Philanthropy (Southampton UK, 16.-17.11.02)
Date: 10/16/02

A symposium on

Women, Gender, Class and

Victorian Cultural Philanthropy

Saturday/Sunday 16/17 November 2002

Conference Centre
Sir James Matthews Building
Southampton Institute
Southampton UK

Southampton Institute will host an international symposium on 'moral
aesthetics' or the Victorian notion that the purpose of art was to
improve or civilize man. The topics covered are wide ranging,
including the Arts and Crafts Movement, the Home Arts Movement,
Settlements, individual women artists, women as patrons and
consumers, education and the influence of Wilde and Morris. It will
also examine gender roles and boundaries.

Although there are exceptions, generally speaking women did not have
the financial resources to endow art galleries, museums or libraries.
Similarly they were constrained as benefactors in terms of collection
giving. What they did have was plenty of time and many felt morally
impelled to find a vocation. Indeed for many women philanthropy was
literally a life-saver, a relief from boredom and stagnation, and
offered a means of extending their physical and social boundaries. A
mission in the East End of London was exciting, simulating and
rewarding. The role of women in social work is well documented and
accounts have centred on women and child welfare, education, housing
and sanitation. This symposium seeks to address the complex notion
of 'cultural equality' or how the working classes were to be raised
to appreciate the values of the middle classes. The upper and middle
classes enjoyed what we now think of as culture, the arts. Some
believed that the poor deserved the same 'riches' or privileges as
the elite. How such notions were argued , how culture was
transmitted, and issues of inclusion and resistance are the focus of
this symposium.

The keynote speaker will be Prof. Regenia Gagnier, Exeter University,
well known for her work on Oscar Wilde, Aestheticism and Commodity
Culture and Individuality.

Other speakers include Dr Maggie Andrews, Prof Edward Bird, Jan
Carder, Jim Cheshire, Elizabeth Crawford, Dr Meaghan Clarke, Fiona
Darling-Glinski, Richard Frith, Janet Floyd, Tony Garland, Heather
Haskins, Prof Janice Helland, Sara Lenaghan, Dr Ruth Livesey, Dr
Diana Maltz, Joseph McBrinn, Morna O_Neill, Elaine Cheasley Paterson,
Dr Talia Schaffer, Hilary Underwood, Jaya Venkatraman, Kim Wahl, and
Shelagh Wilson.

Registration fee £70 or £60 for students and members of the WHN.

This includes tea, coffee and lunch. The symposium dinner is extra.
Accommodation is not included. For further details contact Dr Anne
Anderson, FMAS, Southampton Institute,

Southampton SO14 ORF, UK. E-mail Anne.Andersonsolent.ac.uk.
Web-site www.solent.ac.uk/artandlife for a registration form.

Programme.

Saturday 16th November

9.15 Welcome and introduction

from Anne Anderson

9.30-11.00 Earlier Traditions

Edward Bird

To Train or to Educate: The role of the schools of Art and Design in
the education of the industrial workforce during the nineteenth
century.

Jim Cheshire

Women as patrons and producers of ecclesiastical art 1850-1870
Talia Schaffer
>From Mending to William Morris: Women's Work in Margaret Oliphant's
>Phoebe Junior.

11. 00-11.30 Coffee

11. 30- 1.00 The Home Arts Movement

Shelagh Wilson

The Origins and Intentions of the Home Arts and Industries Association
Hilary Underwood

'It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it': oral evidence
and Mary Watts's Compton enterprises.

Elaine Cheasley Paterson

Homemade Industry: Mary Seton Watts and the Compton Potters' Art Guild.

1.00-2.00 Lunch

2.00-3.3.0 Rural Life

Anne Anderson

Lady Lovelace and Rural Regeneration

Janice Helland

Stitching Identity and Selling 'Irishness' in late nineteenth-century
embroidery.

Joseph McBrinn

Reviving Peasant Arts and Industries in the north of Ireland,
1894-1914: Sophia Rosamond Praeger and the forgotten workshops of
the Irish Decorative Arts Association and the Irish Peasant Home
Industries

3.30-4.00 Tea

4.00 - 5.30 London

Heather V. Haskins

Help or Hindrance? Cultural Philanthropy for Women from the Arts &
Crafts Exhibition Society

Morna O'Neill

"'Everyday Heroic Deeds': Walter Crane at the Red Cross Hall"

Diana Maltz

Aestheticism in the Slums: University Settlement and the Case of the
Toynbee Travellers Club.

6.00-7.00 Key Note : Regenia Gagnier

Followed by drinks and the conference dinner (dinner not included in
the registration fee)

SUNDAY 17th November

STRAND 1

9.30-11.00 The Female Touch

Elizabeth Crawford

'Rhoda and Agnes Garrett, House Decorators, Cabinet Makers, and
Designers of all the Details of Household Furniture and Upholstery,
No 2 Gower Street (corner of Bedford Square), London, W.C.'

Fiona Darling-Glinski
The Privilege of Patronage: Mary Thornycroft and the Sculptural Aesthetic
Kim Wahl

Artistic Play or Sartorial Delimitation?

The Changing Rhetoric of Health and Beauty in 'at-home' British Tea Gowns.

11.00-11.15 Coffee

11.15-12.45- Into the new century

Janet Floyd

Florence White: from country crafts to domestic service

Maggie Andrews
Not just Jam and Jerusalem - The WI as a rural battleground over
definitions of 'craft' in the inter-war period
Jan Carder
Dream of an Independent Life: Painted Fabrics Ltd

12.45- 1.30

Discussion- Framing the debate and ways forward

Chaired by Regenia Gagnier

1.30-2.30 Lunch

SUNDAY 17th November

STRAND 2

9.30-11.00 Social Missions

Meaghan Clarke
'East End Missions': The Art of Improvement in the Press 1880-1900

Ruth Livesey

Art for the People or the People as Artists? Aesthetics, Subjectivity
and Socialist Thought

Richard Frith

'The Worship of Courage': Moral Aesthetics and Aesthetic Morality in
William Morris's Sigurd the Volsung

11.00-11.15 Coffee

11.15-12.45 Wildean Influences

Tony Garland

Breaking the Gender Didactic: The Femme Fatale in English Decadence

Jaya L. Venkatraman

The Artist as Critic as Teacher: Wildean Eye-Openers
Sara Lenaghan
Art and the Aesthete: The feminizing influence of art in the fiction
of James and Wilde

12.45- 1.30

Discussion- Framing the debate and ways forward

Chaired by Regenia Gagnier

1.30-2.30 Lunch

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