Reading Art: Pre-Raphaelite Painting and Poetry Conference in Birmingham

Keynote Speakers:
Professor John Holmes (University of Birmingham)
Dr Dinah Roe (Oxford Brookes University)

Reading Art is a two-day conference hosted by Birmingham Museums Trust and organised by Birmingham City University, on 27th-28th May 2016. The conference is part of a wider project which explores Pre-Raphaelite painting and poetry, and is supported by the AHRC Cultural Engagement fund. For more information on the project and the conference, see our blog: http://readingart.wordpress.com/.

For the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and those associated with them, painting and poetry were sister arts. Many Pre-Raphaelite paintings were inspired by literature, and many poems were written to accompany paintings. The interest in and practice of these intertwining strands is one which was widespread in Pre-Raphaelitism, from Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris to less well-known figures such as Edward Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. This conference will explore and celebrate the many ways in which art and literature are related in Pre-Raphaelitism, and there will also be opportunities to explore BMAG’s Pre-Raphaelite collection and visit the Burne-Jones stained glass in St Philip’s Cathedral.

Abstracts of up to 300 words are invited; please send to Dr. Serena Trowbridge (serena.trowbridgebcu.ac.uk) by March 21st 2016.

Topics may include but are not limited to:
- the work of a particular artist or poet
- the exploration of depictions of poetry in art, or vice versa
- readings of the visual and the verbal
- the broader relationship between art and literature in the 19th century
- sources of literary/artistic inspiration
- disjunctions between art and literature
- subsequent representations of Pre-Raphaelite art or literature.

Creative submissions will also be considered.