Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will be hosting the symposium “Stradanus at Cooper Hewitt” as the culmination of its multi-year Stradanus Project on November 6-7, 2025.

The museum is home to 143 sheets of drawings and inscriptions by the Netherlandish artist Johannes Stradanus (1523-1605), also known as Jan van der Straet. With support from the Getty’s Paper Project Initiative and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Collections Program, Cooper Hewitt embarked on The Stradanus Project, an effort to conserve, research, and digitize Stradanus’s drawings, which served as preparatory designs for his engravings.

In 2021-2022, Cooper Hewitt conducted a conservation survey of all of its Stradanus sketches. Based on this information, the team selected 39 sheets for lining removal and treatment, which was completed in 2024. As a result of conservation work and research, drawings and inscriptions that have been obscured for more than a century have been newly revealed.

Over two days, 14 curators, scholars, and conservators will present new research on Stradanus. In addition to these presentations, there will be viewings of Cooper Hewitt’s Stradanus holdings in the Drue Heinz Study Center for Drawings and Prints.

To register for the symposium, please visit https://www.cooperhewitt.org/the-stradanus-project

Cooper Hewitt’s Stradanus Project is made possible with support from the Getty Foundation through The Paper Project initiative; and received Federal support from the Smithsonian Collections Care Initiative, administered by the National Collections Program. Additional support for the Stradanus at Cooper Hewitt symposium has been provided by the Tavolozza Foundation

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PROGRAMM

THURSDAY, November 6, 2025

9:30 a.m.–9:45 a.m.
Opening Remarks
Maria Nicanor, Director, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York
Caitlin Condell, Associate Curator & Head of Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design Department, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

9:45 a.m.–11:00 a.m.
Panel I

Julia Siemon, Bard Graduate Center, New York
“Stradanus: Word and Image”

Karen Bowen, Unaffiliated
“Tracing the Distribution of Prints Designed by Johannes Stradanus”

Alessandra Baroni, Scuola dell’Arte della Medaglia, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Rome
“Preparatory Sketch or Study After? New Reflections on the Chronology and Function of Stradanus's Drawings at Cooper Hewitt”

11:15 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Panel II

Rebecca Pollak, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
“Stradanus Drawings at Cooper Hewitt: Workshop Practice, Collecting Histories, and Conservation”

Heather Hendry, Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts, Philadelphia “Considering Color Change in Iron Gall Ink Drawings: A Case Study in the Treatment of Stradanus Drawings”

Anders Svensson, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
“Stradanus’s Corrections–A Case Study of the Drawing The Battle of Marciano I”

Jamie Kwan, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York
"Assembling Stradanus: Reconstructing Sheets and Binding Groups in Cooper Hewitt’s Collection”

3:00 p.m.–4:45 p.m.
Study Sessions I and II

Drue Heinz Study Center
Study Session I will begin at 3:00 p.m.
Study Session II will begin at 4:00 p.m.

FRIDAY, November 7, 2025

9:30 a.m.–9:45 a.m.
Opening Remarks
Matilda McQuaid, Acting Director of Curatorial, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York
Caitlin Condell, Associate Curator & Head of Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design Department, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

9:45 a.m.–11:00 a.m.
Panel I

Anca-Delia Moldovan, University of Warwick, Coventry
“Sketching the Thread: Women and Silk Production in Johannes Stradanus’s Drawings”

Dontay Givens II, New York University, New York
“Phantasmagoric Landscapes, Hunting with Jan van der Straet”

Zoe Langer, Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville Lia Markey, Center for Renaissance Studies, Newberry Library, Chicago Gloria Moorman, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame
“Stradanus and Dante”

11:00 a.m.–11:15 a.m. Coffee break

11:15 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Panel II

Kate Heard, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor
“‘Nobile Spectaculum’: Stradanus’s Life of the Virgin Revisited”

Joana Moura, Independent Researcher
“Stradanus’s ‘Descent from the Cross’: Connecting the Dots Dispersed Across Different Geographies”

Rhoda Eitel-Porter, Print Quarterly, London
“Stradanus and the Artist’s Studio”

3:00 p.m.–4:45 p.m.
Study Session III and IV

Drue Heinz Study Center
Study Session III will begin at 3:00 p.m.
Study Session IV will begin at 4:00 p.m.