Dear APS members,

I am pleased to invite you to submit proposals for the session "Cast and Impression: Sculpture and Print in Dialogue", which I will be chairing at the Association for Art History Annual Conference, held at the University of Exeter (UK) from 7–9 April 2027.

This session seeks to bring sculpture and print into dialogue by focusing on their shared processes, technologies, and systems of production. Throughout history, sculptors have turned to print and printmakers to sculpture, while many artists have worked across both media. In each, the artist’s degree of direct involvement may vary considerably, with significant stages of production delegated to specialist artisans, printers, founders, carvers, engravers, or casters. Technological innovations, including photomechanical reproduction and mechanical enlargement, transformed the production and circulation of prints and sculptures alike, challenging distinctions between original and reproduction.

This session invites papers addressing any period or geographical context. Possible topics include artistic exchanges; workshop practices; reproduction and dissemination; technological innovation; and materiality and touch.

The full session abstract and submission details are available here:
https://forarthistory.org.uk/26-cast-and-impression-sculpture-and-print-in-dialogue/

The complete Call for Papers, including all conference sessions, can be found here:
https://forarthistory.org.uk/conference-2027-exeter-aah-2027-call-for-papers/

Deadline for proposals: 25 October 2026.

Please note that all speakers are required to register for the conference, and registration fees apply. Information on registration, including fees (to be announced when registration opens), is available on the conference website:
https://forarthistory.org.uk/conference/2027-exeter/

With my warm wishes,
Anastasia Belyaeva

6th International Mokuhanga Conference
May 26–29, 2027 | University of Kansas | Lawrence, Kansas, USA

The International Mokuhanga Association (IMA) is pleased to announce that proposals are now being accepted for the 6th International Mokuhanga Conference, to be held at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, USA, from May 26–29, 2027.

This year's conference theme, "Mokuhanga in a Connected World: Exploring Diverse Practices and Perspectives," invites artists, craftspeople, scholars, researchers, students, and enthusiasts to examine both the diversity and the responsibilities within this evolving tradition. As mokuhanga continues to develop across cultures and disciplines, the conference provides a space to explore how the field is shaped through material, place, collaboration, education, history, and innovation.

We welcome proposals that engage with traditional practices, contemporary approaches, interdisciplinary experimentation, and emerging perspectives from around the world.

Applications are now open for:
Paper / Panel Presentations
Technical Demonstrations
Exhibitions
Student Lightning Round Presentations
Official IMA Juried Exhibition (Application through SlideRoom)

With the exception of the Official IMA Juried Exhibition, all selected participants are expected to register for the conference and attend in person. Applicants are welcome to submit multiple proposals, although those selected for more than one category will be asked to choose a single presentation opportunity to maximize participation across the conference.

In addition to the competitive calls, all registered conference participants will have opportunities to take part in the Official Print Exchange, Open Portfolio, and Workshops through the conference registration process. Registration for the conference will open later this year.

Key Dates
July 2026 – Calls for proposals open
October 5, 2026 – Deadline for Paper & Panel Presentations, Technical Demonstrations, Exhibitions, and Student Lightning Round Presentations
November 30, 2026 – Deadline for Official IMA Juried Exhibition submissions
November 2026 – Notification of acceptance for presentations, demonstrations, exhibitions, and student presentations
January 2027 – Notification of acceptance for the Official IMA Juried Exhibition
May 26–29, 2027 – 6th International Mokuhanga Conference

Whether your work investigates sustainable practices, expands the boundaries of mokuhanga, explores its history, develops new pedagogical models, or experiments with emerging technologies, we encourage you to share your ideas and contribute to this international exchange.

Please visit the conference website to review the complete guidelines and submit your proposal:
https://2027.mokuhanga.org/
We look forward to welcoming the international mokuhanga community to Lawrence, Kansas, in May 2027.

Sincerely,
International Mokuhanga Association (https://mokuhanga.org/)

In many respects, Rembrandt van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens could hardly differ more: Dutch vs. Flemish; Protestant vs. Catholic; homebody vs. international diplomat. The divergent identities and milieux of these two iconic Netherlandish contemporaries are reflected in their distinct artistic styles. Broadly speaking, where Rembrandt is intimate and particular, Rubens is monumental and classicizing. The two artists take equally antithetical approaches to printmaking. Hailed as the quintessential peintre-graveur, Rembrandt produced over three hundred etchings after his own designs, while Rubens may have made only one. Instead, the Flemish master commissioned a team of skilled engravers, etchers, and woodcutters to translate his designs into print. Despite the obvious differences between these two artists who never met, some have argued that Rembrandt borrowed from Rubens particular motifs and compositions, workshop practices, and even the concept of printmaking as a means to disseminate his work. Could it be argued that influence flowed in the other direction as well, with printmakers in Rubens’s studio adopting some of Rembrandt’s innovations?

In preparation for a museum exhibition devoted to the prints of Rembrandt and Rubens, this panel welcomes perspectives from both museums and academia that interrogate the oppositions and similarities between the printmaking practices of these two artists. Papers could consider such topics as the relationship between prints and the artists’ work in other media; the concept of the “reproductive” print in each artist’s oeuvre; the role of assistants and the studio; artistic rivalry and influence; intended audiences and the art market; and each artist’s legacy for subsequent generations of printmakers. Panelists with interest in museum exhibitions could suggest groupings of prints, imagine design layouts, or propose visitor engagement strategies that would illuminate the unique contributions of these two titans of the seventeenth century.

To submit a paper proposal, please send a 300-word abstract and a 1-page CV to Holly Borham at holly.borham@blantonmuseum.org by September 15, 2026.

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.

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

Long considered a distinctive concern for literary specialists, description in fact informs all the arts and humanities and, no doubt, the natural sciences as well. Any object of inquiry—from texts to paintings to other modes of representation or from raw materials to consumer goods or from stars to dark matter—requires some level of description. While description has been and remains a mainstay of Western reflective thought, its valence has fluctuated over time, with some thinkers finding description to be paralyzing or pedantic, extraneous, misleading, even deceptive, and generally unwelcome. Others, reflecting on description specifically in relation to material culture studies, theorized description as a kind of second substance through which we make sense of objects, “reality reconstituted,” as T.H. Breen put it, whereas Jules Prown thought that textual description was, inescapably, the thing itself.

The symposium, The Matter of Description, welcomes submissions from all disciplines concerned with description and the way it interacts with material culture. Papers should offer new perspectives on questions regarding the powers and practices of description, including—perhaps especially—those times when we take descriptions for granted and let them stand unexamined. On the one hand, how does the description of an object inform and transform what can be grasped of it? On the other hand, is there a uniquely material culture approach to description, one that takes material agency seriously and presumes an iterative relationship between describer and described?

Topics may include (but are not limited to) to one or more of the following themes:

Histories of Description
Ekphrasis, Realism, Mimesis, Ut Pictura Poesis and the Imitation of Nature, Word and Image

Missions of Description
Expeditions, Experiments, First Descriptive Encounters, Taxonomies and Classification, Collecting and Archiving, Laws and other Codes, Memorialization, Education

Protocols of Description
The Camera Eye, Impressionistic Description, Thick Description, Processual Description, Translation, Rules, Textbooks, Witness and Meditation, Memory and Remembering

Media of Description
Oral Traditions, Personal Records, Print, Visual Media, Diagrams, Schematics and Maps, Photography and Film, Audio Media, Data Visualization

Ethics of Description
Observational Objectivity, Phenomenological and Hermeneutic Approaches, Colonial and Imperial Gaze, Reparative Description, Politics of Description

Please send abstracts of of no more than 300 words, with a brief CV of no more than two pages, to Martin Brückner (mcb@udel.edu) and Sandy Isenstadt (isnt@udel.edu) by 15 July 2026. The conference takes place 2–3 April 2027 at the University of Delaware and the Winterthur Museum, DE.

The annual in-person meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies is Europe’s largest and most prestigious annual conference dealing with all aspects of the history, culture, and literature of the long eighteenth century. We invite proposals for papers and sessions dealing with any aspect of the long eighteenth century, not only in Britain, but also throughout Europe, North America, and the wider world. Proposals are invited for fully comprised panels of three papers, for roundtable sessions of up to five speakers, for individual papers of twenty minutes duration, and for ‘alternative format’ sessions of your devising. The submission portal for proposals will open 1st June 2026 and close 15th September 2026.

While proposals on all and any eighteenth-century topics are very welcome, this year our plenary speakers will be addressing the topic of ‘Artifice and Authenticity’, and proposals are also invited which address any aspect of this theme.

Authenticity was a key concern of the eighteenth century. As traditional means of assessing rank gave way to new understandings of social distinction, the question of who you really were became ever more important. Social standing could now be judged by manners and appearance, but that meant that anybody with a modicum of money and effort could gain admittance to polite society. This created new anxieties about artifice, which often focused on the falsity of fashion. Considerable attention was paid to whether your buckles were made of gold or pinchbeck, and whether they were adorned with precious stones or cheap alternatives.

As the century wore on, concern grew about the falsity of polite manners. This was witnessed by the controversy over the publication of Chesterfield’s letters to his illegitimate son, which appeared to encourage artifice in the interests of social climbing. Later Georgians admired values such as sincerity and candour, and the cult of sensibility lent itself to the outward expression of ‘true’ inner emotion. The Romantic movement celebrated authenticity, and the perspective of the common people was valued as never before. Even the common soldier found a ready market for his autobiographical writings, as readers sought vicariously to experience the profound reality of war.

As it does today, artificiality preoccupied eighteenth-century thinkers. The many innovations of the period sparked concern about how far humanity was diverging from the natural world. Mechanical inventions put artisans out of work or promised to do things that had formerly been done by a human. Automata played the flute, or played chess, like the famous Mechanical Turk that only later turned out to be a hoax. This has parallels with concerns in our own time about artificial intelligence and the threats that it poses to our intellectual and artistic labour.

The questions of artifice and authenticity therefore add to our understanding of the century in a myriad of ways. And given that the eighteenth century was foundational to the modern world in so many respects, it also sheds light on current attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. Papers, panels and alternative sessions that address any of these aspects are welcome.

Some time will be reserved for hybrid panels, allowing scholars to present remotely. Please indicate if you would like to be considered for remote presentation in your proposal. NOTE: this is not a guarantee of remote participation as there are limited spaces available.

Proposals are subject to our terms and conditions: https://www.bsecs.org.uk/conferences/terms-and-conditions/

Webpage: https://www.bsecs.org.uk/conferences/annual-conference/

Enquiries: Any enquiries regarding the conference programme that are not answered on our website should be addressed to Dr Meg Kobza via the BSECS email address conference.academic@bsecs.org.uk

Proposal decisions: Decisions about conference proposals will be communicated via email by 15 October.

Bursaries: Application detail