COVID-19 News for Scholars

Please check back here for up-to-date COVID-19 news specifically relevant for the scholarly community.

If you would like to add a posting, please email gbryda@barnard.edu.

List updated April 7, 2020

Index of Medieval Art Goes Open-Access until June 1, 2020

In recognition of the challenges faced by students, faculty, and researchers now working on line in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University has made its online database open-access until June 1, 2020.

As always, the database can be accessed at https://theindex.princeton.edu/. 

Index staff will continue to respond to research inquiries sent via our home page at https://ima.princeton.edu/research-inquiries/. We hope that this modest change will support researchers both old and new as they navigate teaching, learning, and scholarship during this trying time.

(EXTENDED!) Due 20 April 2020: WHITING FOUNDATION 2021–22 PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT GRANTS

ICMA NOMINATIONS FOR THE WHITING FOUNDATION 2021–22 PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT GRANTS

ICMA deadline for summary proposals: April 20, 2020

As a nominating body for the Whiting Foundation's Public Engagement Programs in the humanities, the ICMA calls for proposals in public-facing scholarship to submit for the 2020–21 competition cycle (for funding in 2021–22). The foundation describes these funding opportunities as "designed to celebrate and empower humanities faculty who embrace public engagement" at an early-career stage, "to infuse the depth, historical richness, and nuance of the humanities into public life."

We may nominate one or two proposals by full-time faculty at accredited US institutions of higher learning. To be eligible for the grants, faculty must be tenure-track, tenured in the last five years, or full-time adjunct at a comparable early-career status. The Foundation welcomes proposals including collaborations between faculty and graduate students. Nominees may apply to either of the Whiting's funding programs, depending on the stage of development of their project: 

  • A Fellowship of $50,000 for projects far enough into development or execution to present specific, compelling evidence that they will successfully engage the intended public.

  • A Seed Grant of up to $10,000 for projects at a somewhat earlier stage of development, where more modest resources are needed to test or pilot a project or to collaborate with partners to finalize the planning for a larger project and begin work.

Detailed guidelines and recommendations for the full proposals required by the Foundation are available online HERE, including the link to the application portal for nominees (see esp. Appendix 2 for proposal components).

The full application for nominees is due on June 29, 2020.

For consideration as an ICMA nominee, please submit a CV, a 2-page summary proposal of your project, and a working budget, to Ryan Frisinger by April 20, 2020. Applicants will be notified by May 1. Comments will include recommendations for preparing the full grant proposal. Click here to submit.

Please contact Beatrice Kitzinger (bkitzinger@princeton.edu) and Nina Rowe (nrowe@fordham.edu) with any questions.

Call for Proposals: ICMA at AAH 2021, due 17 April 2020

ICMA AT ASSOCIATION FOR ART HISTORY ANNUAL CONFERENCE
University of Birmingham, 14-16 April 2021
Call for ICMA Sponsored Session Proposals
due 17 April 2020

The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) seeks proposals for sessions to be held under the organization’s sponsorship at the Association for Art History's 47th Annual Conference to be held 14-16 April 2021 at the University of Birmingham, England.
 
Proposals to the ICMA must include a session abstract and a CV of the organizer(s).
Please note the following: 

  • The AAH does not require a slate of speakers; the AAH will generate a CFP once sessions have been selected. Therefore the ICMA will not request a slate of speakers.

  • The ICMA requires the CVs of the session organizers, but the AAH does not.

  • Session organizers and speakers must be ICMA members but are not required to become AAH members. However, AAH members receive a preferential conference rate.

  • Sessions at the AAH conference are built of 70-minute blocks, with a minimum of two blocks per session, up to four blocks in a day. Each block consists of two papers of 25 minutes plus 10 minutes of questions for each paper. The ICMA seeks to sponsor one session of two 70-minute blocks (four papers).

 
Please upload all session proposals by 17 April 2020  here.

Please direct all inquiries to the Chair of the Programs and Lectures Committee: Bryan C. Keene, Getty Museum, USA, bkeene@getty.edu  
 
The ICMA Programs and Lectures committee will select a session to sponsor and will notify the successful organizer(s) by 27 April 2020. The organizer(s) will then submit the ICMA-sponsored proposal to the AAH, which will make the final decision. Submit session proposals to the AAH by 1 May 2020 at sessions2021@forarthistory.org.uk following the guidelines posted on the AAH website: https://forarthistory.org.uk/our-work/conference/2021-annual-conference/

A note about the ICMA-Kress Travel Awards
Thanks to a generous grant from the Kress Foundation, funds may be available to defray travel costs of speakers in ICMA sponsored sessions up to a maximum of $600 for domestic travel and of $1200 for international travel. If available, the Kress funds are allocated for travel and hotel only. Speakers in ICMA sponsored sessions will be refunded only after the conference, against travel receipts.  In addition to speakers, session organizers delivering papers as an integral part of the session (i.e. with a specific title listed in the program) are now also eligible to receive travel funding.  

Visit:  http://www.medievalart.org/kress-travel-grant/

2019 ICMA BOOK PRIZE ANNOUNCED

The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2019 Annual Book Prize:

graves.jpg

WINNER


Margaret S. Graves
Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam
Oxford University Press, 2018.


In the words of the Annual Book Prize committee:

This book is impeccably researched and carefully composed, persuasively arguing the central thesis of the book—that small decorative arts reflect the symbolic, phenomenological and ideological contingencies of large-scale architectural manipulation of space. The copious color or black-and-white illustrations present a panorama of high and low Islamic culture that brings the vicissitudes of a poetics of composition and space popularized by literary theorists and poets such as al-Jahiz into the intimate domestic interiors of medieval patrons. Historically rich in its deployment of biography, epigraphy, and style, this is a model volume articulating a novel interpretation of Islamic decorative arts while grounding its innovative methodological approach to materiality in careful looking, insightful exegesis, and the so-called “allusive object” as the fundamental form of evidentiary support.

Oxford University site: click here

lakey.jpg

The committee also recognizes this volume as Finalist:

Christopher R. Lakey
Sculptural Seeing: Relief, Optics, and the Rise of Perspective in Medieval Italy
Yale University Press, 2018.

Yale University Press site: click here

ICMA Graduate Student Essay Award: due 8 March 2020

GRADUATE STUDENT ESSAY AWARD
due 8 March 2020

The International Center of Medieval Art wishes to announce its annual Graduate Student Essay Award for the best essay by a student member of the ICMA.  The theme or subject of the essay may be any aspect of medieval art, and can be drawn from current research.  Eligible essays must be produced while a student is in coursework.  The work must be original and should not have been published elsewhere.  The winner will receive a prize of $400.

The deadline for submission is 8 March 2020.  The winners will be announced at the ICMA meeting in Kalamazoo in May.

Applicants must submit:

1.  An article-length paper (maximum 30 pages, double-spaced, not including footnotes) following the editorial guidelines of our journal Gesta.

2.  Each submission must also include a 250-word abstract written in English regardless of the language of the rest of the paper.

3.   A Curriculum vitae.

All applicants must be ICMA members.
All submissions are to be uploaded here for 2020.

Email questions to Ryan Frisinger at awards@medievalart.org. The winning essay will be chosen by members of the ICMA Grants and Awards Committee, which is chaired by our Vice-President.

ICMA Student Travel Grants - due 8 March 2020

The ICMA offers grants for graduate students in the early stages of their dissertation research, enabling beginning scholars to carry out foundational investigations at archives and sites. Winners will be granted $3,000, and if needed, officers of the ICMA will contact institutions and individuals who can help the awardees gain access to relevant material. Three grants are awarded per year, and they are designed to cover one month of travel. 

The grants are primarily for students who have finished preliminary exams, and are in the process of refining dissertation topics. Students who have already submitted a proposal, but are still very early on in the process of their research, may also apply.  

All applicants must be ICMA members.

Applicants must submit:
1.  Outline of the thesis proposal in 800 words or less.

2.  Detailed outline of exactly which sites and/or archives are to be visited, which works will be consulted, and how this research relates to the proposed thesis topic. If you hope to see extremely rare materials or sites with restricted access, please be as clear as possible about contacts with custodians already made.

3.  Proposed budget (airfare, lodging, other travel, per diem). Please be precise and realistic. The total need not add up to $3,000 precisely. The goal is for reviewers to see how you will handle the expenses.

4.  Letter from the thesis advisor, clarifying the student’s preparedness for the research, the significance of the topic, and the relevance of the trip to the thesis.

5.  A curriculum vitae.                  

Upon return, the student will be required to submit a letter and financial report to the ICMA and a narrative to the student section of the Newsletter.


Applications are due by 8 March 2020. The ICMA will announce the winners of the three grants at the Spring Board Meeting in May.

Applicants submit materials here.
Thesis advisor submit letter of recommendation here.

Email Ryan Frisinger at awards@medievalart.org with any questions.

ICMA at The Getty: Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art, 13 February 2020

Join the ICMA for a special tour of the exhibition  

Balthazar

A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art


with exhibition curators
Kristen Collins, Curator, Manuscripts Department
Bryan C. Keene, Associate Curator, Manuscripts Department

13 February 2020

The Adoration of the Magi, from a book of hours (text in Latin), Provence, France, about 1480–90, Georges Trubert. The J. Paul Getty Museum

The Adoration of the Magi, from a book of hours (text in Latin), Provence, France, about 1480–90, Georges Trubert. The J. Paul Getty Museum

A special student mentoring session will take place just before the tour to offer insights on exhibition planning and design, object conservation, and other logistical matters. 


13 February 2020
3:30pm, student mentoring session
4:15pm-5:15pm, exhibition tour
5:30pm, drinks at West Restaurant and Lounge at the Hotel Angeleno

at

J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Dr,
Los Angeles, CA 90049

Space is limited. Please RSVP by clicking HERE.

ICMA membership is not required to attend. Please support the ICMA by joining as a 2020 member, so we can continue to organize events like this around the world. Create an account and join HERE.

If you have any questions, please email the ICMA at icma@medievalart.org

ICMA and Expanding the Medieval World, 13 February 2020 at The Arts Club of Chicago

Please join us on Thursday, February 13, 2020 in Chicago at the Arts Club for an evening of discussion and celebration!
 
The program begins at 5pm with a roundtable:
 
ICMA and Expanding the Medieval World
A panel discussion 
 
Please RSVP HERE.

The International Center of Medieval Art presents ICMA and Expanding the Medieval World an hour-long panel discussing the multiplicities found within and outside the traditional boundaries of medieval art and culture, and their connections to the greater world.
 
Helen C. Evans, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Margaret Graves, Indiana University
Avinoam Shalem, Columbia University
Thelma K. Thomas, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Xin Yue (Sylvia) Wang, University of Toronto
Nancy Wu, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
 
Generously supported by the Marilyn J. Stokstad Fund
 
Then we will have a chance to mingle at the reception and ICMA Annual Meeting, running 6-8pm.
 
At the Annual Meeting we will welcome new members to the leadership and thank those who have served the organization.

The fun all takes place here:
The Arts Club of Chicago
201 E Ontario Street
Chicago, IL 60611
 
CAA Annual Conference registration is not required. All are welcome! We hope to see you there!

ICMA session at CAA: Buildings in Bloom: Foliage and Architecture in the Global Middle Ages, 13 February 2020

Please join us at the ICMA sponsored session at the Annual CAA Conference:

Buildings in Bloom: Foliage and Architecture in the Global Middle Ages
Thursday, February 13, 2020
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Hilton Chicago - 3rd Floor - Williford A

CHAIRS
Meg Bernstein, University of California, Los Angeles
Emogene Cataldo, Columbia University

Introduction: Thinking Globally about Foliage in Architecture
Meg Bernstein, University of California, Los Angeles

The Natural World in Early Islamic Architecture
Ann T. Shafer, Harvard AKPIA 

Underground Blossom: Peony, Spatiality, and Entanglement in Tombs of the Liao Dynasty (916-1125 CE)
Fan Zhang, Tulane University

Sociality and Botanical Form in Early Christian Architecture
Andrew Griebeler

The Case for Studying Foliage: Notre-Dame of Amiens and Beyond
Emogene Cataldo, Columbia University

ICMA News, Winter 2019 issue is here!

The winter 2019 issue of ICMA News is here - Click the link below and read it today!

NOTE: This is Heidi C. Gearhart's final issue as editor of ICMA News. The ICMA thanks Heidi for her service these past three years. 


ICMA NEWS, WINTER 2019
edited by Heidi C. Gearhart

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

INSIDE
Commemorations:
Walter Berry (1947–2019)
Gene Kleinbauer (1937– 2019)
  

Reflection 
The Medieval Iberian Treasury in Context: Collections, Connections, and Representations on the Peninsula and Beyond, by Therese Martin

Resources
EOS: Africana Receptions of Ancient Greece and Rome, by SashaMae Eccleston, Harriet Fertik, Mathias Hanses, and Caroline Stark

Exhibition Review
Gold und Ruhm – Geschenke für die Ewigkeit, by Nancy Thebaut

Conference Report
Forum Kunst des Mittelalters: “Ponti-Peaks-Passages” Bern, 18-21 September 2019, by Andrew Sears

“Walter Benjamin and the Middle Ages,” by Christopher Lakey

Events and Opportunities
 


The deadline for the spring issue of ICMA News is 15 February 2020. Please send information to newsletter@medievalart.org 

If you would like your upcoming conference, CFP, or exhibition included in the newsletter please email the information to EventsExhibitions@medievalart.org.

In Memoriam – Danielle Johnson (1938-2019), ICMA Foreign Secretary and longtime ICMA supporter

The ICMA mourns the loss of Danielle Johnson, ICMA Foreign Secretary and longtime supporter of the ICMA. Read below for an opportunity to share your memories of Danielle and a remembrance from Charles Little, past ICMA President.

______

Professors Jan Marquardt and Anna Russakoff would like to put together some reminiscences of people’s contacts with Danielle in Paris over the years that we can present to her husband and daughter. We’d love to hear about your experiences with Danielle. Please send to your write-up by December 1 to Anna Russakoff. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

All best wishes,
Anna Russakoff and Jan Marquardt

Please send the write-up to: annadrussakoff@gmail.com

_______

In Memoriam – Danielle Valin Johnson (1938-2019)

International Center of Medieval Art and a vast community of scholars and friends lost one of its most beloved members this week.

Raised in upstate New York, Danielle graduated from Wells College. Her life quickly took her into banking, and with a Harvard MBA, she and her husband, Dick, together launched their life-long love of Europe; first to Hamburg, then to The Hague and finally settling in Paris.

Her 1984 dissertation for the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden became a springboard to a life of learning in her new Parisian home. That study, “Architectural sculpture in the region of the Aisne/Oise valleys during the late 11th/early 12th centuries,” evolved into a 2014 digital publication The Transition of Romanesque to Early Gothic Architectural Sculpture in the Ile-de-France. Together these defined the parameters of much of her research in the region. It led to numerous discoveries and re-discoveries such as finding a virtually unknown Romanesque chapel, dedicated to Saint-Aignan, in the shadow of Notre-Dame-de-Paris. The “hot news” became a 1999 collaborative article in the Bulletin Monumental. Her desire to better understand the working methods of the medieval sculptor led her to carve, under the tutelage of a master mason, a large decorative “Romanesque” capital, the results of these efforts appeared in Gesta (28/1, 1986). That large capital never moved from the front door of their home making a greeting statement for those entering.

Danielle immediately connected to medieval specialist of all ages and her Paris home became the “welcome center” for virtually all Americans: those seeking advice, those needing introductions or just trying to navigate the world of research in Paris, or simply needing a place to get one’s bearings. Danielle’s collaboration with so many scholars is legendary, becoming a window of medieval activism in Paris for decades. From the 1980’s Danielle became the “foreign secretary” for the ICMA and demonstrably promoted the organization and collected dues from European members. At the same time, Danielle was instrumental in launching from her home a medieval studies group, bringing together visiting medievalists and also hosting music events like the Boston Camerata. In addition, her home also effectively became the French headquarters for the Limestone Sculpture Provenance Project that had become an ICMA initiative. In addition, her eagerness to support professional women in Paris led her in new directions of generosity of spirit. Her love of dogs was a succession of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels all named for Carolingian royalty and they were guardians and greeters to all.

Danielle was always game to explore monuments whether it was to Saint-Denis with archaeologist Michaël Wyss, to Chartres with Anne Prache, to Reims with Dany Sandron, or to Amiens with Bill Clark. Her enthusiastic motto “have car, will travel” always added pleasure. Off to limestone quarries around the Île-de-France or Champagne with Annie and Philippe Blanc or adventuring to Burgundy and Cluny for the abbey’s anniversary celebration in 2010, Danielle always was ready for a new medieval adventure.

Danielle’s joie de vivre and contagious enthusiasm was to “be bad,” that is being the best one can be. It was serious advice for all who knew her. 

Requiesce in pace.

Charles Little
Past President International Center of Medieval Art
16 November 2019

 

 

 

 

ICMA NEWS, SUMMER 2019 - ICMA's newsletter now available to all!

THE SUMMER ISSUE OF ICMA NEWS IS NOW AVAILABLE HERE.

You can also access the latest issue of ICMA News on www.medievalart.org.
Go to the "Publications" menu and then "ICMA News"

ICMA News is available to all.


ICMA NEWS, SUMMER 2019
edited by Heidi C. Gearhart

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

INSIDE
Commemorations:
Luba Esther Eleen, 1928 – 2018
Jean Marie French, 1937 – 2019
Robert Mark, 1930 – 2019 

Reflection 
Gazing at Europe across the Mediterranean Sea: Medieval Art History in Tel Aviv, by Renana Bartal

Resources
The Center for Netherlandish Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, by Meredith Fluke

Exhibition Review
Creatures of the Mappa Mundi, by Maggie Crosland

Grant Report
Cappadocia in Context, by Flavia Vanni

Events and Opportunities

 


The deadline for the winter issue of ICMA News is 15 October 2019. Please send information to newsletter@medievalart.org 

If you would like your upcoming conference, CFP, or exhibition included in the newsletter please email the information to EventsExhibitions@medievalart.org.

ICMA CFP, due 15 September 2019: Medieval Exhibitions in the Era of Global Art History, ICMS Kalamazoo 2020

Medieval exhibitions in the Era of Global Art History
Call for Papers

55th International Congress on Medieval Studies Kalamazoo, May 7 - 10, 2020.

Session sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA)

On May 5, 2019 the Sunday edition of the New York Times appeared an article titled “Medieval Scholars Joust with White Nationalists – and One Another” by Jennifer Schuessler, which featured comments from numerous scholars in the field and brought the International Congress on Medieval Studies to the front page of one of North America’s leading newspapers for the first time in the conference’s 54-year history and pushed medieval studies into a broader public limelight.


This was an impressive demonstration of the fact that the Middle Ages have moved back into the center of a broader public interest. While on the one hand the article can be interpreted positively – drawing attention to the relevance of medieval studies for understanding the present – in other ways the picture is more problematic. Readers were left with the impression that the study of the medieval world is dominated by scholars, who “mostly want to stay out of the fray.” One literary expert describes most of his colleagues as “monkish creatures who just want to live in their cells and write their manuscripts.” To put it simply, medieval studies is characterized as an “intellectually conservative field” with a resistance towards “uncomfortable questions.”


Significantly, recent and forthcoming medieval exhibitions are not mentioned in this article at all. This is not because the Times editors observed a difference between the public-facing and academic sides of the field, but rather because exhibitions were not on their horizon at all. Had the article taken museums into view, they would have been confronted with an impressive number of exhibitions in recent years, taking place at numerous institutions in North America and Europe, that challenge the view of an isolated and apolitical field of medieval studies. Many of these shows have explicitly challenged Eurocentric narratives, focusing on trade routes and patterns of exchange that encouraged the movement of people, ideas, and objects across vast distances. Far from retreating into “intellectually conservative” topics and reifying nationalist histories, these exhibitions have embraced the global turn in medieval studies, challenging their publics to see the racial, religious, and regional diversity of the Middle Ages with fresh eyes.
This lack of awareness between the Times article and current curatorial practice raises several fundamental questions which will be the central theme of this session:


*To what degree do medieval exhibitions reflect and thematize current discourse in academia and society?

*What factors contribute to the organization of major exhibitions?

*Is there a balance between entertainment and political and historical education?

*How do museums try to reach out to a broader public which is not familiar (anymore) with, or feel alienated by the Middle Ages? This is especially true as we reshape what exactly it is we mean by medieval.

*What are the differences between Europe and North America in presenting medieval objects to the public, and shaping specific topics?

*Finally, what is the contribution of museums for the academic debate where increasingly global approaches and diversity have been moving into center stage?

We welcome papers which focus on specific case studies of past, current, or future exhibitions. Equally important will be presentations which discuss current trends from the perspectives of museums and other academic institutions, keeping a global perspective in mind. The session is intended to strengthen awareness for current trends at museums and universities, and to open dialogues about how different institutions might learn from each other and exchange ideas, expectations and approaches.


Organizers:
Gerhard Lutz, Dommuseum Hildesheim, gerhard.lutz@dommuseum-hildesheim.de
Lloyd de Beer, The British Museum, ldebeer@britishmuseum.org

Proposals can be sent directly to the organizers, together with the Participant Information Form PIF
https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions


Deadline: September 15th, 2019

Contact ICMA:
Beth Williamson
Email: beth.williamson@bristol.ac.uk
Chair, of the Programs and Lectures Committee

ICMA-Kress Grants due 31 August 2019

ICMA-KRESS RESEARCH & PUBLICATIONS GRANTS (with expanded eligibility!)
- and -
ICMA-KRESS EXHIBITION DEVELOPMENT GRANT

Deadline for both: August 31, 2019

_____________________________________

ICMA-KRESS RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION GRANTS
The Kress Foundation is again generously supporting five research and publication grants to be administered by the ICMA. This year, grants are $3,500 each (an increase over prior years) and we have expanded the eligibility for applicants to include scholars who are ICMA members at any stage past the PhD. 

The deadline for the 2019 grants is August 31, 2019.

ELIGIBILITY
The ICMA-Kress Research and Publication grants ($3,500) are now available to scholars who are ICMA members at any stage past the PhD.

With the field of medieval art history expanding in exciting ways, it is crucial that the ICMA continue to encourage innovative research that will bring new investigations to broad audiences. These grants are open to scholars at all phases of their careers and priority will be given to proposals with a clear path toward publication.

If travel is a facet of your application, please include an itinerary and be specific about costs for all anticipated expenses (travel, lodging, per diem, and other details). If you aim to inspect extremely rare materials or sites with restricted access, please be as clear as possible about prior experience or contacts already made with custodians.

If your application is for funds that will support the production of a book, please include a copy of the contract from your publisher, the publisher’s request for a subvention, and/or specifics on costs for images and permissions.

Priority will be given to applicants who have not received an ICMA-Kress grant in the past.

Please submit these documents for your application:

1) A detailed overview of the project (no more than three pages, single spaced). Please also confirm that your ICMA membership is active and specify whether or not you have been awarded an ICMA-Kress grant previously.

2) A full cv.

3) A full budget.

4) Supporting materials – an itinerary (for applications involving travel), a contract and schedule of costs (if a press requires a subvention), or table of anticipated fees for image permissions (if applicable).

Please note: If you are applying for funds to support the production of a book, please do not upload the entire typescript or portions of the text.

The application should be submitted electronically here. Recipients will be announced in October 2019.

Questions can be addressed to Ryan Frisinger, Executive Director, at awards@medievalart.org.

Failure to include all required materials adversely affects the review process.

_____________________________________

NEW! ICMA-KRESS EXHIBITION DEVELOPMENT GRANT
Deadline for applications: August 31, 2019

The ICMA is pleased to announce a new funding opportunity made possible by the generosity of the Kress Foundation. ICMA members are eligible to apply for an ICMA-Kress Exhibition Development Grant of $5,000 to support research and/or interpretive programming for a major exhibition at an institution that otherwise could not provide such financial support. Members from all geographic areas are welcome to apply.

As an organization, the ICMA encourages scholars to think expansively, exploring art and society in “every corner of the medieval world,” as characterized in our newly-updated mission statement. With this grant, we hope to encourage colleagues to develop innovative exhibition themes or bring little-known objects before new audiences. We also aim to enhance the impact of exhibitions by supporting related lectures or symposia.

ICMA-Kress Exhibition Development Grant can be used to fund travel in the research and preparation stages of an exhibition and/or to underwrite public programming once a show is installed. This grant is designed to assist with an exhibition already in the pipeline and scheduled by the host museum.

We ask applicants to upload to the ICMA submission site: CLICK HERE TO UPLOAD ITEMS

  • Applicant’s cv

  • Description of the exhibition and its goals, including an overview of the structure of the exhibition – themes and estimated number of objects in each section of the show – and dates of the exhibition

  • Statement of other sources of funding both secured and provisional, with specifics on the amounts already awarded and expenses to be covered by secured and provisional funding

  • Sample wall panel for a subsection of the exhibition and sample labels for 3-4 examples of works in the show

  • If the applicant seeks funds to travel to see objects for inclusion in the exhibition, a list of institutions to be visited, names of contacts at each, and key objects (with accession numbers) to be inspected

  • If the applicant seeks funds for exhibition programming, specific information on gallery talks, public lectures, or symposium, with anticipated names of speakers and estimated dates

  • Letter of support from the Museum Director or Curator with whom the applicant is working, confirming that the exhibition will be mounted

  • If funds will be used toward a lecture or symposium connected to an exhibition, letter of support from institutional administrator/s (Dean, Provost, or Museum/Gallery Director) confirming that space at the organizer’s institution will be made available for the event/s


Applications will be reviewed by the ICMA Grants & Awards Committee and approved by the ICMA Executive Committee. The recipient will be announced in October 2019.

Questions can be addressed to Ryan Frisinger, Executive Director, at awards@medievalart.org

This information is posted on our website at http://www.medievalart.org/exhibition-grant.


ICMA CFP - The Global North: Medieval Scandinavia on the Borders of Europe, ICMS Kalamazoo 2020; due 3 September 2019

CFP
The Global North: Medieval Scandinavia on the Borders of Europe

An ICMA-sponsored session at International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 8-11 May 2020

The field of medieval studies recently denounced White Nationalism’s misuse and misappropriation of Scandinavian Norse mythology and the Viking era as a constructed ideal of a (white) medieval Europe. Indeed, premodern Scandinavia was a global enterprise dependent on the interactions, transactions, and mobility of many cultures and religions. This panel seeks to examine the cross-regional and -cultural connections of premodern Scandinavian art and architecture in a global context.

Not only is understanding medieval Scandinavian art important for addressing such outstanding misrepresentations today, but extant Scandinavian objects can provide valuable information about the medieval world broadly. For example, there remains a rich corpus of painted altar frontals and sculptures preserved in modern-day Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, despite the fact that such extant objects from medieval Scandinavia remain on the margins of scholarship. In this panel we aim to explore how medieval Scandinavian art and architecture contribute to our wider knowledge of the medieval world. We are especially keen on papers that promote interregional artistic relationships, as well as issues of race and identity in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages.

We conceive of Scandinavia broadly, including Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, as well as the Baltic and North Sea areas, and we define the Middle Ages in Scandinavia from the Viking Age through the sixteenth century. We welcome papers across geographic, temporal, and material contexts that address Scandinavian artistic and visual cultures in the Middle Ages. Materials may include, but are not limited to: architecture, sculpture, maps, manuscripts, woodcuts, and the visual arts of liturgy and pilgrimage.

Participants in ICMA-sponsored sessions must be ICMA members and may also be eligible to receive travel funds, generously provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. For more information please see: http://www.medievalart.org/kress-travel-grant.

Please send paper proposals of 300 words to the Chair of the ICMA Programs Committee, Beth Williamson (beth.williamson@bristol.ac.uk), and the co-organizers Ingrid Lunnan Nødseth (Ingrid.nodseth@ntnu.no) and Laura Tillery (laura.tillery@ntnu.no) by 3 September 2019, together with a short C.V., and a completed Participant Information Form, to be found at the following address: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions#papers.

Please include your name, title, and affiliation on the abstract.

All abstracts not accepted for the session will be forwarded to the Congress administration for consideration in general sessions, as per Congress regulations.

DEADLINE EXTENDED! Due 15 Sept 2019: ICMA Student Committee CFP: Art Historical Approaches to Medieval Environments, ICMS Kalamazoo

DEADLINE EXTENDED! Due 15 SEPT 2019

Art Historical Approaches to Medieval Environments

 

International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 7–10, 2020
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo Michigan

 

International Center for Medieval Art, Student Committee

We are surrounded by evidence that we live in an anthropocentric age: plastic in the oceans, deforestation, animals hunted to extinction. However, forest fires and rising sea levels remind us that human action is not a one-way street. The environment strikes back. Understanding the dynamics between the many actors in environmental networks has, until now, been the purview of the “hard” sciences. As environmental historians close the distinction between nature and culture it is clear that the humanities also have a role to play.

Since the late twentieth-century, discourse has progressed from establishing the relationship between medieval people and their environments to examining the character of this connection. Scholars such as Barbara Hanawalt, Sarah Ritchey, and Richard Hoffmann, have mobilized archeology, literature, and the writings of medieval philosophers—like the Asharite atomist al-Ghazali and the neo-platonist Bernard Sylvestris—to construct diverse interpretations of medieval environmental attitudes. What can the study of sculpture, manuscript illumination, or painted frescos contribute to this discourse? Can art make equally significant claims on the role of God in nature, the effect of environments on the human body, or the politicization of geography? It is in interpreting these visual expressions of environmental attitudes that medieval art historians can contribute to the debate.

 “Environments” do not have to occur on a global scale; nor do they necessarily occur between humans and what we today call “nature.” Environments include both the natural world and spaces entirely circumscribed by human agency: the agricultural landscape and the urban center; the mise-en-page of a manuscript, or halls of a royal court. This session aims to examine the ways in which humans have historically engaged with their environments, whatever they may be, through art and architecture, whether by observing, shaping, or responding to them.

 Papers might consider themes of:

-Depictions of the natural world 
-Urbanism
-Landscape
-The environment of display
-Architecture definitions of, and responses to place
-Climatic effects on the use, availability, or conservation of artistic media
-Environmental impacts (societal, economic, personal, psychological, material) on form and styl
-Kunstgeographie/The geography of art

 The Student Committee of the International Center for Medieval Art involves and advocates for all members of the ICMA with student status and facilitates communication and mentorship between student and non-student members.

 We invite interested applicants to submit an approximately 250 word abstract and c.v. to Dustin Aaron (dsa268@nyu.edu) by 5pm ET on September 15.