Call for Papers

Sculpture and Display

(Deadline: July 1 2006)

This two-day international conference (planned for spring 2007) aims to
bring together academics, curators, architects, artists, designers and
museum professionals to discuss the role of sculpture and its display in the
museum and gallery. It aims to look above all at the reasons behind the
choices of particular works and their placement; identifying and exploring
the programmatic statements of power, prestige and symbolic value which
sculpture has been used to signpost over recent centuries. We welcome
proposals for papers from the Renaissance to the present, from early
galleries and cast courts, to contemporary interventions and installations.
We are looking at the relationship between sculpture and its public
position, primarily inside the building rather than out, and will consider
a broad range of definitions of 'gallery' and indeed of 'sculpture'. How
does sculpture signal an institution's (or an individual's) public
aspirations; how does it denote culture, learning or modernity? How does
sculpture affirm or challenge an established reputation? What kind of
comparisons can be drawn between sculpture displays in art museums and
galleries and those in other types of museums?

Please submit abstracts (of no more than 500 words) together with a brief
biographical outline by email to Ellen Tait by email
(ellenhenry-moore.ac.uk) or by post to: Henry Moore Institute, 74 The
Headrow, Leeds, LS1 3AH by July 1 2006. (This conference has been developed
in tandem with the Fellowship held at the Institute by Dr Christopher
Marshall of the University of Melbourne who will work with us in developing
its content.)