The Louvre before the Louvre:
Artisans, Artists, Academies

Venue: The Wallace Collection, London
Date: 5 July 2013
Organisers: Mia Jackson (Queen Mary University of London) & Hannah
Williams (University of Oxford)

CALL FOR PAPERS - DEADLINE 15 Jan 2013

Now one of the world's best-known museums, the Louvre was once a vast
artistic and cultural centre of a different kind. 'The Louvre before
the Louvre' will delve into the fascinating but little known period of
the Louvre's history from 1643 to 1793, exploring the role this space
played in the histories of art production and artistic sociability in
early modern Paris.

Even before Louis XIV moved the Court from the Louvre to Versailles in
1682, the Louvre had already become the centre of artistic, creative,
and intellectual energy in Paris. Artists and artisans of all trades –
from watch-makers to history painters – were given lodgings and studio
space in the same wings and corridors that accommodated cultural organs
like the Menus Plaisirs du Roi (responsible for state festivities and
spectacles), the royal printing press, and the royal academies
(Painting and Sculpture, Architecture, Inscriptions, Science, and the
Académie Française). As the palace expanded over the next two
centuries, the Louvre complex (the building and surrounding streets)
came to be dominated by this growing community of artists, artisans,
men of letters, and their aristocratic patrons, inhabiting this space
and living out their daily lives together.

'The Louvre before the Louvre' will reconstruct and re-evaluate this
space of artistic sociability. As dust billowed and paint dripped in
artists' studios, theoretical debates were thrashed out in the
academies, and groundbreaking technologies were designed in artisans'
workshops, the Louvre became a fertile ground for collaboration, the
results of which are evident in many objects (e.g. by Boulle,
Oppenordt, Oeben, Boucher, Oudry, Girardon, Coysevox, to name a few)
now in the Wallace Collection where this conference will take place.

Seeking a more intimate understanding of the artistic and intellectual
'neighbourhood' of the Louvre and its effect on art and design in the
period, we invite papers that explore the Louvre's rich history, art,
material objects, spaces, and social interactions during the 17th and
18th centuries. Suggested topics may include but are not limited to:

- Artistic and intellectual circles (the lives of the Royal Academies &
their academicians)
- Living in the Louvre (artists' logements/studios; social order &
daily life; professional/social interactions; individual and
collaborative practice)
- Form and function of Louvre spaces (key sites: Galerie d'Apollon,
Salon Carré, Grande Galerie, theatres, chapels, etc)
- Patronage Networks (patrons and collectors in the Louvre)
- Decoration & Display (furnishing and decoration by Louvre
inhabitants; displays of collections; exhibitions)
- Louvre Experiences (written and visual descriptions of life in the
Louvre)
- Finding boundaries – where did the artistic communities of the Louvre
begin and end? How did one 'belong' to the Louvre community? What did
it mean to do so?

Please send proposals of no more than 300 words to
amelia.f.jacksongmail.com and hannah.williamshoa.ox.ac.uk by
15 Jan 2013.

For further information:
http://www.wallacecollection.org/education/research/
forthcomingconferences