Research Forum Archive

Calendar: Spring Term 2010

January to March

All events were held at The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, unless stated otherwise. Events were free and open to members of the public unless otherwise stated.

Printable version

Spring 2010 Friends Lecture Series
Conservation in Focus: Preserving Painted Architectural Decoration at the Mountain Resort of the Qing Emperors

Tuesday, 12 January 2010
17.30 - 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

The Shuxiang Temple, Imperial Mountain Resort, Chengde, China. Photo: Getty Conservation Institute

Speaker(s): Lorinda Wong (Project Specialist, Getty Conservation Institute)

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: Conservation of Wall Painting Department and Conservation & Technology Department (The Courtauld)

In China, architectural painting of Qing wooden buildings has traditionally been restored — repainted — rather than conserved. Recently, this practice has been changing, with conservation becoming a more favoured..... read more

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture
Refashioning Fashionability: Women’s Portraiture, Fashion Prints, and Allegory in France at the Turn of the 18th Century

Wednesday, 13 January 2010 (note date)
18.00, Seminar Room 3, Department of Art History, University College London, 20-21 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0AG

Speaker(s): Kathleen Nicholson (University of Oregon)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Rose Marie San Juan (r.sanjuan@ucl.ac.uk) and Joanna Woodall (joanna.woodall@courtauld.ac.uk)

In the period from c. 1690-1720 French portraits of women display a decisive shift from courtly formality to a more relaxed and socially nuanced representation — a change that tracks the increased personal freedoms and social reconfiguring that became possible at the end of Louis XIV’s reign. This paper will argue that the popular......read more

CINE CUBANO: THE REVOLUTION AND FILM

Memories of Underdevelopment, Dir. Tomas Guiterrez Alea, 1968

Thursday, 14 January 2010

18.00, Research Forum South Room

Ticket/entry details: Open to all Courtauld students

Organised by: Dr Stephanie Schwartz

In conjunction with the BA Special Option course “Art and Revolution: Cuban Art Since 1959,” the Research Forum presents Cine Cubano—a six-film series on and about the Cuban revolution. Opening with Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment (1968), a film that defined the revolution for..... read more

Caroline Villers Associate Fellow Lecture
Dirty Books: Quantifying Patterns of Use in Medieval Manuscripts Using a Densitometer

Wednesday, 20 January 2010
17.30, Research Forum South Room

Detail of prayerbook folio from eastern part of Northern Netherlands, showing dark deposits from handling in the lower margin. Liège, University Library. Ms. 2091 B, fol. 14r

Speaker(s): Dr Kathryn M Rudy (Caroline Villers Associate Fellow 2009-10, The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Aviva Burnstock

Medieval manuscripts carry signs of use and wear. The priest repeatedly kissed the canon page of the missal, leaving his greasy nose print behind. The devotee regularly touched the image of Mary out of veneration, but inadvertently rubbed the paint off the vellum. Medieval readers of books of hours and prayerbooks...... read more

CINE CUBANO: THE REVOLUTION AND FILM

Grin Without a Cat, Dir. Chris Marker, 1977

Thursday, 21 January 2010
18.00, Research Forum South Room

Ticket/entry details: Open to all Courtauld students

Organised by: Dr Stephanie Schwartz

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture
The Artist as Historian of Art: On the Souvenirs of Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun

Monday, 25 January 2010 CANCELLED
18.00, Seminar Room 3, Department of Art History, University College London, 20-21 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0AG

Speaker(s): Mary Sheriff (University of North Carolina)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Rose Marie San Juan (r.sanjuan@ucl.ac.uk) and Joanna Woodall (joanna.woodall@courtauld.ac.uk)

Imagining the English Baroque in the 20th Century:
Image, Exhibition, Scholarship
Spring Term Architecture Event

Uneasy Collaborations: Rudolf Wittkower and Helmut Gernsheim

Tuesday, 26 January 2010
17.00 - 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Speaker(s): Professor Christy Anderson (Department of Art, University of Toronto)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Christine Stevenson

This lecture explores the collaboration between the photographer Helmut Gernsheim and the architectural historian Rudolf Wittkower, then head of the Fototeca at the Warburg Institute, London, during the early 1940s. Gernsheim was hired by the Warburg to document important buildings for the newly formed National Buildings Record and for..... read more

Research seminar: History of Photography
‘Ruins: the Ruin of Ruins’: Photography in the ‘Red Zone’ and the Aftermath of the Great War

Wednesday, 27 January 2010
17.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Simon Baker (Curator of Photography, Tate)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Alexandra Moschovi (alexandra.moschovi@courtauld.ac.uk), Julian Stallabrass (julian.stallabrass@courtauld.ac.uk) and Benedict Burbridge (benedict.burbridge@courtauld.ac.uk)

The History of Photography research seminar series aims to be a discursive platform for the discussion and dissemination of current research on photography.From art as photography and early photographic technology to ethnographic photographs and contemporary photography as art, the seminar welcomes contributions from researchers..... read more

Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary
Feminist Aesthetics and A.I.R. Gallery (New York)

Monday, 1 February 2010
17.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Meredith Brown (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Gavin Parkinson

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture

Discussion on The Sacred Made Real. Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700, at the National Gallery.

Monday, 1 February 2010

18.00, Department of Art History, University College London, 20-21 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0AG

Speaker(s): Xavier Bray (National Gallery)

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: Rose Marie San Juan (r.sanjuan@ucl.ac.uk) and Joanna Woodall (joanna.woodall@courtauld.ac.uk)

Discussion with Xavier Bray, curator of the exhibition The Sacred Made Real. Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700, at the National Gallery. Xavier Bray is Assistant Curator of 17th century Italian and Spanish paintings at the National Gallery..... read more

15th Annual Medieval Postgraduate Student Colloquium
Past Histories & Afterlives of Medieval Art and Architecture

Saturday, 6 February 2010
09.55 - 17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre (registration from 09.30)

The Stavelot Triptych, second half of the twelfth century (Photo: © Pierpont Morgan Library, New York)

Speaker(s): Connie Bailey (University of Leicester), Jessica Berenbeim (Harvard/The Courtauld Institute of Art), Melanie Hanan (Institute of Fine Arts, New York), Jim Harris (The Courtauld Institute of Art) ...
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Medieval postgraduate students Jack Hartnell, Laura Venesky and Lesley Milner

Within the field of art history, the Middle Ages can be perceived as static and unchanging. However, recent scholarship, fuelled by evolving forms of interdisciplinary research, has unmoored the medieval object..... read more

Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary
Paper Thin: Aubrey Beardsley's Immortality

Monday, 8 February 2010
17.30, Research Forum South Room

Servant carrying slippers on a tray, Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, 19th C. © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

Speaker(s): Anna Gruetzner Robins (University of Reading)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Gavin Parkinson

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture

Landscape and Exile

Monday, 8 February 2010

18.00, Seminar Room 3, Department of Art History, University College London, 20-21 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0AG

Speaker(s): Nick Grindle (University College London)

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: Rose Marie San Juan (r.sanjuan@ucl.ac.uk) and Joanna Woodall (joanna.woodall@courtauld.ac.uk)

Spring 2010 Friends Lecture Series
Conservation in Focus: Lucio Fontana´s Technical Means for Reaching Beyond the Third Dimension

Tuesday, 9 February 2010
17.30 - 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Lucio Fontana in his studio. Photographer unknown.

Speaker(s): Dr Pia Gottschaller (German Academy Villa Massimo, Rome)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Conservation of Wall Painting Department and Conservation & Technology Department (The Courtauld)

Dr Pia Gottschaller will present a lecture on the subject of her recent monograph of Lucio Fontana, Lucio Fontana´s Technical Means for Reaching Beyond the Third Dimension. The talk intends to offer insight into the 20th century Italian artist´s painterly choices as he ..... read more

Research seminar: RENAISSANCE

Another Antiquity: the Peasants of Pieter Bruegel

Wednesday, 10 February 2010

17.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Stephanie Porras (Leibniz-Gemeinschaft Postdoctoral Fellow, The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: Dr Susie Nash

Modern and Contemporary
Arshile Gorky and Abstract Expressionism: A Contested History

Wednesday, 10 February 2010
17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Arshile Gorky, The Limit, 1947. Private Collection © 2009 Estate of Arshile Gorky/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Speaker(s): Michael R. Taylor (The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Gavin Parkinson

Timed to coincide with the Arshile Gorky retrospective exhibition at Tate Modern (10 February - 3 May 2010), this lecture will explore the artist's relationship with the Abstract Expressionist movement. The initial reception of Gorky’s work after his death in 1948 paved the way for his gradual assimilation into the canon of Abstract Expressionism as it was formed in the 1950s..... read more

CINE CUBANO: THE REVOLUTION AND FILM

Red Desert, Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964

Thursday, 11 February 2010

18.00, Research Forum South Room

Ticket/entry details: Open to all Courtauld students

Organised by: Dr Stephanie Schwartz

In conjunction with the BA Special Option course “Art and Revolution: Cuban Art Since 1959,” the Research Forum presents Cine Cubano—a six-film series on and about the Cuban revolution. Opening with Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment (1968), a film that defined the revolution for..... read more

Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary
Displacement in the Work of Angela Ferreira (b. 1958): Mozambique, South Africa, and Portugal

Monday, 15 February 2010
17.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Ana Balona de Sa’Oliveira (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Gavin Parkinson

First Annual RIHA Lecture
Geographies of Provincialism in Roman Sculpture

Tuesday, 16 February 2010
17.00 - 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Speaker(s): Dr Peter Stewart (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Caroline Arscott

The Roman Empire was responsible for the spread of classical sculptural traditions across the territories of more than thirty modern countries, but in many places, notably in marginal regions like Britain, this artistic heritage was only partially adopted, and often took distinctly unclassical forms. This lecture re-examines the 'provincialism' of such..... read more

CINE CUBANO: THE REVOLUTION AND FILM

El Super, Dir. Leon Ichaso and Orlando Jimenez-Leal, 1979

Thursday, 18 February 2010

18.00, Research Forum South Room

Ticket/entry details: Open to all Courtauld students

Organised by: Dr Stephanie Schwartz

Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary
Manuel Piña: Appropriate Documents

Monday, 22 February 2010
17.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Stephanie Schwartz (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Dr Gavin Parkinson

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture
A Heartfelt Gesture

Monday, 22 February 2010
18.00, Seminar Room 3, Department of Art History, University College London, 20-21 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0AG

Speaker(s): Brendan Prendeville (Goldsmith’s, University of London)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Rose Marie San Juan (r.sanjuan@ucl.ac.uk) and Joanna Woodall (joanna.woodall@courtauld.ac.uk)

Edmund Husserl described Galileo as a ‘disclosing and concealing genius’, because in defining an objective reality subject to mathematical description as constituting the proper field of scientific enquiry, he blanked out or bracketed off what in Husserl’s view comprised an alternative field of enquiry: the Lebenswelt, the ‘life world’...... read more

Spring 2010 Friends Lecture Series
Conservation in Focus: The Art of Painting by Johannes Vermeer van Delft - Recent Technical Studies

Tuesday, 23 February 2010
17.30 - 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Johannes Vermeer, The Art of Painting, c. 1662- 1668. Photo: © Courtesy Kunsthistorisches Museum, ViennaSpeaker(s): Elke Oberthaler (Head of Conservation, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Conservation of Wall Painting Department and Conservation & Technology Department (The Courtauld)

Ten years after the restoration of The Art of Painting by Johannes Vermeer van Delft, a full technical study of the picture is being undertaken, including a number of new non-invasive analytical techniques. Since completion of the conservation treatment, the painting has been submitted to an intense loan programme; its condition..... read more

Research seminar: Medieval WORK IN PROGRESS

Inscriptions and Memory in Medieval Georgia

Thursday 25 February 2010

17.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Dr Antony Eastmond (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: Professor John Lowden

Medieval Art in Theory workshop
Looking Like: Mimesis/Imitatio in the Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages

Monday, 1 March 2010
14.00 - 18.00, Research Forum South Room

Photo: L. Cleaver. Loches

Speaker(s): Jim Harris (The Courtauld Institute of Art), Jack Hartnell (The Courtauld Institute of Art), Geoff Nuttall .....
Ticket/entry details: All welcome but numbers are limited. Advance booking by 22 February is essential. For further information and to book please contact Laura Cleaver laura.cleaver@courtauld.ac.uk

Organised by: Dr Laura Cleaver

The imitation (imitatio in Latin) of the natural world has long been considered an ideal quality of works of art. But what do we mean when we say an artwork resembles something, and what does it resemble? Mimesis ..... read more

Spring 2010 Friends Lecture Series

Conservation in Focus: Looking for Colour on Ancient Greek and Roman Sculpture

Tuesday, 2 March 2010

17.30 - 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Queen Berenike II, Cyrene, Lybia, 246-21 BCE, The British Museum (1861,1127.145). Photo: The British Museum

Speaker(s): Giovanni Verri (Mellon Fellow, British Museum)

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: Conservation of Wall Painting Department and Conservation & Technology Department (The Courtauld)

It is now well established that colour formed a central part of the life and culture of ancient civilisations throughout the areas surrounding the Mediterranean basin and beyond. Wall paintings, ceramics, architecture and sculpture were often brightly painted and the importance of colour is referred to in the primary literary sources..... read more

The 2010 Courtauld Institute of Art Postgraduate Symposium:
Identities in Time

Thursday, 4 March 2010
12.00 - 17.40, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Family portrait (detail), 1922. Photo: Courtesy of Martina Caruso

Speaker(s): Benedict Burbridge, Martina Caruso, Samantha Darell, Anna Marie Kirk, Michela Pittaluga, Per Rumberg, Maria Starkova-Vindman
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Research Forum Postgraduate Advisory Group and PhD students

The 2010 Courtauld Institute of Art Postgraduate Symposium will provide an opportunity for third year PhD Students to present work-in-progress papers on their research projects. Speakers will engage..... read more

CINE CUBANO: THE REVOLUtion AND FILM

Now!, Dir. Santiago Alvarez, 1965

Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song, Dir. Melvin Van Peebles, 1971

Thursday, 4 March 2010

18.00, Research Forum South Room

Ticket/entry details: Open to all Courtauld students

Organised by: Dr Stephanie Schwartz

exhibiting Research III

Blurring Distinctions? Art and Material Culture

Friday, 5 March 2010

17.30 - 19.00, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Speaker(s): Xavier Bray (Assistant Curator, The National Gallery, London); Christopher Brown (Director, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford); Peta Motture (Curator, Victoria and Albert Museum, London); Joanna Woodall, Chair (Faculty, The Courtauld Institute of Art)

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: MA Programme ‘Curating the Art Museum

What is the place of material culture in the museum? What role does display have in creating, maintaining, or controlling the distinction between art and material culture? How does display fulfil what the public wants? Join our panel of speakers as they weigh the balance between the construction of display and the construction.....read more

Research seminar: Modern and Contemporary
Black Market Memory: Myth and Art in Yugoslavia, 1991-2001

Monday, 8 March 2010
17.30, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Alexandra Lazar (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Professor Caroline Arscott

Spring 2010 Friends Lecture Series
Conservation in Focus: Decoration of a Utrecht Canal House by Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680): A technical and historical analysis of an early series of large fitted canvasses

Tuesday, 9 March 2010
17.30 - 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Ferdinand Bol, Aeneas receives a new set of armour from Venus (detail), canvas 400 x 407 cm, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam on loan to the Peace Palace, The Hague. Photo: © Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Speaker(s): Dr Margriet van Eikema Hommes (Instituut Collectie Nederland and University of Amsterdam)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Conservation of Wall Painting Department and Conservation & Technology Department (The Courtauld)

Dr Margriet van Eikema Hommes will give a lecture on her recent research leading to the publication of a book later this year related to an ensemble of five large scale oil paintings painted in the early 1660s by Ferdinand Bol. The commission of these works for a specific location is investigated, together with the iconography of ..... read more

Research seminar: RENAISSANCE

The Malaspina Monument in the V&A: History, Status and Date

Wednesday, 10 March 2010

17.00, Seminar Room 1 (note time and room)

Speaker(s): Peta Motture (Chief Curator, Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, Victoria & Albert Museum)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: Dr Susie Nash

ICMA at The Courtauld lecture series 2009-10

The Count of Clermont and the Case of Conques: Unravelling Some Mysteries of Medieval Enamelling

Thursday, 11 March 2010

18.00, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Speaker(s): Barbara Drake Boehm (Curator, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters,

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: Dr Joanna Cannon

This lecture is presented by The Courtauld Institute of Art in association with the International Center of Medieval Art, New York, and with the support of The Courtauld Institute of Art's Research Forum. The International Center of Medieval Art promotes the study of the visual arts of the Middle Ages in Europe. Its worldwide membership includes..... read more

CINE CUBANO: THE REVOLUTON AND FILM

Waiting List, Dir. Juan Carlos Tabío, 2000

Thursday, 11 March 2010

18.00, Research Forum South Room

Ticket/entry details: Open to all Courtauld students

Organised by: Dr Stepahnie Schwartz

AAH 2010 Conference preview

Friday, 12 March 2010

15.00, Research Forum South Room

Speaker(s): Courtauld PhD students Jim Harris, Jack Hartnell and Edward Payne

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: Dr Francesco Lucchini

The Research Forum has awarded travel scholarships to Courtauld Institute of Art postgraduate students who will be giving research papers at the 36th AAH Annual Conference which will take place at the University of Glasgow, 15th - 17th April 2010. The event provides an opportunity to hear the papers of the award recipients.

Download programme
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THE MATERIAL life of things

copper casket with inlaid ivory panels carved in relief with human figures
Late 11th century ivory panels mounted in a 19th century copper casket. Photo: © The Courtauld Institute of Art

Calls for Applications Deadline:
Friday 12 March 2010

read more

Socialeast seminar on networks and sociability in eastern european art

Call For Papers Deadline:

Monday 15 March 2010

Symposium to take place:

Saturday 23 October 2010

The Courtauld Institute of Art

The SocialEast Seminar on Networks and Sociability in East European Art provides a forum for the presentation of new research into practices of informal exchange and patterns of alternative communication between experimental artists in the Eastern Bloc. This seminar explores the ways in which unauthorised artistic ideas were able to transgress national and ideological boundaries through networks of friendship and artistic..... call for papers

London seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture
Ephemeral Everyday: Sounds of Seeing in the Early Modern City

Monday, 15 March 2010 BEING POSTPONED
18.00, Seminar Room 3, Department of Art History, University College London, 20-21 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0AG

Speaker(s): Katie Scott (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission
Organised by: Rose Marie San Juan (r.sanjuan@ucl.ac.uk) and Joanna Woodall (joanna.woodall@courtauld.ac.uk)

This seminar series has been organised jointly by The Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum and University College London.

Spring 2010 Friends Lecture Series

Conservation in Focus: Inside ‘Conservation in Focus’ at the British Museum

Tuesday, 16 March 2010

17.30 - 18.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

A visitor discusses the treatment of a Pacific barkcloth with Nicola Rode, conservator, at the 'Conservation in Focus' exhibition', the British Museum. Photo: © The British Museum

Speaker(s): Dr David Saunders (Keeper of Conservation and Scientific Research, British Museum)

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

Organised by: Conservation of Wall Painting Department and Conservation & Technology Department (The Courtauld)

Caring for 7 million objects viewed by 6 million visitors a year presents daunting challenges for conservation. Among them is the perception and understanding of the nature of conservation itself, as most conservation and investigation of the Museum’s collections takes place in studios, laboratories and...... read more