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[1] Expanding the Ceramic Field in the Long 19th Century

From: Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth <c.mccaffrey-howarthleeds.ac.uk>
Date: July 9, 2018

This session calls for papers that expand the field of ceramics in the long 19th century to explore alternative narratives within art, decorative art and design histories and material culture and thus move beyond the tradition of connoisseurship and the cycles of production and consumption. We maintain that ceramics in the 19th century had a profound and pervasive presence: a rare Kangxi vase or a Chelsea gurine, a popular blue transferware plate or a humble china cup spoke to multiple actants – collector, dealer, consumer, designer, for example – and thereby contributed to the 19th-century’s tangled and often fraught social and intellectual networks. This period also bore witness to an increase in scholarly publications relating to the cultural history of ceramics, intensified by museum exhibitions and the rising art market for these objects, and culminating in a second Chinamania.

We invite topics on all types of pottery and porcelain from all periods that touch upon 19th-century issues, including but not limited to: Chinamania, colonialism, collecting, display, domesticity, gender, identity, and transnationalism. Building upon Cavanaugh and Yonan’s seminal publication on 18th- century porcelain (2010), we ask: How did pottery and porcelain operate as agents of culture, conveying social, psychological and symbolical meanings in the 19th century?

Please send a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 25-minute paper, your name and institutional affiliation (if any) to the panel organisers:

Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth, University of Leeds
c.mccaffrey-howarthleeds.ac.uk

Anne Anderson, V&A Course Director and Tutor anne.anderson99talk21.com

Rachel Gotlieb, Gardiner Museum, Toronto rachelgardinermuseum.on.ca

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[2] ‘Difficult Heritage’ and the Legacies of Empire. Diversifying engagement with material culture in public spaces and museums

From: Dr Mirjam Brusius <brusiusghil.ac.uk>
Date: July 10, 2018

Session Convenor
Mirjam Brusius, German Historical Institute London/TORCH Oxford, brusiusghil.ac.uk

The vestiges of empire extend beyond standard conventions of physical control and coercion. Empire persists and proliferates in the present through material and visual representations and celebrations of the past. It manifests in statues, museum exhibits, artifact collections, and is embedded in public spaces and the individual’s consciousness. This has an impact on how audiences access and perceive not just artefacts in public life, but also history.
This session intends to feature six case studies and a commentary that address the legacy of empire in public space, ranging from imperial statues such as that of Rhodes, to the possession and presentation of artifacts in museums, and beyond. Following up on debates that have taken place in the last few years, the session seeks to learn from examples of what a critical engagement with material culture could look like in practical terms, e.g. through interventions by (art) historians, curators, community members and artists. How can difficult histories be made visible in public space, e.g. if imperial statues are not removed? How can museums tell their complex collection histories in more inclusive ways? Finally, how could these interventions contribute to attempts to diversify audiences in museums and make institutions more accessible and relevant today?
Brighton provides an apt platform for this session: Here, one of the landmarks of the city, the Royal Pavilion, incorporates an ‘Oriental’ appearance. We thus welcome proposals that engage with colonial (counter-flow) discourses and the exhibition of colonial power from the late Georgian era onwards.

To offer a paper
- Please email your paper proposals direct to the session convenor, details above.
- Provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 25-minute paper (unless otherwise specified), your name and institutional affiliation (if any).
- Please make sure the title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because it will appear online, in social media and in the printed programme.

You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission from the session convenor.
Deadline for submissions: Monday 5 November 2018

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[3] Modern(ist) Objects? The objet trouvé in the 18th and 19th centuries

From: Molly Duggins <molly.dugginsnas.edu.au> and
Freya Gowrley <f.l.gowrleygmail.com>
Date: July 13, 2018

Molly Duggins, National Art School, Sydney Molly.Dugginsnas.edu.au
Freya Gowrley, University of Edinburgh f.l.gowrleygmail.com

Marcel Duchamp’s series of ‘readymades’, particularly the infamous Fountain of 1917, are often viewed as heralding a watershed moment in the history of art. Produced between 1913 and 1921, Duchamp utilised found and appropriated objects, often drawn from everyday life, to redefine and question the very nature of art. Yet the art historical emphasis on the revolutionary nature of Duchamp’s practice overlooks the productive possibilities offered by a longer and more fluid notion of the found object, or objet trouvé. Indeed, found objects have a long and venerable history stretching back well before the advent of Modernism, being used in the production of an array of cultural practices throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Transformed by aesthetic and material processes such as display, translation, and adaptation, both everyday and extraordinary found objects proliferate in collections, collages, still lives, manuscripts, and assemblages made throughout this period.

This session accordingly seeks to examine the expanded field of the found object and the readymade by exploring these earlier manifestations. We invite proposals for papers on topics including, but not limited to:
- souvenirs
- acts of acquisition
- the collection
- historiographies of the found object
- mass production and/or commodification
- fragments, scraps, excerpts, and pieces
- appropriation
- dialogues of production and consumption
- circulation and exchange of found objects.