Vauxhall Revisited
Pleasure Gardens and their Publics, 1660–1880

14 - 16 July 2008

Immortalised by the finest artists, composers and novelists of the day,
Vauxhall Gardens opened in 1661, providing Georgian and Victorian
Londoners with a summertime retreat, a place to hear music, admire
paintings, promenade, drink and seduce. Tourists wondered at the happy
confusion of classes and media, and similar resorts sprang up around the
country and across the globe.

Vauxhall Revisited will consider the phenomenon of the pleasure garden
in all its aspects: design, art, music, fashion, gender and class.

Monday 14 July: Museum of Garden History

19.00 Opening reception in Knot Garden behind museum

20.00-22.00 Concert of Eighteenth and Nineteenth century pleasure
garden music

The Linden Baroque Orchestra
Works by Arne, Boyce, Dibdin, etc.
(director Peter Holman).
Philippa Hyde (soprano)

Vauxhall Songs, including works by Balfe, Bishop and Wade
David Owen Norris (piano)
Amanda Pitt (soprano)

Tuesday 15 July: Tate Britain

10.00-10.30 Registration and Tea/Coffee

10.30-10.40 Introduction. Victoria Walsh (Head of Adult Programmes,
Tate Britain) Brian Allen (Director, The Paul Mellon Centre)

10.40-11.20 Keynote

John Dixon Hunt (Penn)
'Theatres of Hospitality': The forms and uses of private landscapes and
public gardens.

Grounds for Pleasure - Chaired by Stephen Daniels (Nottingham)

11.20-11.40 Michael Symes (Birkbeck)
Pleasure Gardens and the English Landscape Garden

11.40-12.00 Paul Elliott (Derby)
Victorian Provincial Public Parks: the Pleasure Gardens of the
Nineteenth Century?

12.00-12.20 Q & A

12.20-13.40 Lunch (not provided)

13.40-14.20 Keynote

Peter Borsay (Aberystwyth)
Pleasure Gardens and Urban Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century

Pleasure Gardens outside London - Chaired by Roey Sweet (Leicester)

14.20-14.40 Jon Stobart (Northampton)
The provincial pleasure gardens of Georgian England

14.40-15.00 Katy Layton-Jones (Liverpool)
'Agreeable elevations' and 'healthful situations': Liverpool's walks and
gardens in the long eighteenth century

15.00-15.20 Wolfgang Cilleßen (Frankfurt)
Exoticism & Commerce: Vauxhalls in Pre-Revolutionary Paris

15.20-15.40 Q & A

15.40-16.10 Tea/Coffee

16.10-16.50 Keynote

Aileen Ribeiro (Courtauld)
Transformations: Dress and disguise in Eighteenth century London

Patriotic Visions - Chaired by Martin Postle (Paul Mellon Centre)

16.50-17.10 Eleanor Hughes (Yale)
Guns in the Gardens: Peter Monamy's Supperbox Paintings at Vauxhall

17.10-17.30 Nebahat Avcioglu (Columbia University. Institute of
Scholars, Paris)
"Vauxhall Gardens or A Turkish Paradise": Princely Politics and the
Architecture of the Other

17.30-17.50 Belinda Beaton (Oxford)
Vauxhall Meets Its Waterloo: Wellington, Heroism and History

17.50-18.10 Q & A

18.10-19.30 Drinks Reception

Wednesday 16 July : Tate Britain

10.00-10.30 Coffee and registration

10.30-11.10 Keynote

Rachel Cowgill (Leeds)
Performance Alfresco: Music-making in English pleasure gardens pre-1880

Divisions on a Ground - Chaired by Simon McVeigh (Guildhall School of
Music & Drama)

11.10-11.30 Berta Joncus (St. Anne’s, Oxford)
"To Propagate a Sound for Sense": Music for Diversion and Seduction at
Ranelagh Gardens

11.30-11.50 Bonny H. Miller (Washington)
Poetical Essays, Pleasing Strains: Pleasure Garden Music in the Popular
Periodical Press

11.50-12.10 William Weber(CalState, Long Beach)
The Evolving Canon of British Vocal Pieces, 1750 - 1890

12.10-12.30 Q & A

12.30-13.30 Lunch (not provided)

An Inclusive Space? Class, Gender and Race - Chaired by Penelope
Corfield (Royal Holloway)

13.30-13.50 David Hunter (University of Texas, Austin)
The Real Audience at Vauxhall, 1729 - 1759

13.50-14.10 Hannah Greig (York)
"All Together and All Distinct": Social Exclusivity and the Pleasure
Gardens of Eighteenth-Century London

14.10-14.30 LakeDouglas (Louisiana)
Pleasure Gardens in New Orleans, 1810 - 1830

14.30-14.50 Q & A

14.50 - 15.20 Tea/Coffee

Light and Dark - Chair: Marius Kwint (Oxford)

15.20-15.40 Alice Barnaby (Exeter)
Light Entertainment: The Role of Illumination, 1780 - 1860

15.40-16.00 Deborah Nord (Princeton)
Gaslight, Daylight and the Decline of the Carnivalesque: Egan, Dickens
and Thackeray

16.00 - 16.20 Margaret MacDonald (Glasgow)
'The evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil':
Whistler and Cremorne

16.20 - 16.40 Q & A

16.40 - 17.00 Final comment and discussion: led by John Brewer, (CalTech)

17.00 End of conference
Tate Britain Auditorium
£80 (£60 concessions), booking required
For tickets book online
or call 020 7887 8888.
Book tickets online
http://www.tate.org.uk/tickets/default.htm?performancelist.asp?ShowID=3204&Source=web