Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference 2024 - Call for Sessions.
‘Britain and the Low Countries: Cultural Exchange Past, Present & Future’.

2024 marks the first time in the forty-year history of the Historians of Netherlandish Art that the biennial conference will be held in the UK. Cultural, political and economic exchange has been pivotal to the histories of the UK and the Low Countries and these relationships have taken on new significance and have new potential as the UK renegotiates its relationship with Europe after Brexit. ‘Britain and the Low Countries: Cultural Exchange Past, Present & Future’ considers the extraordinary depth and breadth of the relationships between the constituent nations of the UK, Belgium, and The Netherlands.

In applying for funding from UK sources, the steering committee has been obliged to decide on some specific themes and sessions. Three broad themes thus form part of the conference programme: technology and the natural sciences, key themes in scholarship on British-Netherlandish culture, and medium-based scholarship in the British-Netherlandish context. The thirteen open sessions listed below reflect these themes; calls for papers for these sessions will be issued shortly. In the meantime, the committee welcomes proposals for further sessions which need not relate directly to the theme of ‘Britain and the Low Countries’. Our priority is the presentation of new research and contributions from graduates and early career researchers. We welcome proposals on a range of subjects that either complement the extant sessions or introduce alternative topics.

Each session will be 90 minutes, allowing for three 20-minute papers and time for discussion. All sessions in which papers are delivered will take place at West Road Concert Hall, University of Cambridge. Gallery sessions in Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum, King’s College and other venues) and London (Wallace Collection and Dulwich Picture Gallery) will also take place.

Applicants must be HNA members and are allowed to submit multiple proposals but may not chair more than one session. Please note that members are allowed to submit proposals for sessions in which they would like to present a paper themselves. Please send proposals of c. 500 words, clearly stating the goals of the session, along with a CV (no longer than one page) to: HNA2024exeter.ac.uk.

Please direct any questions to the above e-mail address.

Deadline: 29 May 2023. Applicants will be notified by the programme committee no later than 15 June 2023.

Please consider contributing to HNA IDEA’s appeal for contributions to an equitable conference: https://hnanews.org/hna-launches-fundraising-campaign/

Sessions on the theme of ‘Britain and the Low Countries: Cultural Exchange Past, Present & Future’:

Technology and the natural sciences:

1) Technical Art History: Material stories-Object itineraries (chair: Erma Hermens, Director of the Hamilton Kerr Institute and Deputy Director, Conservation and Heritage Science, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge)

2) Art and Nature in the Dutch Colonial World (chair: Dániel Margócsy, Professor in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University of Cambridge)

3) Embracing the Digital Age (chair: Lauryn Smith, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The Digital Art History Lab, The Frick Collection, New York & Weixuan Li, Postdoctoral Researcher, Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society [LUCAS])

4) Culture and Climate Change (chair: Dagomar Degroot, Associate Professor of Environmental History, Georgetown University, Washington DC)

Key themes in scholarship on British-Netherlandish culture:

5) ‘Soft power’: The Material Legacy of William and Mary (chair: Meredith Hale, Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture, University of Exeter)

6) Collecting and Exchange Between North Sea Neighbours (chair: Lizzie Marx, Curator of Dutch and Flemish Art, National Gallery of Ireland)

7) Gender & the Home Across Cultures (chair: Judith Noorman, Assistant Professor of Early Modern Art History, University of Amsterdam)

8) Worldly Images and Images of the World in Netherlandish Art (chair: Thijs Weststeijn, Professor and Chair of Art History before 1800, University of Utrecht)

Medium-based scholarship in the British-Netherlandish context:

9) Print Culture Between the UK and the Low Countries (chair: Maureen Warren, Curator of European and American Art, Krannert Art Museum in Champaign, Illinois, USA)

10) New Research on Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the UK (chair: An van Camp, Christopher Brown Assistant Keeper of Northern European Art, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford)

11) Painting: What is Anglo-Dutchness? (chair: Ulrike Kern, Assistant Professor, Institute of Art History, Goethe- Universität Frankfurt am Main)

12) Immigrants and Excellence: Sculptors from the Low Countries at the English and Scottish courts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (chair: Phillip Lindley, Professor of Art History, Loughborough University)

13) 20th C British-Netherlandish Design (chair: Cees de Bont, Professor and Dean of the School of Design and Creative Arts, Loughborough University)

Steering committee:

Meredith Hale (University of Exeter), principal organiser
Lizzie Marx (National Gallery of Ireland), co-organiser
Caroline van Eck (University of Cambridge)
Jamie Edwards (University of Exeter)
Erma Hermens (University of Cambridge)
Helen Hillyard (Dulwich Picture Gallery)
Jean Michel Massing (Emeritus, University of Cambridge)
Paul Taylor (The Warburg Institute)
An Van Camp (Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford)
Joanna Woodall (Emerita, Courtauld Institute of Art)
Edward Wouk (University of Manchester)