Considering Collecting’ series, our panel will explore this ‘rebalancing’ in more depth.
Supported by Laurence C. Zale Associates, Inc., a visual arts advisory company.
The Guest of the Body: Visualizing Souls in Medieval Europe, 1100-1200
Shirin Fozi is Associate Professor in History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of a monograph titled Romanesque Tomb Effigies: Death and Redemption in Medieval Europe, 1000-1200 (2021), which received a Millard Meiss Grant from the College Art Association, and co-editor of Christ on the Cross: The Boston Crucifix and the Rise of Medieval Wood Sculpture (2020). Fozi has also published several articles on modern collections of medieval art, and her most recent Museum Studies seminar culminated in a student-curated online exhibition called A Nostalgic Filter: Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age (2020). Organised by Dr Tom Nickson (The Courtauld) and Dr Jessica Barker (The Courtauld).