Call for Contributions

Collecting and Displaying in Portugal: From João V to the Estado Novo

Edited by Foteini Vlachou (Instituto de História da Arte, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

During the last two decades, the interest in Portuguese collecting and collectors, as well as objects commissioned and purchased abroad during the maritime expansion has known a significant surge. The publications and exhibition catalogues of scholars such as Maria Antónia Pinto de Matos (the specialist on Chinese export porcelain) or Annemarie Jordan Gschwend have drawn attention to the extensive commerce of luxury and exotic goods between Portugal and her colonies. Other scholars, such as João Carlos Pires Brigola have pioneered the study of the early history of museums and collections in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, focusing on natural history museums. Individual collectors have also been studied (Manuel do Cenáculo Vilas-Boas and João Allen, for example), and various exhibition catalogues have been dedicated to them (such as the one on Henry Burnay). Teaching and research has also developed along these lines, notably the master’s degree on museum studies (Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa), and the research program “Fontes para a História dos Museus de Arte em Portugal”, both spearheaded by Raquel Henriques da Silva.

This volume aims to present to an international audience a comprehensive view of recent scholarly activity, but also – and most importantly – a panorama of the history of collections, exhibitions and museums in Portugal, roughly from the beginning of the eighteenth century till the end of Salazar’s regime. Methodological approaches that take into account the relationship between collecting and displaying practices and class, gender, national identity and citizenship, and/or focus on material culture will be especially welcome. The volume is under consideration with Ashgate Publishing (Series: The Histories of Material Culture and Collecting, 1700-1950, Series Editor: Michael Yonan, University of Missouri).

Topics will fall under four major headings:
Collecting and Displaying the Empire (botanical gardens and naturalist specimens from the scientific expeditions, the development of concepts such as the Indo-Portuguese and related exhibition history, etc.)
Decorative Arts (collections of textiles, porcelain, etc., the importance of azulejos in both a local and colonial context, nineteenth-century exhibitions of decorative arts and the notion of ‘national’ art, etc.)
‘European Traditions’ (prints and drawings collections, collections of copies and/or plaster casts, nineteenth-century Portuguese collectors, etc.)
Museums, Exhibitions and Collections during the First Republic and the Estado Novo (museums and the state, the proclamation of the Republic as a seminal moment in the institutional history of Portuguese museums, exhibiting Portugal abroad, etc.).

Please send proposals of up to 500 words and a one page CV to Foteini Vlachou (nandia.vlachougmail.com) no later than January 30, 2014.
Writers will be notified by the end of February 2014.