Invention and Imagination in British Art and Architecture, 600-1500

This conference will explore the ways in which artists and patrons in
Britain devised and introduced new or distinctive imagery, styles and
techniques, as well as novel approaches to bringing different media
together. It is concerned with the mechanisms of innovation, with
inventive and imaginative processes, and with the relations between
conventions and individual expression. The conversation will therefore
also address the very notions of sameness and difference in medieval art
and architecture, and how these may be evaluated and explained
historically.

Topics for discussion can include authorship, creativity,
experimentation, envisaging, representation, and regulation by guilds or
patrons, as well as case studies of particular objects, buildings,
commissions or practices.

The conference will take place on 30th October - 1st November at the
Paul Mellon Centre and The British Museum; it will include
collaborations with the museum's Department of Prehistory & Europe and
opportunities to see works from the collection.

Papers should be of 20 minutes duration. Proposals/abstracts of 500
words should be submitted to Ella Fleming by 25 March 2014:

eflemingpaul-mellon-centre.ac.uk

Conference organised by the Paul Mellon Centre, with Sandy Heslop
(University of East Anglia), Jessica Berenbeim (University of Oxford),
Lloyd DeBeer and Naomi Speakman (The British Museum).