FOURTEENTH ANNUAL GRADUATE STUDENT SYMPOSIUM
IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ART
Sunday, March 26, 2017, 10AM to 5PM

Co-sponsored by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) and
the Dahesh Museum of Art
Location: The Dahesh Museum of Art, 145 Sixth Avenue, New York City
Special thanks to the Dahesh Museum of Art for the Dahesh Museum Art Prize for the Best Paper, a gift from the Mervat Zahid Cultural Foundation.

10 AM: Welcome
Peter Trippi, President of Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art

10:15 AM – 11:15 AM: First Morning Session & Discussion
Peter Trippi, Moderator

Fatma Coşkuner, Koç University, Istanbul, “Between Myth and History: The Mirage of the Galerie des Batailles in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Imperial Imagery”

In 1867, when Sultan Abdülaziz’s painting commission of a triumphal narrative of Ottoman history was already underway, he visited European capitals and saw major cycles of battle paintings. Fatma Coşkuner analyzes the influence of the European historical painting genre on changing Ottoman state artistic policy in the late 19th century.

Tom Young, University of Cambridge, “The Behar School of Athens and the Problem of the Public in Company India, 1824–32”

The prospect of an ‘Anglo-Indian’ public caused considerable anxiety in Britain. Yet in 1820s Patna an amateur art society called the Behar School of Athens was making powerful claims about using art to cultivate just such a political body. Tom Young examines this curious disjuncture.

11:15 AM - 11:30 AM: Break

11:30 AM - 12:30 PM: Second Morning Session & Discussion
Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Seton Hall University and Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, Moderator

Amber L. Wingerson, Smithsonian-George Mason University, “‘Glass That Decorates’: The History, Designers, and Stained-Glass of the Church Glass and Decorating Company of New York”

The Church Glass and Decorating Company of New York (1899¬–1913) created and retailed a diverse assortment of religious and secular stained-glass windows. Its history, skilled designers, and works illustrate the development and range of the larger American stained-glass movement at the turn of the century.

Thomas Moser, Ludwig-Maximillian’s-University of Munich, “Seductive Objects: Rise of the Tactile Sense in French Art Nouveau”

In the late 19th century, the understanding of the human body underwent decisive reconstruction. By taking the body in its physical presence into account, an ennoblement of the tactile sensorium took place. Thus, touching was promoted to a genuine esthetic experience as several Art Nouveau objects indicate.

12:30 PM – 2:00 PM: Lunch Break

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM: First Afternoon Session & Discussion
Roberto C. Ferrari, Columbia University, Moderator

Saskia Verlaan, City University of New York, “Real Fakes: De-attributed Canova Nudes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art”

This presentation addresses a group of eight nude figure studies in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, formerly attributed to Antonio Canova. The contested authorship and intent of these drawings are investigated in light of
issues including collecting practices, forgery, the copy, and drawing pedagogy.

Caroline D. Shields, University of Maryland, “Nostalgia in Tahiti: Desire and Hope in Paul Gauguin’s The Royal End”

Paul Gauguin’s 1892 canvas The Royal End acquires new meaning when located at the intersection of the nineteenth century’s multivalent notions of nostalgia. A framework derived from the present-day science of nostalgia, and grounded in period literature and science, reveals the capacity for optimism and growth in artistic representations of the past.

Thijs Dekeukeleire, Ghent University-University of Antwerp, “Art and the Shifting Implications of Male Same-Sex Desire: Jean Delville's School of Plato (1898)”

Thijs Dekeukeleire examines the cultural specificity of the same-sex affection apparent in The School of Plato, thereby aligning art-historical analysis with queer critical theory. He argues that the canvas and its reception stand as a testament to the shifting implications of male intimacy in the fin de siècle.

3:30 PM – 3:45 PM: Break

3:45 PM – 4:45 PM: Second Afternoon Session & Discussion
Patricia Mainardi, Graduate Center, City University of New York, Moderator

Kathryn Desplanque, Duke University, “Scènes de l’Artiste Inglorieux: Honoré de Balzac, Henri Murger, and Graphic Satire from the Revolution through the July Monarchy”

This contribution argues that Honoré de Balzac’s 1830 Scènes de la Vie Privée and Henri Murger’s 1847–48 Scènes de la vie de Bohème can be re-conceptualized as literary responses to an already established corpus of Revolutionary and July Monarchy cultural production published in now-marginalized media: graphic satire and vaudeville.

Raphaella Serfaty, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, “Manipulating the Gaze: Challenging Spectatorship in Honoré Daumier’s Caricature”

Raphaella Serfaty explores Daumier’s images of spectators, arguing that the artist occasionally subverted the expected equation between the observer and the object of observation. She unravels the performative function of the gaze as a dynamic strategy that created content while introducing components of the spectacle into the depicted scene.

The 2017 jury consists of Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Marilyn Satin Kushner, Roberto C. Ferrari, Patricia Mainardi, Peter Trippi. The symposium committee includes Caterina Pierre and Margaret Samu.

Special thanks to Amira Zahid and Alia Nour-Elsayed of the Dahesh Museum.
The symposium is free and open to the public; reservations are suggested but not required.
For further information: infodaheshmuseum.org.