Call for Papers

Sculpture in Arcadia: gardens, parks and woodlands as settings for
sculptural encounters from the 18th to 21st century.

Proposals by 8th October 2006
Date of Symposium: 26 February 2007
University of Reading, UK

Call for papers
This one day symposium will ask about the characteristics of
sculpture planned for Arcadian and pastoral settings. What is the
nature of the sculptural encounter when sculpture is viewed outside
the museum or urban setting, and what are the sculptural meanings
generated in such contexts? How have gardens and sculpture trails
been planned so as to propose scripts for the visitor's viewing
experience? What kinds of audiences have been imagined for such
works? What connections can be traced between eighteenth-century
garden sculpture and their modern equivalents? How have the uses of
terms such as 'pastoral' and 'arcadian' changed? What kinds of
connotations - gendered, aesthetic, political - are invoked when
'nature' and 'sculpture' are brought into juxtaposition? We are
interested in the settings for sculpture including architectural
structures such as pavilions and plinths, and formal and informal
planting in gardens, parks and managed woodland. While eighteenth-
century gardens and modern sculptures have been studied extensively
in the context of their particular periods, this symposium aims to
trace the connections, continuities and discontinuities between the
earlier period and contemporary pastoral settings for sculpture,
including the contemporary preservation and re-presentation of
eighteenth-century sculpture for modern audiences.

This symposium takes place at the University of Reading, close to
some of the most celebrated eighteenth-century gardens in Europe,
Stowe and Rousham, but we invite papers from all periods from the
eighteenth century to the present day and in all European and North
American contexts.

Plenary Speakers include Professor Antje von Graevenitz (University
of Cologne), Dr Ulrich Müller (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena),
and Dr Patrick Eyres (New Arcadian Press and University of Leeds)

Please submit proposals for papers along with a 300-word abstract to
Dr Sue Malvern, Dr Eckart Marchand and Dr. Gerhard Bissell by 8th
October 2006.

Department of History of Art and Architecture
School of Humanities
The University of Reading
Whiteknights
PO Box 218
Reading RG6 6AA
U.K.

Fax: ++44 / (0)118 / 378 89 18
Email: arthistoryreading.ac.uk