SEMINAR
COUNTING VERMEER: USING WEAVE MAPS TO STUDY VERMEER’S CANVASES

The RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History invites MA-students, PhD-students, art historians, conservators, and researchers to attend the seminar on the theory of thread counting and painting canvases and the use of automated thread count and weave map software. 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); and the online RKD Studies publication: Counting Vermeer: Using Weave Maps to Study Vermeer's Canvases to be launched on www.rkdmonographs.nl in October 2017. This will be the first of a series of yearly seminars.

C. Richard Johnson, Jr. received the first PhD minor in Art History granted by Stanford University along with a PhD in Electrical Engineering in 1977. Forty years later, he is the Jacobs Fellow in Computational Arts and Humanities at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech (New York, NY) and the Geoffrey S. M. Hedrick Senior Professor of Engineering at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY). In the past decade professor Johnson has founded four multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, pioneering projects in the new field of computational art history. Their aim is the development of computer-based procedures assisting in the matching of manufactured patterns in art supports: canvas thread count automation (in 2007), historic photographic paper classification (in 2010), laid paper chain line pattern marking and matching (in 2012), and watermark identification in Rembrandt's etchings (in 2015). Professor Johnson has co-authored several papers arising from these projects.

Attending the seminar is free; coffee, lunch, drinks, public lecture and field trip are included. The number of attendants however is limited to 20 (except for the public lecture). Bringing your own laptop with internet connection is required. Participants are expected to have read the RKD Studies publication Counting Vermeer upon the start of the seminar. The spoken language will be English.
To apply for the seminar, please send a motivation letter (max ½ A4) and your Curriculum Vitae to Sytske Weidema (weidemarkd.nl). Deadline for submission is 20 October 2017. After your submission we will contact you soonest to inform you on your admission to the seminar.  

PROGRAM

Mon. 6 November - RKD
13:30-14:00 Coffee (with welcome by professor Chris Stolwijk, General Director of the RKD)
14:00-16:30 "The Life of a Painting's Canvas: Weaving to Weave Maps"
The progression of a painting’s canvas from manufacture to thread counting & weave maps. Includes a 15 minutes break.

Tue. 7 November - RKD
13:45-14:00 Coffee
14:00-16:30 "Thread Counting and Weave Mapping Tools"
Workshop on using software to assist manual and automated thread counting (that produces weave maps) and on preparing reports on the results. Participants work in pairs and on their own laptops. Includes a 15 minutes break.

Wed. 8 November - Field trip, Mauritshuis
13:45-16:00 Field trip to the Vermeer-collection & conservation studio (no break)

Thu. 9 November – RKD
12:30-13:00 Coffee
13:00-14:00 “The impact of Weave Maps and Automated Thread Count on art historical research” (lecture by Michiel Franken, Curator Technical Documentation / Rembrandt & Rembrandt School, RKD)
14:00-16:30 "Algorithmic Thinking in Developing a Procedure for Weave Map Match Hunting"
Participants present reports and engage in the use of weave map match hunting between teams. Participants work on their own laptop. Includes a 15 minutes break.

Fri. 10 November – Mauritshuis, Nassauzaal
15:00-16:00 “Counting Vermeer” – public lecture
16:00-17:00 Drinks