The Window as Protagonist in British Architecture and Visual Culture.

The Window as Protagonist in British Architecture and Visual Culture will explore the multifaceted, multi-purpose nature of the window as protagonist, with an emphasis on its place in British architecture and visual culture, broadly conceived. A range of interdisciplinary papers presented by international scholars will provide a platform for dynamic and engaging discourse that forefronts the cultural and social significance of the window in its many guises as object, as boundary, as frame and as mediator.

Program.

Day 1: Thursday 21 November at the Paul Mellon Centre and streamed online.

Panel 1: Visions of Light.

Benet Ge (student, Williams College): “Looked Through: Edward Orme’s Transparent Prints and Masculinizing Georgian Windows” (remoting in).

Francesca Strobino (independent): “The Window as a Test Object W.H.F. Talbot’s Early Photographic Experiments with Latticed Patterns” (remoting in).

Victoria Hepburn (postdoctoral associate, Yale Center for British Art): “A ‘Luminous Framework’ but not ‘Glass of a Modern Kind’: William Bell Scott’s Painted Windows for the Ceramic Gallery at the South Kensington Museum” (remoting in).

Panel 2: Social Relations.

Shaona Barik (assistant professor of English literature at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India): “Health, Hygiene, Sanitation in Colonial Bengal: Case Study of Windows (1860–1920)” (remoting in).

Albie Fay (writer): “Through the Broken Glass: The Window as a Symbol of Social Unrest in Britain and Northern Ireland”.

Ellie Brown (PhD candidate, University of Warwick): “The Window as a Frame and Boundary in the Shopping Centre”.

Day 2: Friday 22 November 2024 at The Warburg Institute.

Panel 1: The Art of Display: From Museums to Shop Windows.

Laura Harris (Senior Research Fellow, University of Southampton): “Art Gallery Windows”.

Naomi Polonsky (assistant curator, House and Collection, Kettle’s Yard): “‘The Vision of the Mind’: Windows In and Out of Art at Kettle’s Yard”.

Alexandra Ault (Lead Curator of Manuscripts (1601–1850), British Library): “Re-glazing the Print Shop Window: The Impact of Glass Technology on the Commercial Display of Fine Art Prints ca.1850–1900”.

Birgitta Huse (social anthropologist, independent researcher): “More Than a Glimpse ‘In Passing’: Reflecting on Shop Windows as Provocateurs Between Art, Commerce and Cultural Traditions”.

Panel 2: Architectural Manipulation.

Steven Lauritano (lecturer in architectural history, Leiden University): “Windows of Learning: Robert Adam, William Henry Playfair and the Old College, University of Edinburgh”.

Rebecca Tropp (archivist, Crosby Moran Hall and former Research and Events Convener at the Paul Mellon Centre): “Windows and the Picturesque”.

Panel 3: Transparency and Materiality.

Alice Mercier (PhD researcher, University of Westminster): “Photographic Looking Before Photographs: Watching Through Windows in the Early-mid Nineteenth Century” (remoting in).

Ruth Ezra (lecturer in art history, University of St Andrews): “Muscovy Glass, from Fenestration to Demonstration”.

Deborah Schultz (senior lecturer in art history, Regent's University London): “The Window as a Lens in the Work of Anna Barriball”.

Panel 4: Cinematic and Literary Horrors.

Vajdon Sohaili (assistant professor of art history and contemporary culture, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University): “Glass, Darkly: Equivocal Windows and the Architectural Paratext in Don’t Look Now’”.

Francesca Saggini (professor in English literature at the Università della Tuscia), “The Horror at the Window”.

This conference has been co-convened by Rebecca Tropp (archivist, Crosby Moran Hall and former Research and Events Convener at the Paul Mellon Centre).

Free tickets and zoom link: https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/whats-on/forthcoming/the-window-as-protagonist-in-british-architecture-and-visual-culture-971