Discourse on the media-reflective and metapoetic dimension of Rembrandt's work has largely focused on the artist’s painting practice. What happens when this methodological attention shifts to Rembrandt’s etchings? His extensive graphic oeuvre has typically been examined through the lens of connoisseurship and/or material analysis, with particular emphasis on the numerous reworkings and states.

This panel proposes an approach that is intended to complement the existing method with a focus on the topoi at work in Rembrandt’s etching practice. Etching involves a sequence of interdependent processes: the preparation of a metal plate coated with a resist, the incision of lines with a needle that exposes the surface beneath, and the controlled action of acid that bites into the plate to varying depths. Revisions may further be carried out directly on the plate using tools such as the burin. These stages introduce elements of resistance, delay, and contingency, as the final image emerges through chemical transformation rather than direct application. The resulting prints can be understood as sites of environmental encounter, where perception is mediated through processes that register the intra-action between bodily gestures, material resistance, and natural forces. The artist’s body engages in dynamic exchange with its environment, foregrounding etching as a medium through which human and nonhuman agencies become entangled.

In the spirit of this question, we welcome papers that approach Rembrandt’s etching as a relational technique shaped by human and environmental agencies, and as a site of experienced “Nature” and environment.

The SGCI Confluence Steering Committee has initiated the conference Open Call for Participation. The Committee is accepting proposals for conference programming like Panels, INKubators, Themed Portfolio Exchanges, Pop-Up Exhibitions, Mobile Events, and Outside the Box Events.

To submit a proposal you must be an SGCI member in good standing. If a proposal is accepted, all organizers and participants must hold an active SGCI membership at the Advocate level or higher to participate in the conference. Please refer to this page for membership tiers. Participants may request an official letter of participation for their records.

Proposals will be reviewed by the Confluence Steering Committee and evaluated according to four criteria: artistic or academic merit, importance to members, diversity, and proposal integrity. See the full criteria and evaluation guidelines for reviewing conference proposals below.

The proposal process includes two rounds. During Round 1, applicants submit proposals to organize conference events. Following the selection of conference event proposals, select formats, including Panels, INKubators, and Themed Portfolio Exchanges, will move into Round 2, when SGCI members may apply to participate in those selected events.

To support broad participation and ensure all voices and perspectives are represented at the conference, event organizers may pre-select up to 50% of their roster. The remaining participants must be selected from the pool of SGCI members who apply through Round 2.

Members may participate in a maximum of one conference event plus one Themed Portfolio Exchange per conference. Members may apply to multiple events, but if selected for more than one, they must choose which event they will participate in.

This policy is intended to make participation opportunities available to the greatest number of members possible.

#24 DATA (Fall 2027)

How does the notion of ‘data’ shape our understanding of the eighteenth century?

This issue queries the role of data in relation to art, visual, and material histories of the eighteenth century: for example, maps as an encapsulation of land-based statistics, the recording of flora and fauna, lists of people and occupations, the making of pattern books, logs of plantation produce, the quantification of goods traded, building/describing archives, the catalogues of collections, taxonomies, census taking, or even journals of voyages and touristic activities in the context of Europe’s maritime expansion into Asia, Americas, and the Pacific. From trade ships carrying porcelain as ballast (that was cataloged diligently) to personal cabinets of curiosity (that are examples of selective data mining), the scale and scope of data building varied. To what extent was the creation of “big data” foundational to the process of empire building? And what sort of products (maps, albums, logs, gazetteers, almanacs) were the result of this information gathering? To what extent can complex, high volume datasets, such as those generated from maritime exploration, account for modes of colonial expansion? What was the nature of intangibles that resisted typification and classification?

The theme of ‘data’ takes a historical view of a phenomenon that is now driving the creation of large data centers and a quest for infinite data, and what critics have described as “data colonialism” and dispossession. This issue seeks to query the idea of humanistic data as something emerging from specific cultural and historical contexts and representations of lives and ideas that were subjective and personal but that nonetheless drove larger conceptual and economic shifts in the context of empire building in the eighteenth century. This issue also encourages papers that bring together ideas from the digital humanities and collection-as-data theory and practice in order to reflect on the eighteenth century.

Issue Editors
Yuthika Sharma, Northwestern University
Clara Drummond, McCormick Library, Northwestern University

Proposals for issue #24 Data are now being accepted. Deadline for proposals: September 15, 2026.

To submit a proposal, send an abstract (250 words) and a brief biography to the following email addresses: editor@journal18.org, yuthika.sharma@northwestern.edu, and cdrummond@northwestern.edu. Articles should not exceed 4000 words (including footnotes) and will be due for submission by April 2, 2027. For further details on submission and Journal18 house style, see Information for Authors at Journal18.org.

The Mid America Print Council invites the printmaking community to help us put the MAP in MAPC!
In an effort to connect, support, and promote, the printmaking populace MAPC is collecting information for the Printmaking MAP(C), featuring Universities, Printshops, Supply Stores and more. Whether you are looking for specific programing, interested in investigating local shops or supplier options, or simply curious to explore the vast network of printmaking, this map is intended to act as an accessibility and community building tool for those dedicated to all things print.

PLEASE VISIT THE FORM AT THE LINK BELOW, If you are interested in participating and adding an organization to the map. In addition, feel free to interact with the current version of the MAP(C) at https://midamericaprintcouncil.org/.

The DEIA and Membership Committees will be reviewing and uploading requests every two weeks over Summer 2026, with continual updates every quarter thereafter.

An international documentary enquiry, Cartography of Absence, is currently investigating the material history, survival and historiography of engraved cartographic matrices from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Following a year of research involving nearly seven hundred museums, libraries, archives, universities, scientific laboratories, learned societies and private collections worldwide, the project is now inviting the technical experience of practising engravers, printmakers and print specialists.

To my knowledge, practising engravers have rarely been invited to contribute directly to the historiography of engraved cartographic matrices. Their technical experience may nevertheless provide a unique documentary perspective on the manufacture, use and material behaviour of these remarkable objects.

The purpose is not to authenticate historical matrices, but to explore how contemporary engraving practice may help illuminate technical questions that historical documentation often leaves unanswered.

Professional experience will be considered as a complementary documentary source, critically compared with archival, material and institutional evidence within a broader historical enquiry.

Practitioners wishing to contribute observations arising from their professional experience are warmly invited to contact:

Michel Chevalier
Independent Researcher
Project Cartography of Absence
michel.r.chevalier@hotmail.fr

This APS-sponsored panel seeks contributions examining early modern print production between two or more hands, and the complex works that result from such collaborations, from c. 1450-1700. Print production has often involved multiple people reflecting distinct specializations: early modern woodcuts were usually designed by a draftsman, cut by Formschneiders, and printed by a publisher. The signatures invenit, sculpsit, fecit, excudit, delineate a work’s multilayered phases and temporalities of production and authorship, from inspiration to resulting image. Matrices themselves were sold, traded, and repurposed, resulting in unforeseen or delayed “collaborations,” such as with Rembrandt’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt, partially altered from Hercules Seghers’ Tobias and the Angel plate. We aim to complicate the notion of singular artistic authorship in the history of print by examining early modern production structures established within the confines of a workshop, as well as less official forms of “collaboration.” Potential topics could include:

1. Early modern cross-disciplinary collaborations, including between artists and poets, antiquarians, or scholars of the natural sciences.

2. Unplanned partnerships: how were matrices or resulting impressions altered, collaborated upon, or renewed and edited ex post facto by other artists or printers? How does necessity or circumstance—including modifying damaged matrices or altering imagery to avoid censorship—provide the opportunity for an unforeseen collaboration between two or more artists or artisans?

3. Cross-cultural collaborations across geographies: how did the affordances of durability/ephemerality, scale, and portability of matrices and paper provide opportunities for artists and makers from different countries, cultural identities, or religious confessions to shape works for different audiences?

4. Prints that provided an outlet for two or more artists to explore fantastical or taboo subjects.

Participants must be current RSA and Association of Print Scholars (APS) members at the time of the conference.

Please submit your 200-word abstract and a 2-page CV to brittany.rubin@temple.edu and ashley.west@temple.edu by 19 July 2026.

The position is based in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division where you’ll find wonderful colleagues and great chances to serve researchers ranging from leading scholars to folks just starting to learn about graphic art--all within a strong research context. They include many students, teachers, and creators and thinkers of all kinds, as well as the interested public and of course members of Congress and their constituents and staff. In my experience, the DC area creative community is warm, vibrant, and collaborative.

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The Prints and Photographs Division has one of the largest pictorial research collections in the world with more than 15 million pictures in a variety of visual formats contained in hundreds of individual collections and stored in several locations and remote sites. The collections are among the most varied in subject, time-period, medium, format, physical condition, and intellectual property rights requirements, with attendant concerns regarding security, preservation, safe handling and service. The collections are accessed by means of complex, diverse and often multi-layered intellectual controls in written, filmed and digital forms. The Graphic Arts area has an estimated 500,000 artist prints, posters, documentary drawings, cartoons and comics, historical prints, and pictorial ephemera like trade cards.

Provides reference and research services of limited technical complexity to researchers where user needs are determined easily from interviews or written requests. Provides accurate, competent research guidance on the use and technical aspects of the visual materials collections. Examines publications, electronic resources, and trends in topics related to a specialized field. Develops knowledge of collections for use in performing research tasks. Assists in preparing finding aids and related written products describing collections. Prepares basic and standard responses to written, telephone, or electronic media inquiries.

- Assists with the full range of curatorial duties, including reference, processing, preservation, publication, and exhibition work. Identifies and provides basic curatorial documentation on items and collections for purposes of preservation, processing, and cataloging. Monitors condition and preservation needs of items in the collections. Assists with special reference service, such as unprocessed collections.

- Sees to arrangements for new acquisitions or donations. Researches visual works identified for possible acquisition. Proposes works for possible acquisition. Helps maintain contacts with donors and potential donors, including correspondence and phone communications. Arranges for delivery of objects. Prepares listings of new items.

- Conducts research using established methods. Researches visual collections, searches published and unpublished sources to complete cataloging, establish provenance, answer public inquiries, provide research support for exhibit/publication projects, and otherwise contribute to the accessibility and wider availability of the collections, etc.

- Compiles background materials under the direction of a curator to inform the interested public (government officials, scholars, publishers, writers, learned societies, etc.) of the Library's resources and services and to support special exhibit and publication projects. May participate in professional associations.

This position is in the Curatorial Section of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.

Calling all graduate students and early-career scholars!

Submissions are now open for APS’s annual CV Workshop, a career development opportunity designed to help members refine their academic and professional profiles.

Limited to 10 participants per session, this workshop offers tailored, constructive, anonymous CV feedback aimed at enhancing competitiveness for future opportunities.

To apply, please submit the following:

Your current CV or résumé

A brief note indicating the types of positions you are targeting (e.g. curatorial roles, academic jobs, fellowships, or other professional paths), to better allow our reviewers to provide the most relevant and actionable advice.
Participants must be APS members in good standing. Spaces will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, with preference given to applicants who have not previously had an opportunity to participate.

To secure your spot, email info@printscholars.org with the subject line: [CV Workshop_Your Last Name]

The deadline to submit is July 10, 2026.

Applications are now open for “Prints Across the Pacific, 1565–1815,” a Connecting Art Histories project exploring print culture as a key medium of cultural exchange across the early modern Pacific.

UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies invites early to mid-career scholars based in Southeast Asia and Latin America working in art history, book history, literature, curation, librarianship, and related fields to apply. Selected participants (12–15 total) will join three fully funded international seminars in Manila, Mexico City/Puebla, and Madrid/Rome, featuring collaborative research, site visits, and discussions on global print histories.

Submit materials to sporras@tulane.edu and devinfitzgerald@library.ucla.edu by June 22, 2026.

Learn more about the program and application process: https://cmrs.ucla.edu/.../call-for-participants.../