“Arts, Power, and Politics”: Second Spring Academy for Young Chinese Art Historians at the German Center for Art History Paris

The German Center for Art History in Paris welcomes applications from junior scholars and doctoral students from Greater China for a spring seminar titled “Arts, Power, and Politics,” which will focus on French 17th- to 20th-century art. The seminar will take place from May 13th to May 31th, 2019 in Paris at the German Center for Art History and at several museums and research institutes in the French capital and its surroundings. Participants will receive funding for transportation, lodging, and meals.

Scholars interested in participating are invited to attend a one-day introduction to the program on March 21th, 2019, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China. Limited funding is available for prospective participants who attend the Beijing meeting. Attendance at the introductory meeting in Beijing is not required for admission into the seminar, but is strongly encouraged.

The seminar is possible thanks to generous support from the Getty Foundation through its Connecting Art Histories initiative.

Political systems have made use of art over the centuries. France and its capital city, in particular, offer excellent visual material of this. French politics has been reflected in various artistic genres and media. Regardless of whether it was an absolutist form of government, a revolutionary system, an empire, or a republic — art repeatedly played a central role in national representation. Painting, printmaking, tapestry, decorative arts, architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, celebrations, ephemeral decorations, and mass events were strategically employed to make a ruler’s or a government’s claim to power tangible. All kinds of tactics were developed to display political concepts and legitimize them: the heroizing of a person, particularly the ruler; the glorification of individual, mainly war-related, events; the visualization of power and hierarchies in the structure of a city; the mobilization of the population via parades, celebrations, or demonstrations. In examining visualization strategies, aspects of reception must also be taken into account, such as the question of audience, accessibility, and the position of the arts in the social fabric of the country.

The academy will take a look at the time from Henry IV to François Mitterrand. It was Henry IV who first practiced a concept of art politics which was not only addressed to the court but to a wider, general public. Further focuses will be the era of Louis XIV, the French Revolution, the Napoleon Empire and the July Monarchy, the Second Empire and the government of François Mitterand at the end of the 20th century.

The academic content of the program will be presented through lectures and discussions held at the German Center for Art History and through visits to museums, where original works of art will be examined and discussed. Additional site visits will include guided walks through Paris designed to help to contextualize art politics within the city itself. The seminar will include special visits to such museums as the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Pavillon de l’Arsenal and to the castles of Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte. These trips will be guided by specialist scholars and curators.
The seminar’s co-directors are Thomas Kirchner (Director of the German Center for Art History in Paris) and Sophie Goetzmann (rechercher at the German Center for Art History in Paris). They are assisted by Thierry Laugée as senior mentor for the nineteenth and early twentieth century (Université Paris Sorbonne, Paris IV) and Valérie Bussmann, a specialist of the art politics of François Mitterand.

The seminar aims to facilitate dialogue between participants, lecturers, museum curators and members of the German Center for Art History in Paris and to enrich and strengthen study of French Ar

Organization: Robert Eberhardt, Johannes Grave, Joris C. Heyder, Britta Hochkirchen (Sub-Project „Comparative viewing: forms, functions, and limits of comparing pictures“ of the SFB 1288 „Practices of Comparing. Ordering and changing the world“)

The perception of pictures is never unconditional, but rather closely connected with practices that constitute, adjust, and manipulate its perceptibility. The process of seeing is also linked to actions that activate and control specific functions and meanings of images. Such arrangements can be of manifold nature: frames, neighboring objects, and spatial contexts shape the view as well as institutional structures, conventions, routines or discursive enclosures. All these adjustments are due to certain practices; they cannot be traced back to intentional settlements alone, but often owe their existence to situational contingencies or the pragmatic necessity of arrangement.
The effects of these underestimated accompanying circumstances of image perception particularly come to the fore in a ubiquitous practice of dealing with images: comparative vision. In comparison––which is stimulated, for example, by arrangements of pendants, by connoisseurial collection albums or in a museum context––the concentration on the individual picture with its own immanent pictorial logic is limited in favor of a re-contextualisation. When images coexist, the presence of the other image cannot be ignored, so that a concrete frame of reference is predetermined at any given time. Thus, both the processes of creating meaning and the concrete temporal course of perception change its character. Similar considerations apply to reproductions, which decisively affect the perceptibility of the reproduced image by introducing the materiality and mediality of the reproduction.
The practices outlined are in a grey area that has seldom been targeted so far. They can neither be adequately captured by a hermeneutic analysis related to the individual image nor by the investigation of sociological and institutional structures. Recent approaches in cultural, media, and social studies––in particular, practice theories, studies in cultural techniques, and affordance theories (Kulturtechnikforschung)––have recently sharpened attention to the relevance of such micro-practices in other areas. These suggestions should be considered concerning questions of image and art history.
The conference aims at analyzing historical as well as contemporary practices that make image viewing possible in the first place, shape it and transform it. Which preliminary decisions, media boundaries, material interventions, and forms of discursive framing shape the view of images and the implementation of perception? Can these previous actions be historically grasped, categorized, and possibly even subdivided into specific phases in the history of practices of viewing images? The conference is intended to examine these questions, taking into account various perspectives (art history, historical image studies, phenomenology, sociology, perceptual psychology or cognitive sciences).
In three sections, the conference is dedicated to the differentiation of material, media, and discursive approaches to image viewing on the basis of historical and contemporary case studies. In addition, contributions are welcome that propose new theoretical perspectives on the general question of our conference. The conference will be held in English and German.

Please send an abstract of 300 words along with a short bio to Silke Becker (silke.becker@uni-bielefeld.de) by December 1, subject: Before the sight. We will provide accommodation and reimburse travel costs.

Participants will complete an edition of prints from metal plates worked entirely without acids, using a printmaking technique generally called drypoint. The drypoint medium is a wonderful means of drawing directly on a metal plate, without toxic chemicals or complicated technical sequences. Participants will make prints from metal plates worked entirely without acids, using drypoint, roulette, mezzotint, sandblasting, and engraving, exploring materials not usually associated with intaglio, such as sandpaper, stamping, and power tools. We will further learn to alter the surface of the plate with the scraper and burnisher. Participants will develop their plates in the studio, printing frequently to assess the development of the image. We will explore varied approaches to printing, emphasizing the skills of hand-wiping a plate, and printing a small edition from each plate.

MIMIMUM OF RANGE: $15.00/HOUR

REPORTS TO: Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs

SUPERVISES: N/A

QUALIFICATIONS: B.A. in Art History or closely related subject required, M.A. preferred. Work closely with the Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs and other department staff in broad­ ranging research projects, relating to the permanent collection, acquisitions, and exhibitions. Familiarity with the history of works of art on paper preferred. Strong library research skills, as well as reading knowledge of one or more European languages (French, German, Italian) required. Excellent computer skills including familiarity with collections databases preferred.

JOB PURPOSE: Assist the Curator and department colleagues with research and cataloguing of works in the permanent collection, acquisitions, and rotating exhibitions from the collection.

DUTIES, WORK PERFORMED:
- Research the Museum 's collection by conducting art historical and provenance research to supplement information in files, paper and electronic formats
- Assist in compiling information for possible acquisitions, deaccessions, and loans
- Work with the Curator and other colleagues in the development and organization of exhibitions and rotations of the permanent collection
- Work with curatorial, archives, and registrar staff to compile and organize Registrar and Curatorial files relating to individual works of art in the collection
- Work with the registrar's office to see that information is correctly entered into Museum 's database and document files, adhering to established standards and practices
- Assist in responding to inquiries about the permanent collection
- Confer with Curator on a regular basis to ensure accuracy of information, the use of appropriate reference material, and status of cataloging projects and other ongoing research and projects
- Research and compile information as needed to facilitate publications, installations, or exhibition related projects such photographs and rights information, education programs, or label copy, including assistance writing and editing texts

Under the supervision of the Senior Curator, the Curatorial Assistant provides research and administrative support to the Senior Curator, and other curators, as needed. Major curatorial duties include checklist research and development; compilation of publication materials in conjunction with exhibitions; and preparing, coordinating, and monitoring loan forms and contracts in accordance with Museum procedures. Major administrative duties include responding to artist submissions and exhibition proposals; corresponding with guest curators and colleagues in the field; organizing and maintaining collections/exhibition files and various departmental filing systems; schedule and travel planning for curators, artists, and museum consultants; preparing drafts and final correspondence, memoranda, reports, tables, and other documents; and assisting the Senior Curator with administrative duties related to Hammer Contemporary Collection management, and day-to-day museum operations.

In 2005 the Hammer launched an initiative to build a collection of contemporary art. This growing collection is led by works on paper–particularly drawings and photographs–but also includes painting, sculpture, and media arts. Particular attention is paid to works by artists from Southern California, but the collection represents artists working throughout the United States and internationally. When possible, artists are represented in depth, and works are often acquired in tandem with exhibitions at the Hammer, particularly from the Hammer Projects series.

[Requisition #47154BR]

The Harvard Art Museums’ collection of approximately 12,000 drawings (from before the year 1900) is by far the finest drawings collection kept in any American university museum. The collection includes major masterpieces from the American and principal European schools, with strengths in Italian Renaissance, German and Netherlandish masters, 19th-century British and American, and 17th- and early 19th-century French (including the most extensive collection of drawings by Ingres, Géricault, and David outside of France). As a whole, the collection of European and American drawings at the Harvard Art Museums is one of the most comprehensive in the United States.

Duties & Responsibilities ----

The Harvard Art Museums seeks a leader in the field of European and American drawings pre-1900. Responsible for the care, documentation, research, and presentation of Harvard’s exceptional collection, the associate curator of drawings is expected to be an intellectual authority in drawings with an established track record of exhibitions and publications. The associate curator will work closely with colleagues and supporters to strengthen the collection, and collaborate with colleagues in the Division of Modern and Contemporary art on drawings acquisitions in their area.

The associate curator crafts an ambitious exhibition, research and publication program for drawings, and works closely with students and faculty to foster significant and sustained curricular use of the collection for both undergraduate and graduate teaching. The associate curator works within a team environment and promotes dialogue, engagement, and collaboration with colleagues within the division of European and American Art and with other curatorial divisions that have overlapping collection holdings and expertise. The associate curator acts as a mentor to curatorial fellows, interns and students of the university, and may supervise their work. The associate curator recommends purchases, works closely with collectors and museum supporters, and actively solicits gifts for the collection and funds for museum purposes from individuals, foundations, federal agencies and other sources.

Basic Qualifications ----

Ph.D. in art history or related field required; minimum of 5 years of progressively responsible curatorial and/or field-related experience.

Additional Qualifications -----

Demonstrated record of scholarship and achievement in the field of drawings pre-1900, and a commitment to working and playing an active role in a university setting.

Additional Information ----

Please apply by November 16, 2018, after which applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis as necessary.
Please see Requisition #47150BR. We will fill only one of these positions. Please read both descriptions carefully and submit an application for the position most appropriate to your qualifications through Harvard’s Recruitment Management System, Harvard Careers.
Additional materials may be required.

Visualizing Difference: The Art and Architecture of Alterity
9th Annual Art History Graduate Student Symposium
Organized by the Rutgers University Art History Graduate Student Organization (AHGSO)

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Adrienne Childs, Independent scholar, art historian, and curator

"Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought. Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself." – Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949

What is alterity and how do we represent it? How do we, as human beings, craft personal and communal identities, and achieve a sense of social belonging? To what extent do we rely on inherited biases about class, gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity when fashioning our self-image? As the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir observed in her well-known feminist manifesto, the concept of Otherness occupies a central place in human consciousness. Social identities are inherently relational, and people often define themselves in terms of what they are not. This comparative impulse manifests itself in complex ways in the history of art and architecture. Given the global upswing in nationalist sentiment and nativist movements built on hardened definitions of Otherness, we feel that such dialogue is more important than ever.

The Rutgers University Art History Graduate Student Organization seeks proposals that address any of the above-mentioned questions. Abstracts are welcome from all historical periods, geographical areas, and cultural, theoretical, and methodological perspectives. Submissions within the fields of art and architectural history, archaeology, history, visual and material culture, media studies, and gender studies will be considered for 20-minute presentations in English. After the symposium, one paper will be selected for possible publication in Volume 36 of the Rutgers Art Review, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal produced by graduate students in the Department of Art History.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

- Cross-cultural encounters (the Grand Tour, appointments to foreign courts, prints accompanying written travel accounts)
- Orientalism and the taste for the exotic
- Physiognomy, phrenology, and other pseudo-sciences
- The architecture of segregation and apartheid
- Colonialism, imperialism, and unequal power dynamics
- Representations of slavery and servitude
- Stereotypes, caricatures, and satires
- Minstrelsy, masquerade, and racially charged forms of entertainment
- The impact of trade and globalization on notions of Otherness
- Intercultural identities in contemporary society

Please send your abstract and a current CV to rutgersarthistorygradsymposium@gmail.com by December 15, 2018. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words. Applicants will be notified of the committee’s decision by January 15, 2019.

Editors: Pauline Bachmann (Universität Zürich); Jasmin Wrobel (Freie Universität Berlin)

The 1950s Neo-Avant-Gardes experimented for the first time with artistic-poetic artefacts that transcended and challenged definitions and limits of literature and visual arts. Concrete Poetry became an international movement that worked upon the experimental writing heritage of icons such as Mallarmé, Joyce and Cummings integrating visual and material practices into poetry. During the 1970s and 1980s experimental poetry evolved as an international and also highly collaborative practice ranging from visual, sound and installation to performative formats. The reception of these radical poetic practices also oscillates between literature and art: poems appear often in magazines with highly experimental formats or are exhibited in galleries as artworks, performances or happenings.

Strikingly, experimental poetry proliferated in politically contrarian climates and sought for global connection. The chasm between technological modernization and extreme social inequality was a visible expression of such contradictions, especially in Latin America. Societies were flooded with industrially produced goods to which only a small part of the population had access. Radio, TV and color print media increased the circulation of information while repressive regimes in many Latin American countries, the Iberian Peninsula and Eastern Europe practiced a harsh censorship. Yet, the experimental practices also became a strong current in democratic western European countries, such as Italy, France and the Netherlands where the use of new materials and the exchange with international colleagues came into focus.

During these years, experimental poetry overlapped largely, with mail art and even established the first mail art circles in Latin America. Poetry’s entanglement with its material and technological media became an essential characteristic. The Xerox copy, for example, became an important technological medium for experimental poetic practices. From the mid-1990s on, experimental poetry increasingly explored the possibilities of the digital. Yet, we find up until today analogue practices that intervene on the physical material, such as Carlito Azevedo’s Manual da Pedra (2013) or Daniel Monteiro’s Rodapé Literário (2013).

MATLIT’s volume 7.1 seeks contributions dealing with analogue experimental poetic practices – both historical (starting in the 1950s) and contemporary – that dialogue with the social reality they were created in and/or highlight the networked character of experimental poetry, even across linguistic barriers. The goal is to gather texts that interrogate experimental poetic practices not only within the time frame and space in which each poet worked but to offer a perspective on the intersections of its networked character, material reality and presence of the body (as in the case of performance poetry, for instance). We are also interested in articles that inquire how far the development of the digital age has changed and influenced analogue production and its networked character.
Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):
• Experimental poetry’s relation to mail art circles
• The role of exhibitions and magazines in international collaboration
• Relations between international collaboration and national/local culture and political situation
• Intermedia and interdisciplinary collaborations
• Interlinguistic collaborations and exchanges
• Materiality and negotiations between analogue and digital practices
• Analogue experimental poetry in the digital era

DEADLINE: Article submissions will be due on December 31, 2018, with notifications of acceptance by April 30, 2019. MATLIT publishes articles in the following languages: Portuguese, English, and Spanish. Authors must register and upload their files through the journal platform. Please register here via 'External Link' below.

The RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History invites MA-students, PhD-students, art historians, conservators, and researchers to attend the seminar Rembrandt's European Papers on the theory of Computer-Assisted Classification of Watermarks and Chain Line Patterns for Moldmate Identification.

Beginning with assertions about the similarity of paper sold in the same batch, assumptions about the purchase and use of paper by Rembrandt's studio, and claims about the retention of a sheet of paper's physical dimensions during an existence over hundreds of years including decay and preservation, Rembrandt scholars have devised a strategy for estimating the production date of the various impressions of Rembrandt's prints that relies on matching watermarks and chain line patterns in their antique laid paper supports made in Europe.

The basic premise is that the unique pair of watermarks in a pair of molds used in making European paper in the 17th century was only purchased for Rembrandt's use in one sale and employed in one contiguous time interval. Thus, sheets of paper identified as made on the same pair of twin molds as evidenced by matching watermarks and surrounding chain line patterns should all have the same year (plus or minus one) of creation. This provides a chronology offering valuable insights into Rembrandt's artistic development and production patterns.

Professor C. Richard Johnson Jr.

This seminar is organized on the occasion of the visit of the RKD Visiting Fellow in Computational Art History, Professor C. Richard Johnson Jr. (Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, Cornell Tech, New York City).

Program
This 2-day short course offers an introduction to computer-assisted classification of watermarks revealed by radiographic imaging. The course is divided into 4 segments of one and a half hours each. Each segment will include lectures and training exercises.

The technical concept of a decision tree (similar to the parlor game of 20 Questions) is embedded in an interactive interrogatory relying on human responses to a series of Yes/No questions, as described in: A. C. Weislogel, C. R. Johnson, Jr., et al., “Decision Trees and Fruitful Collaborations: The Watermark Identication in Rembrandt's Etchings (WIRE) Project at Cornell" in: Lines of Inquiry: Learning from Rembrandt's Etchings, Ithaca [NY] 2017, pp. 32-57.

The underlying decision tree concept has broad utility in image classification of a variety of maker marks found in the supports of art works, including, for example, panel maker marks and guild brands. This short course will prepare the students to be sophisticated users of this emerging technology and potentially to pioneer its use in other cultural heritage applications.

Wednesday 24 October
13:00-14:30 Session 1: Converting identified watermarks into chronology of Rembrandt’s impressions
14:30-15:00 Coffee Break
15:00-16:30 Session 2: Types, variants, sub-variants, and twins

Thursday 25 October
13:00-14:30 Session 3: Scale-invariant features, decision trees, and decision tables
14:30-15:00 Coffee Break
15:00-16:30 Session 4: Watermarks in drawings by Rembrandt and his pupils

Friday 26 October
16:00-17:00 RKD Public Lecture: Prof. Rick Jonson, Rembrandt's European Papers: Computer-Assisted Classification of Watermarks and Chainline Patterns for Moldmate Identification
17:00-18:00 Drinks

Apply
This seminar is free of charge; coffee, drinks and Public Lecture are included. To apply for the seminar, please send a motivation letter (max ½ A4) and your Curriculum Vitae to Sabine Craft-Giepmans (craft@rkd.nl). Deadline for submission is 15 October 2018. After your submission we will contact you soonest to inform you on your admission to the seminar. The number of attendants is limited to 20. Bringing your own laptop with internet connection is recommended. The spoken language will be English.

For more information, please click on the 'External Link' below.

Launched in 2009, the International Fellowship Program (ISP) offers the opportunity to international researchers, especially early career scholars, to conduct research at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

The program supports projects that are directly related with the diverse institutions and the rich collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The fellowships, which can be held to up to three months, allow researchers to work on their individual projects and to establish professional contacts at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The program aims to strengthen the position of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in the international research network and therefore specifically addresses scholars who do not reside in Germany. The fellows will also gain the opportunity to participate in the academic and cultural life at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

The applicants must hold at least a first university degree (M.A. or equivalent degree) by the time of the application.

The application deadline is December 31st 2018 for next academic year from September 2019 to June 2020.

Please submit your application in one PDF file till December 31st 2018 to forschung@smb.spk-berlin.de