Paola D’Alconzo and Domenico Pino Awarded the APS Collaboration Grant

The Association of Print Scholars is pleased to award its seventh annual Collaboration Grant to Paola D’Alconzo and Domenico Pino. The grant, in the amount of $1,000, will support the technical and organizational expenses of five seminars related to the print collection of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, Naples, and provide funding for the digitization of relevant prints that will form a permanent online exhibition of works from the collection.

The Società’s graphic collection, which numbers around 10,000 works, has never been the subject of close study. The proposed seminars will expand on discoveries made in the course of a recent cataloguing project, putting important findings in context, expanding knowledge of the collection, and making it more visible to the larger print community. Through the seminars the organizers aim to complicate current understandings of early modern print culture and to engage with broader topics such as the publishing industry, economic history, cultural contact, environmental history (Vesuvius and volcanoes), scientific history, material culture, and center-periphery debates.

The proposed seminars will be held every other week at the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria over a period of two months. Each seminar will consist of a brief presentation, followed by a discussion with the public, and a study appointment featuring a select group of works related to each session’s topic. Seminars will be presented both in person and over Zoom and will take place in either late spring or fall 2024. Speakers will include Professor Paola D’Alconzo, Orfeo Cellura, Emma de Jong, Costanza Marsico, Dr. Andrea Milanese, Domenico Pino, Maria Toscano, and Alessandra Zaccagnini.

The Società Napoletana di Storia Patria was founded in 1875 and holds a large and important collection of manuscripts and printed books relating to the history of Naples and Southern Italy dating from the twelfth century to the present. It is also home to a holding of approximately 10,000 works on paper including maps, drawings, and prints.

APS is also happy to extend an Honorable Mention for the 2024 Collaboration Grant: Dr. Louise Hardiman and Lauren Warner-Treloar of Kingston University, London, will be awarded $500 for their project “Advancing Knowledge of the Russian Print Collection at the Dorich House Museum.” The funds will be used to support cataloging research, a symposium, and a workshop around the collection.

For their time and expertise, APS would like to sincerely thank this year’s jurors: Carey Gibbons (Assistant Professor of Art History, University of North Texas), Hope Saska (Chief Curator and Director of Academic Engagement, University of Colorado Art Museum), and Asiel Sepulveda (Assistant Professor of Arts and Humanities, Babson College).

Paola D’Alconzo is Professor of Art History, Conservation and Museology at the University of Naples Federico II. She has published widely on conservation practices of the antiquities of Herculaneum and Pompeii in the eighteenth century, on the reception of those antiquities in the early-modern period, and on antiquarian practices and the history of collecting between Naples and Spain under the Bourbons. She is currently working on the publication of a previously unpublished manuscript by Ferdinando Galiani on the ancient frescoes of the Vesuvian cities. She holds various institutional appointments including at the Palazzo Reale di Napoli, the Pio Monte della Misericordia and the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, where she sits on the scientific board.

Domenico Pino is a PhD candidate in History of Art at University College London. His thesis focuses on printmaking in eighteenth-century Naples, considering center-periphery debates, the southern Enlightenment, and history of thought. He has previously held the Michael Bromberg Fellowship in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, a fellowship at the Centre for the History of Art and Architecture of Port Cities at the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, and is currently the Pio Monte della Misericordia Fellow at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici, Naples.

APS is a non-profit organization for print enthusiasts that brings together a diverse community of curators, collectors, academics, graduate students, artists, conservators, critics, independent scholars, and art dealers. APS aims to encourage innovative and interdisciplinary print scholarship and to facilitate dialogue among its members. Over 550 people from all over the world have joined APS  since it was founded in 2014.

Please contact grants@printscholars.org with any questions regarding this announcement. APS is currently accepting submissions for the 2025 Collaboration Prize (deadline: January 31, 2025). To learn more about the APS Collaboration Grant, click here.