Call for Papers: ART, INC.

Deadline for paper proposals: Friday 5^th September 2025

Symposium to be held on Friday 5^th December 2025 at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London

Across galleries and university curricula, art is still routinely categorised, displayed, and taught according to a conceptual framework that centres the nation. This focus has resulted in a minimisation of the significant role that corporations have played in commissioning art, innovating artistic styles and genres, and transporting art objects across the globe. Indeed, the historical process of nation-building arguably relied on visual and material practices that incorporated bodies had long used to communicate common values or cultivate loyalty. To this day, private corporations are major patrons of artists and generate considerable contestation over cultural values, with much contemporary debate over the character of corporate-sponsored art. By recentring an overlooked ‘corporate art history’, this symposium will provide insights into the place of art objects within a range of broader historical phenomena: the role of corporations in the formation of civil society and the state; the expansion of commercial and industrial capitalism; the concomitant globalisation of legal understandings of incorporation; as well as the ‘corporate character’ of European imperialism. Importantly, it will also foreground how visual and material cultures have historically played a significant role in materialising and making tangible the very concept of incorporation – the abstract notion that continues to underpin so many of today’s legal and financial modes of association. Held at a time when the political and environmental impact of multinational corporations is under particular historical and journalistic focus, Art, Inc. will not only provoke new thinking about corporations as significant actors in art history, but will open new insights into the ways visual and material cultures have shaped the histories of empire, commerce, law, and globalisation.

We invite proposals for twenty-minute papers on topics from any period or geography that address issues including, but not limited to:

1. Histories of corporate patronage in art history
2. Corporations as agents of stylistic innovation in art history
3. Histories of visual and material culture making the abstract concept of incorporation intelligible or tangible
4. The possibility of tracing a ‘corporate style’ in visual and material culture
5. Histories of corporations provoking contestation over artistic values
6. Antagonism, relations, or blurred boundaries between the state and corporations in art history
7. Histories of states using art to manage or nationalise corporations
8. How the visual and material practices of corporations contributed to the development of civil societies

Please send paper proposals of no more than 400 words, along with a full CV, to tom.young@courtauld.ac.uk. Papers should not contain material that is already in publication, as ideally this conference will lead to further collaboration and, if possible, the publication of an edited volume.

The deadline for applications is Friday 5^th September. Applicants will be informed about decisions by mid-September.

Successful applicants will be encouraged, where possible, to use institutional funding they have available for travel and accommodation, as only minimal funding from the Courtauld will be available and this will be reserved for early career candidates and those without institutional support.