Call for Papers for a conference at the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle,
County Durham on 19th and 20th September 2014. The conference focuses on
'The Period Room' and we invite proposals for papers from a wide range
of disciplines and perspectives.

The Period Room: Museum, Material, Experience

Since the late 19th century the Period Room has been a consistent
presence in the public museum, and yet over the past 25 years the Period
Room has become a contentious museum object, leading many museums to
question the legitimacy of the Period Room as an effective and
appropriate method of display and interpretation. As dislocated
fragments, often remodelled to fit the spaces of the museum, the Period
Room is, for some, a signifier for the inauthentic, an outmoded method
of display and a representation of unfashionable museum interpretation.
The problems associated with Period Rooms are exacerbated by the fact
that they are large and bulky objects, difficult and expensive to
redisplay or reinterpret. Many museums retain their Period Room
displays, but the recent changes in the perspectives on Period Rooms
have also led a number of museums in the UK, Europe and the USA to
reconsider their continued relevance as museum objects, to dismantle and
deaccession the displays, and in some cases to repatriate the Period
Rooms to their places of origin (if that still exists of course).

This conference, held at the Bowes Museum, which redisplayed its own
collection of Period Rooms in 2007-10, aims to consider the Period Room
from a wide variety of perspectives in order to address some key
questions about Period Rooms and the history of Period Rooms display in
Museums: Should Period Rooms be considered objects in their own right,
or merely 'contexts' for related material? How, and in what ways, did
Period Rooms satisfy ideas of museum interpretation, and how and why did
these attitudes change? What was the role of the evolving frameworks of
national/local heritage in the appearance of Period Rooms in museums?
What were/are the theoretical, technical and aesthetic frameworks for
the display of Period Rooms in museums? How, and in what ways, is the
Period Room different from, or similar to, the Historic Interior?


We invite papers to explore these themes and relationships from a wide
range of perspectives and from a wide range of organisations,
institutions and disciplines, from academics (historians, art
historians, literary and film historians), museum curators and
professionals, exhibition designers, technicians and craft-workers):

Themes for consideration may include:
The processes of the circulation, display and redisplay of Period Rooms
– the dealers, merchants, decorators, collectors, and museum curators
and their roles in the changing taste for the Period Room.
Case Studies of Period Rooms – the history of specific displays in
museums and other public institutions; their provenance, removal and
reconstruction; display and interpretation.
The philosophical history of the Period Room as a particular mode of
engagement with the past - as an historical space, as a space of
historical empathy, and as an immersive environment.
The material and technical aspects of Period Room display; the
challenges of redisplay in museum contexts, what the objects reveal
about the history of their making and the history of museum
interpretation.
The 'Period Room' in literature, film and visual culture; how was/is the
Period Room/Historic Interior imagined, and what can these perspectives
tell us about how we engage with the Period Room in the museum?

Please send abstracts of no more than 400 words to the conference
organisers:
Dr Mark Westgarth (School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural
Studies, University of Leeds) m.w.westgarthleeds.ac.uk
Dr Jane Whittaker (The Bowes Museum)
jane.whittakerthebowesmuseum.org.uk
Dr Howard Coutts (The Bowes Museum)howard.couttsthebowesmuseum.org.uk

Closing Date for Abstracts: 31st March 2014.