Month: September 2010

The Clark Fellowships Program

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The Clark Fellowship Program Deadline for 2010 applications: November 1. Candidates will be notified about the action taken on their application around March 1. The Clark offers between fifteen and twenty Clark Fellowships each year, ranging in duration from six weeks to ten months. National and international scholars, critics, and museum professionals are welcome to propose projects that extend and enhance the understanding of the visual arts and their role in culture. Stipends are dependent on salary and sabbatical replacement needs. Housing in the Institute’s Scholars’ Residence, located across the street from the Clark, is also provided. Clark Fellowships are open to academics, curators, and independent scholars whose projects deepen the knowledge, understanding, and interpretation of art and visual culture, broadly conceived. Candidates must already have a Ph.D. or equivalent professional experience. Fellows are furnished with offices in the library,…

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News: Online books and a guide to some online databases

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Gutenberg-e online books Columbia University Press has a new site where it is publishing e-monographs. Gutenberg-e (not to be confused with Project Gutenberg) is an open access site that publishes award-winning dissertations as e-books. It appears that Gutenberg-e aims to “offer elements that cannot be conveyed in print: extensive documentation, hyperlinks to supplementary literature, images, music, video, and links to related web sites”. Of interest to art historians is Robert Kirkbride’s Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro, which can be read here. The book has also been recently reviewed by Saundra Weddle on H-net. __________ JISC Collections JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) recently launched a page that acts as an introduction to their online resources. From here you can search across collections and browse the different collections. The collections have a UK focus but are likely…

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London calling

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Foreign Correspondent London Calling Mark McDonald (Assistant Keeper – Old Master Prints and Spanish Drawings, British Museum). What can only be described a brilliant summer in London is rapidly drawing to a close; brilliant not only for the long hot days that could on occasion be compared to Australia, but what has been on view at the British Museum. Not wanting too much to boast about the Department of Prints and Drawings with its ceaseless offering of exhibitions that delight and inspire, but Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings curated by my colleague Hugo Chapman with Marzia Fiettti of the Uffizi showed 100 drawings, fifty from each collection, that was a revelation. There is good reason to feel exhausted by the endless privileging of the Italian Renaissance in both academia and museums, but this exhibition was an eye-opener showing…

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EVCS – Vincent Alessi on Van Gogh’s collection of illustrations

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Vincent Alessi ‘It’s a kind of Bible’: A thematic and stylistic analysis of van Gogh’s collection of English black-and-white illustrations During his life Vincent van Gogh assembled a number of important collections, including approximately 2,000 black-and-white popular illustrations. Cut from illustrated newspapers, the majority of the works in this collection were from two pioneering English publications, the Illustrated London News and The Graphic. To date, these illustrations has been widely neglected; scholars have acknowledged the influence of English illustration on Van Gogh’s work, but little has been done in analysing the actual print collection. Why did van Gogh build the collection? Why did he choose certain illustrations over others? What was its thematic and stylistic structure? This paper aims to reveal the complex thematic and stylistic structure which underpins van Gogh’s extensive collection, revealing the influence it had on the…

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Artists’ Talks – Basil Sellers Art Prize

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Artists’ Talks – Basil Sellers Art Prize 2010 Take part in a conversation between The Ian Potter Museum of Art Curator Bala Starr and finalists of the Basil Sellers Art Prize 2010. Finalists Glenn Morgan & David Ray respond to their works and their experience of the prize. Gain personal insights into the artists’ thought processes and what inspires them. Free Admission. Time: Saturday 11 September, 2.00pm Glenn Morgan is known for his witty dioramas of concerts and sporting events. Works on display include a bus full of Geelong Cats premiership players, the euphoric scene at Sydney Swans 2005 premiership game and Steve Waugh’s final test cricket match in 2004. Morgan’s work celebrates the spirit and energy of Australian sport. David Ray is a ceramicist whose hand-crafted vessels incorporate an abundance of colours, textures and decals. Ray has created trophies…

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Call for Applications – Andrew W. Mellon Postdoc Fellowship

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Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities Call for Applications, 2011-12 – http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu/applications/postdoc/cfa.shtml Topic: Adaptations Five (5) one-year Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships are available for the 2011-2012 academic year for untenured scholars in the humanities who received or will receive their Ph.D. between December 2002 and December 2010. The fellowship is open to all scholars, national and international, who meet application terms (see Guidelines below). The programs of the Penn Humanities Forum are conceived through yearly topics that invite broad interdisciplinary collaboration. For the 2011–2012 academic year, we have set Adaptations as the theme. Humanists and those in related fields are invited to submit research proposals on any aspect of this topic, except educational curriculum building and the performing arts. Fellows teach one undergraduate course in addition to conducting their research. The fellowship stipend is $46,500, plus health insurance. Fellows…

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Lisa Beaven – ‘The Sons of Clovis II’

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What are you looking at? Lisa Beaven Evariste Luminais, The Sons of Clovis II (1880) in the Art Gallery of New South Wales This is, without doubt, the strangest painting in the New South Wales Art Gallery (Fig. 1). Painted on a heroic scale, with the figures almost life-size, it is impossible to ignore and while I am looking pools of people gather around it. Two boys float feet-first towards us on what looks like a luxuriously upholstered bed but which is actually a raft. The fine silk textiles and their embroidered garments contrast with the rough-hewn planks of wood beneath them. In the background fine tongues of land project into an expanse of water, which is a dull muddy yellow, the colour of the Yarra river. The raft drifts on an angle to the picture plane, so that the…

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Vale Bill Kent

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It is with regret that we have learned of the death of Emeritus Professor Francis William (Bill) Kent on 30th August 2010. Professor Kent was the Founding Director of Monash University Prato Centre (2000-2004) and then Professor of History and Australian Professorial Fellow at the School of Historical Studies, Monash University. Bill was one of the great Italian Renaissance historians, and a world authority on Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was a great supporter of art history and a friend to art historians. A Bill Kent Foundation has been established to honour his memory. Details can be found to the following website: http://www.monash.edu.au/giving/news/billkent.html

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