Radical Nature Study Day at the Barbican

Saturday 12 September 2009 10:30am - 4:30 pm
Location: Redgrave Suite, Level 4, the Barbican Centre, London EC2Y 8DS

An event exploring the relationship between contemporary art and climate change.

How are artists responding to the urgency of the issue? How does climate change affect culture? This study day maps the possible collaboration between creative thinking and problem solving.

Join artists Cornelia Parker, Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey; Franceco Manacorda, Curator of Radical Nature; Michaela Cimmin, Head of Arts, RSA; and Dr Joe Smith, Senior Lecturer, Geography, OU to engage with this hot topic. The event is chaired by Bob Spicer, Professor of Earth Sciences, OU and Gill Perry, Professor of Art History, OU.

This Study Day will be of special interest to students studying Arts and Humanities, Art History, Earth Sciences and Geography. It is organised by the Barbican in association with the OU.

Tickets £20/ £15 concessions (includes ticket for the Radical Nature exhibition currently showing at the Barbican) available from the Barbican Box Office 0845 120 7500 or online.

The programme for the day

10.30am - 12.30pm Morning focus on Climate change - Chaired by Bob Spicer

10.30am - 11.00am Welcome

11.00am - 11.30am Bob Spicer, Professor of Earth Sciences, Open University Climate Change in Context

11.30am - 12 noon Dr Joe Smith, Open University - Climate Change changes everything

12 noon - 12.30pm Mark Watts, former Environment Advisor to Ken Livingstone, now at Arup

Discussion with all speakers, and opened up to the audience, chaired by Bob Spicer

12.30pm - 2.00pm Lunch break with time to see RN exhibition

2pm - 4.30pm Afternoon focus on mediating through art / artists’ responses to climate change Chaired by Gill Perry

2 .00pm - 2.30pm Gill Perry, Professor of Art History, Open University – ‘A bilious shade of green’? Installation Art and the Evironment: Problems and Possibilities

2.30pm - 3.00pm Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey artists – illustrated talk

3.00pm - 3.30pm Michaela Crimmin, Head of Arts, RSA curatorial concerns-

3.30pm - 3.50pm Cornelia Parker intro & showing Comskian Abstract 2007 film (short 6 mins extract)

3.50pm - 4.30pm Discussion with all speakers, opened up to audience chaired by Gill Perry.

Radical Nature: Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969 -2009 exhibition open from 11am until 8pm.

Tickets for Study day include entry to the exhibition on this day only.

Radical Nature Study Day at the Barbican

Saturday 12 September 2009 10:30am - 4:30 pm
Location: Redgrave Suite, Level 4, the Barbican Centre, London EC2Y 8DS

An event exploring the relationship between contemporary art and climate change.

How are artists responding to the urgency of the issue? How does climate change affect culture? This study day maps the possible collaboration between creative thinking and problem solving.

Join artists Cornelia Parker, Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey; Franceco Manacorda, Curator of Radical Nature; Michaela Cimmin, Head of Arts, RSA; and Dr Joe Smith, Senior Lecturer, Geography, OU to engage with this hot topic. The event is chaired by Bob Spicer, Professor of Earth Sciences, OU and Gill Perry, Professor of Art History, OU.

This Study Day will be of special interest to students studying Arts and Humanities, Art History, Earth Sciences and Geography. It is organised by the Barbican in association with the OU.

Tickets £20/ £15 concessions (includes ticket for the Radical Nature exhibition currently showing at the Barbican) available from the Barbican Box Office 0845 120 7500 or online.

International fellowship programme for New York Public Library resources

15 fellowships of up to $60,000 are awarded each a year to outstanding scholars and writers – academics, independent scholars, journalists, and creative writers - by the Cullman Center’s Selection Committee.

The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers is an international fellowship program open to people whose work will benefit directly from access to the research collections at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street (formerly the Humanities and Social Sciences Library). Renowned for the extraordinary comprehensiveness of its collections, the Library is one of the world's preeminent resources for study in anthropology, art, geography, history, languages and literature, philosophy, politics, popular culture, psychology, religion, sociology, and sports.

Foreign nationals conversant in English are welcome to apply.

The Cullman Center looks for top-quality writing from academics as well as from creative writers and independent scholars. It aims to promote dynamic communication about literature and scholarship at the very highest level – within the Center, in public forums throughout the Library, and in the Fellows’ published work.

Exclusions
Candidates who need to work primarily in The New York Public Library's other research libraries – The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Science, Industry and Business Library – are not eligible for this fellowship, nor are people seeking funding for research leading directly to a degree.

Deadline
Completed applications and letters of recommendation for the Cullman Center fellowship must be received by Friday, September 25, 2009. Candidates will learn the results of the competition in early March.

For more information and application form, see:
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/scholars/fellowship.html

Free Evening Lecture Series: Art and Travel in the Mediterranean, 1600–1900

In the history of British travel since the late sixteenth century, the Mediterranean has always played a prime role and inevitably captured the imagination like no other European region. Travel to the Mediterranean was stimulated by its art and architecture and in return inspired new art, architecture, collecting and art criticism. Images drawn, painted or photographed on these journeys by a diversity of travellers – artists, antiquarians, scientists, ethnographers, diplomats, navy personal, amateurs and tourists, to name just a few – have fulfilled a whole variety of purposes. This lecture series, organised by the National Maritime Museum’s Centre for Art and Travel and generously hosted by the Paul Mellon Centre, attempts a new overview on the subject from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century.

Lectures
26 November 2009: The Origins of the Grand Tour and the Discovery of Art, Edward Chaney, Southampton Solent University

10 December 2009: 'Present under the rose...' Stratford Canning, his Greek artist, and the last chance to see Turkey before the Tanzimat, Charles Newton, former Curator, Victoria & Albert Museum

21 January 2010: 'These inhuman trafficers in flesh & blood' : British artists and the slave trade in Egypt, Briony Llewellyn, Independent Art Historian

4 February 2010: Revolving Mirrors: Britain and Spain from the Armada to the Spanish Civil War, David Howarth, University of Edinburgh

18 February 2010: ‘Hellas… in one living picture’: British artist travellers in Greece, Jenny Gaschke, National Maritime Museum

All lectures take place at: Seminar room, Paul Mellon Centre, 16 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3JA. 18.00 start; 19.00 drinks; 19.30 exit. (Nearest tube stations include Tottenham Court Road, Goodge Street or Russell Square.)

Booking: Free of charge and no need to book, but if you wish to reserve a place, please check NMM website for contact details (link below).

For more information see: http://www.nmm.ac.uk/researchers/research-areas-and-projects/cart/art-and-travel-lectures/

Futurism and the Avant-Garde - OU Art History Study Days at Tate Modern

Saturday 27 June 2009, 11.00–17.15
Starr Auditorium, Level 2, Tate Modern

This symposium explores the controversial status of Futurist movements in art history, and some of their 'avant-garde' practices. Speakers engage with various forms of Futurist art, performance and film, including the use of manifestos and demonstrations. Italian Futurism will be viewed in relation to other radical art practices across Europe. The Futurists' disdain for traditional values and their pursuit of an 'art of modern life' will be explored in relation to prevailing concepts of modernity and 'avant-garde' utopias.

The seminar has been organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with The Open University

Speakers

• Lutz Becker is a director of political and art documentaries such as ‘Double Headed Eagle’ 1972, ‘Lion of Judah’ 1981 and ‘Nuremberg in History' 2006. A practicing painter, he is also a curator of exhibitions. He collaborated with the Hayward Gallery on ‘The Romantic Spirit in German Art’ 1994, ‘Art and Power’ 1995 and Tate Modern on ‘Century City’ 2001. He is an expert on Russian Constructivism and Italian Futurism. His recent exhibition on European photomontage 'Cut & Paste' was held at the Estorick Collection, London.
• Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature, Graduate School, City University of New York. She has edited the HarperCollins World Reader, the Yale Anthology of Twentieth Century French Poetry, Surrealist Love Poems, Surrealist Painters and Poets, Surrealism, and authored The Surrealist Look, Glorious Eccentrics, Surprised in Translation, To the Boathouse: a Memoir, Provencal Cooking: Savoring the Simple Life in France, and illustrated biographies of Picassos’s Weeping Woman, Proust, Picasso, James, Woolf, and Dali. She has co-translated volumes of René Char, Tzara, Reverdy, Breton, and Desnos, and held Fulbright, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships.
• David Cottington is a Professor of Art History at Kingston University London, and the author of several books on the early twentieth century avant-garde, including Cubism in the Shadow of War: The Avant-Garde and Politics in Paris 1905-1914 (Yale University Press, 1998), Cubism and its Histories (Manchester University Press, 2004) and Modern Art: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005). He is currently working on two books about the avant-garde.
• Alex Danchev is Professor of International Relations at the Univeristy of Nottingham. He is deeply interested in the interconnections and intersections of art and politics. He is the author of a number of widely acclaimed biographies, among them GEORGES BRAQUE (Penguin, 2007). His most recent books are PICASSO FURIOSO (2008) and ON ART AND WAR AND TERROR (2009). He is currently working on a biography of Cezanne, and a collection of artists' manifestos.
• Matthew Gale is Head of Displays at Tate Modern and curator of Futurism.

For more information and to book see: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/symposia/18175.htm

Fellowships and grants from The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art has two rounds of fellowship and grants awards each year - a January round for fellowships and grants and a September round for grants (the application deadlines are 15 January and 15 September). Their Advisory Council meets to decide on the awards in March (for the January round) and in October (for the September round). They write to applicants informing them of the outcome of their application no later than three weeks after the Council's meeting.

The following programmes have a deadline of 15 September 2009:

• Curatorial Research Grants - Up to £20,000 per annum to help institutions undertake research for a particular exhibition or installation of British art (up to three years).
• Educational Programme Grants - Up to £5,000 for lectures, symposia, seminars or conferences on British art and architecture.
• Publications Grants (Author) - Up to £10,000 (but normally not exceeding £5,000) for costs incurred by authors on books, catalogues of exhibitions or permanent collections of British fine and decorative arts and architecture.
• Publications Grants (Publisher) - For costs incurred by publishers or institutions on books, catalogues of exhibitions or permanent collections of British fine and decorative arts and architecture.
• Research Support Grants - Up to £3,000 to contribute towards travel and subsistence expenses for scholars engaged in research on the history of British art or architecture.
• The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Research Support Grant - This grant was instigated by the Barns-Graham Charitable Trust (www.barns-grahamtrust.org.uk) in 2009 and will be administered by the Paul Mellon Centre. £2,000 will be awarded annually to assist scholars and researchers in the field of 20th Century British painting.

For more information, guidance and application form, please see: http://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/16/

Museums Blog - A directory of museum-related blogs

Museum Blogs is a directory of museum and museum-related blogs and aggregator. Like its companion site Museum Podcasts, the purpose of this site is to raise awareness and increase the authority of sites focusing on museum issues. At the time of writing there were 331 blogs included on the site.

The Directory
A moderated directory provides a central website for listings to museum and museum-related blogs.

The Blog
All of the posts are from the RSS feeds of the blogs included in the directory.

Policies
This site is run as a public service and encourages community participation. The site does not accept advertising.

Link:

Le Corbusier Open University Study Day at the Barbican

Le Corbusier Open University Study Day
21 March 2009 11am-5pm
At the Barbican, Redgrave Suite, Level 4

Tickets: £20/£15 OU concessions

OU staff and students qualify for a reduced price, which includes admission to the Barbican show: Le Corbusier – The Art of Architecture

Le Corbusier repeatedly asserted that his innovations as an architect depended on his passion for the fine arts and his practice as a painter, sculptor and designer. Is this true and what was the nature of the relationship between art and architecture in his work?

Chaired by Tim Benton, Professor Department of Art History, Open University. Speakers include Christopher Green, Professor Emeritus, Courtauld Institute of Art, Stanislaus von Moos, exhibition curator and Professor Emeritus, Department of Art History, University of Zurich, Caroline Maniaque, Associate Professor at the Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture et de paysage de Lille and artist Simon Starling.

This event is open to all and the ticket price includes entry to the exhibition.

Part of Le Corbusier: Schools and Families
Part of Le Corbusier: The Art of Architecture

Tickets can be booked on-line.

For more information about Le Corbusier at the Barbican see: http://www.barbican.org.uk/lecorbusier

Art History Study Day at Tate Modern - Constructivism and the Art of Everyday Life

Saturday 28 March 2009, 11.00–17.00

This study day explores some of the issues raised by the Rodchenko and Popova exhibition, including the relationship between art and every day life in post-war Russian constructivist art. Contributors investigate the languages of 'construction' and the move from abstraction in art to social forms in every day life, architecture, theatre, product and graphic design.

Speakers will consider debates about different modes of production in art and design, their role in the construction of social space, and the continuing relevance of many of these themes to the work of contemporary artists.

Speakers include curator Margarita Tupitsyn, art historians Christina Lodder, Brandon Taylor, Steve Edwards, Alexander Lavrentiev and artist Dave Mabb.

In collaboration with The Open University and the Research Forum, Courtauld Institute of Art

Tate Modern Starr Auditorium
£15 (£12 concessions), booking recommended
Price includes entry to the exhibition

For tickets book online or call 020 7887 8888

Postdoctoral fellowships for Henry Moore related research

The Henry Moore Foundation will offer a small number of one-year post-doctoral fellowships in the field of sculpture studies at a British university from the autumn of 2008, tenable for one year in the first instance, with the possibility to apply for a second year. The awards are primarily to help scholars recently awarded PhDs to prepare a substantial publication. Applicants must show that they have an affiliation with a university department.

One fellowship will be tenable at the University of Leeds, in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, in association with the Henry Moore Institute. Applicants for this fellowship should indicate how their topic would contribute to the research work of the School and that of the Henry Moore Institute, as the fellow will act in a liaising role between these institutions. Candidates may apply specifically for the University of Leeds award, or indicate on their application if they wish additionally to be considered for this post.

Further details are available from:
www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk

The closing date is 17 April 2009

Yale Centre for British Art - Visiting Scholarships (up to 4 months)

The Yale Center for British Art offers residential awards ranging from one to four months to scholars undertaking postdoctoral or equivalent research related to British art. These awards allow scholars of literature, history, the history of art, and related fields to study the Center’s holdings of paintings, drawings, prints, rare books, and manuscripts. The Center also offers several pre-doctoral residential awards ranging from one to two months for graduate students writing doctoral dissertations in the field of British art.

Visiting Scholar awards include the cost of travel to and from New Haven and also provide accommodations and a living allowance. Recipients are required to be in residence in New Haven and must be free of all other significant professional responsibilities during their stay.

Applications to become a visiting scholar between July 2009 and June 2010 must reach the YCBA by January 16, 2009. It is too late to apply for this deadline, but if this is something that is applicable and of interest it is worth looking at this again around September/October 2009 for an application in January 2010.

For more information see: http://ycba.yale.edu/education/edu_fellowships.html

Open University lecturer wins prestigious French literature prize

Tim Benton, Professor of Art History at The Open University, has just been announced the joint winner of the Prix du Livre by the Academie d’Architecture in France. The award is the most prestigious prize for books about architecture in the French language and he shares it with architect and architectural historian Philippe Prost.

Professor Benton’s book Le Corbusier conférencier, is a collection of numerous excerpts, preliminary notes, accompanying drawings, and photographs that architect Le Corbusier produced for his lectures. It covers the period 1924 – 1929 and analyses the construction, content and use of verbal and visual aids.

By using manuscript notes and eyewitness accounts, Professor Benton was able to reconstruct the content of unscripted presentations, thereby unlocking a completely new perspective on Le Corbusier’s thinking.

The book was selected from a shortlist of eight, nominated by a jury of architects, historians and critics. Commenting on his award, Professor Benton said: “I am extremely excited by the jury’s selection of my book, since the book is an unusual one and not the typical architectural monograph. I became fascinated with Le Corbusier’s architecture when I first saw it in real life, and the Fondation Le Corbusier’s rich archive has kept me hooked ever since. The richness of the collection is a fascinating and complex challenge for anyone studying it.”

Le Corbusier conférencier was first published in 2007 in French. An English edition, The Rhetoric of Modernism: Le Corbusier as a lecturer will be published in May 2009 by Birkhauser.

Editor's Notes
Tim Benton, Professor of Art History at The Open University, has worked on the architecture of Le Corbusier since 1973. His classic work, The Villas of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, originally published in French in 1984 and in English in 1987, has been reissued in a revised edition in 2006 (French, English and Italian editions). He has worked on numerous exhibitions, including Art Deco 1910-1939 (2003) and Modernism Designing a new world 1914-1939 (2006), both at the V&A.

Tim is a member of the Conseil d’Administration (managing committee) of the Fondation Le Corbusier and is currently chairing a working party producing a comprehensive edition of all Le Corbusier’s lecture notes.

He is the Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor of Art History at Williams College, Massachusetts.

Text from OU Press release 18 Dec 2008

Up to £2,500 available for historical study of Asia

A new British Academy call has been issued for the Stein-Arnold Exploration Fund Awards. The purpose of these awards is the encouragement of research on the antiquities or historical geography or early history or arts of those parts of Asia which come within the sphere of the ancient civilisations of India, China, and Iran, including Central Asia. The Awards are normally tenable for up to 12 months. In general, awards do not exceed £2,500.

The deadline for applications is 15 March 2009. Awards will be announced at the end of June 2009.

Details and application forms are available from: http://www.britac.ac.uk/funding/guide/sanfa.cfm

If you are considering applying for this funding, please contact Arts-REST. It will need to go through the normal RED form approval process.

Open University researcher receives prestigious prize for putting Renaissance Rome on art history map.

Dr Carol Richardson, Lecturer in Art History at The Open University, has scooped one of the prestigious Philip Leverhulme prizes for 2008. The prizes, worth £70,000 each, are awarded to outstanding young scholars who have made a substantial and recognised contribution to their particular field of study.

One of Dr Richardson’s most significant research achievements to date has been to help put Renaissance Rome on the art historical map. Her scholarly initiatives and substantial archival research have enabled a series of articles, book chapters, conferences and international seminars, and a forthcoming monograph and edited collection, which have redrawn and enriched cultural and art historical assumptions about Renaissance Rome. Her work addresses the relationship between history, culture and art, as is illustrated in her pioneering studies of artefacts created to mark, celebrate or defend monuments of triumph and crisis in Papal Rome.

In her nomination, Professor Gill Perry, Head of Art History, praised Dr Richardson for being a researcher of exceptional abilities, and said: “Her commitment to disseminate and enhance art historical research has led to the production of several important collaborative publications and projects, and her planned future research shows enormous promise.”

Commenting on the award, Dr Richardson said: “I am delighted to receive recognition for this exciting part of my work. Renaissance Rome is generally viewed as a poor cousin of Florence, and my research involves careful reconstruction of fifteenth century monuments, those in old St. Peter’s being the prime example; close scrutiny of some renaissance stereotypes, such as the unchanging nature of the papacy; and an approach that combines the study of art, architecture, archaeology, religion and history.”

Dr Richardson's book "Reclaiming Rome: Cardinals in the Fifteenth Century" will be available from Brill in Spring 2009. For more information see: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=23897

For full list of Philip Leverhulme Prize 2008 winners see: http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/PLP/2008