Picasso didn’t just draw on paper – he tore it, burnt it, and made it three-dimensional. From studies for ‘Guernica’ to a 4.8-metre-wide collage, this major exhibition, open until 13 April 2020 at the Royal Academy, brings together more than 300 works on paper spanning the artist’s 80-year career. Click here for more information.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Instituto Cervantes has organised a programme of talks and concerts paying homage to the famous Spanish artist.
This event will feature an afternoon of presentations and a special exhibition preview in celebration of the opening of Murillo: The Prodigal Son Restored at the National Gallery of Ireland.
Showcasing a unique series of works by one of the most celebrated artists of the Spanish Golden Age, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682), this in-focus exhibition explores themes of sin, repentance and forgiveness across six remarkable canvases. Donated to the National Gallery of Ireland by the Beit family in 1987, the six works have not been displayed together publicly for several decades. Murillo: The Prodigal Son Restored will celebrate the recent conservation of the series, which has revived the splendour of Murillo’s colours, brushwork, and mastery of narrative.
| 12pm – 1.15pm | Exhibition preview (Present your ticket for admission) Hugh Lane Room, Beit Wing, Level 3 |
| 1.15pm – 1.25pm | Registration Lecture Theatre, Beit Wing, Level -1 |
| 1.30pm | Welcome Sean Rainbird, Director, National Gallery of Ireland |
| 1.35pm | Introduction Dr Aoife Brady, Curator, National Gallery of Ireland |
| 1.50pm | Murillo: The Prodigal Son Revisited Muirne Lydon, Conservator, National Gallery of Ireland |
| 2.10pm | The Prodigal Son series. “Quatro cuadritos” by Murillo in the Museo del Prado. Elena Cenalmor Bruquetas, Researcher, Museo del Prado |
| 2.30pm | Discoveries and Display: Murillo’s Virgin and Child in Glory Kate O’Donoghue, Curator, National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery |
| 2.55pm | Questions and discussion |
| 3.10pm | Tea / coffee Courtyard |
| 3.50pm | Introduction Prof. Stefano Cracolici, Director, Zurbarán Centre |
| 4pm | “All rooms are furnished with great works of art” – the Beit collection Pauline Swords, Curator, Russborough, Co. Wicklow |
| 4.20pm | A Painter of Street Urchins and Beggars? The perception of Murillo in Britain. Isabelle Kent, Independent scholar |
| 4.40pm | “Something of immortal value”: Murillo at the Meadows Museum Dr Amanda Dotseth, Curator, Meadows Museum, Dallas |
| 5.05pm | Questions and discussion |
| 5.20pm | Close |
Click here for more information and to book tickets (Full price €25, students/OAPs €22.50, Friends €20)
You are cordially invited to an informal study morning in the exhibition Young Bomberg and the Old Masters (27 November 2019 – 1 March 2020)
10:05 am
Meet at the exhibition in Gallery 1 (accessible via the Getty Entrance to the right of the main portico on Trafalgar Square).
Self-led tour of the exhibition and discussion (coordinated by National Gallery Spanish Paintings Curatorial Fellow Akemi Herráez). The discussion will take place during normal museum opening hours so please be mindful of other visitors.
10:30 – 11:00 am
Followed by curator Richard Cork’s overview of the exhibition and further discussion with a presentation including Bomberg’s paintings of Spain in the Wilkins Boardroom, Wilkins Building (Akemi Herráez will take the group from the exhibition to the conference room).
Attendees may check their belongings into one of the Gallery’s cloakrooms. Large bags and suitcases may not be brought into the Gallery. There is a bench in the exhibition for those who wish to sit. Please note that this study morning is by invitation only. Numbers are strictly limited to a quota of 13 people and places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
We kindly ask you to RSVP to akemi.herraezvossbrink@ng-london.org.uk by Friday 21 February 2020.
You are cordially invited to an informal study morning in the exhibition Young Bomberg and the Old Masters (27 November 2019 – 1 March 2020)
10:05 am
Meet at the exhibition in Gallery 1 (accessible via the Getty Entrance to the right of the main portico on Trafalgar Square).
Self-led tour of the exhibition and discussion (coordinated by National Gallery Spanish Paintings Curatorial Fellow Akemi Herráez). The discussion will take place during normal museum opening hours so please be mindful of other visitors.
10:30 – 11:00 am
Followed by curator Richard Cork’s overview of the exhibition and further discussion with a presentation including Bomberg’s paintings of Spain in the Wilkins Boardroom, Wilkins Building (Akemi Herráez will take the group from the exhibition to the conference room).
Attendees may check their belongings into one of the Gallery’s cloakrooms. Large bags and suitcases may not be brought into the Gallery. There is a bench in the exhibition for those who wish to sit. Please note that this study morning is by invitation only. Numbers are strictly limited to a quota of 13 people and places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
We kindly ask you to RSVP to akemi.herraezvossbrink@ng-london.org.uk by Friday 21 February 2020.
ARTES records with regret the death of Professor Trevor Dadson in January 2020. As Editor-in-Chief of the Hispanic Research Journal from 2012 to 2017, Trevor was a tremendous enthusiast of the annual visual arts issue, and a great supporter of its editors, Tom Nickson and Sarah Symmons.
Trevor was also an incredibly distinguished scholar whose work encompassed cultural, literary and social history. He dedicated his career to the study of the Spanish Golden Age, becoming one of the world’s foremost experts on the era. He published dozens of books, chapters and research papers throughout his career and was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 2008. In that same year, the Spanish town of Villarrubia de los Ojos named a new street after him, and in 2015 he was awarded the title of Encomienda de la Orden de Isabel la Católica by King Felipe VI of Spain for his services to Spanish culture. In 2016, he was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Real Academia Española and the Real Academia de la Historia.
His monographs include a major study in Spanish of the Moriscos of the Campo de Calatrava in Spain (2007), a history of the printing of the ‘Rimas’ by Lupercio and Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola (2010), a study of Diego de Silva y Mendoza, Count of Salinas (2011), and an edition in Spanish of the travel diaries of Elizabeth Lady Holland and the novelist George Eliot, who both visited Spain in the nineteenth century (2012). Other books include the letters memorials of the Count of Salinas (Marcial Pons-CEEH, 2015), an edition of the Count’s unedited poetry based on the autograph originals (Real Academia Española, 2016), and a revised and updated second edition of his book on the Moriscos of Villarrubia de los Ojos (Iberoamericana-Vervuert.
In 2014 he published a book in English on the Moriscos of the Campo de Calatrava: Tolerance and Coexistence in Early Modern Spain (Tamesis Books); a revised edition of this work in Spanish was published by Cátedra in 2017. His latest projects included an edition of the more than 500 letters the Count of Salinas sent as Viceroy from Lisbon between 1617 and 1622, as well as editing a volume of studies on Islamic Culture in Spain to 1614 by L. P. Harvey (former Professor of Spanish at Queen Mary).
Trevor will be remembered as an exceptional scholar and energetic scholar. Our thoughts are with his family at this time.
[this obituary is adapted from one published by Queen Mary, where Trevor taught for many years: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sllf/news/stories/remembering-trevor-dadson.html%5D
Please join us for the launch of Gothic Architecture in Spain: Invention and Imitation, eds Tom Nickson and Nicola Jennings: https://courtauld.ac.uk/event/gothic-architecture-in-spain-invention-and-imitation-book-launch
6.30pm, Research Forum South Room, Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square, Penton Rise, London WC1X 9EW
From the dazzling spectacle of Burgos Cathedral to the cavernous nave of Palma Cathedral or the lacy splendour of San Juan de los Reyes, Spain preserves a remarkable variety of inventive but little understood Gothic buildings. Yet Gothic architecture in Spain and the Spanish kingdoms has traditionally been assessed in terms of its imitation of northern European architecture, dismissed for its ‘old-fashioned’ or provincial quality, and condemned for its passive receptivity to ‘Islamic influence’. But did imitation really triumph over invention in the architecture of medieval Iberia? Are the two incompatible? Can inventio and imitatio offer useful or valid analytical tools for understanding Gothic architecture? And to what extent are invention or imitation determined by patrons, architects, materials or technologies? This essay collection brings together leading scholars to examine Gothic architecture from across Iberia from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, and provides the first significant account of Spanish Gothic architecture to be published in English since 1865.
The launch directly follows a Medieval Work-in-Progress Seminar by Beate Fricke, ‘Colour and Chaos’, starting at 5pm in the same room. Attendance is free and all are welcome to attend. Details here: https://courtauld.ac.uk/event/colour-and-chaos
Dear Fellow ARTES Members,
We look forward to celebrating the life and work of the first Spaniard to graduate from Oxford with you!
Osma Centenary
7 February
Bodleian Library
Pembroke College
Guillermo J. de Osma was the first Spaniard to study at Oxford after the Universities Test Act 1871, which opened Oxford, Cambridge and Durham universities to non-Anglicans. Osma was a diplomat, a politician, an art historian and an art collector. He served as the first president of the Board of Trustees of the Alhambra and founded the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan, a research centre in Madrid, which contains a wide-ranging collection of art works and archival materials, including medieval manuscripts, Philipp II’s state papers, textiles, ceramics, and rare books.
He then went on to found the first Spanish scholarship at Oxford – the Osma Studentship – in 1920. The Studentship, which was open to both men and women since its foundation, is under the exclusive remit of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford and has been held over the past century by many distinguished scholars and practitioners.
The one-day symposium will be held at the Bodleian Library on 7 February 2020 to coincide with the anniversary of Osma’s death and will convene Osma Students from across the generations and countries, specialists from Spain and the UK, and de Osma’s descendants from around the globe.
The symposium will be held in the Lecture Theatre at the Weston Library on Broad Street. Lunch will be served at Convocation House in the presence of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Louise Richardson. After the symposium, we will make our way to Pembroke, where Osma read History, for an evening reception.
Welcome Coffee: 9.45 am
Start: 10.30 am
Reception: 5.30–7pm
Please click here for a conference programme and practical information.
For questions, contact: marina.perezdearcos@politics.ox.ac.uk
Marina Perez de Arcos
ARTES members with experience of using the National Library of Scotland’s Astorga Collection or expertise in topics related to its formation and contents are encouraged to contribute to an upcoming conference organised by Dr Christopher Storrs, Reader in History at the University of Dundee, to be held in Edinburgh on Wednesday 20 May 2020.
The collection contains 3,617 early-modern Spanish printed books and is one of the National Library of Scotland’s lesser-known treasures. Part of the library of an aristocratic Spanish family, the Marqueses de Astorga, it was acquired in 1826 for the Advocates Library (the National Library’s precursor) by Sir Walter Scott’s son-in-law, J.G. Lockhart. The collection contains several texts on history, theology, geography and science, and illustrated books, some with maps or hand-coloured plates. Eleven are incunabula, and many others date to the sixteenth century.
At present, the conference programme includes presentations on Sir Walter Scott and Spain, J.G. Lockhart, and themes related to the Astorga collection in a nineteenth-century British context. Additionally, the organisers seek proposals addressing the collection from a Spanish viewpoint, notably on the Astorga family, the situation of Spain in the early nineteenth century, the book acquisitions and their value to historians. Papers on Golden Age holdings are particularly encouraged.
The collection is catalogued on the NLS’ website under the shelfmark G. (click here), but a handlist is also available upon application.
For further information, and to propose a conference paper, please email Dr Christopher Storrs, c.d.storrs@dundee.ac.uk.
The City of Agen and its Fine Arts Museum, located between Bordeaux and Toulouse in the South-west of France, will present, over the winter of 2019–2020, an outstanding exhibition with a fresh and unexpected view on Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) and his work.
Through a selection of works in several media (paintings, drawings, engravings), the exhibition will demonstrate the essential characteristics that remain constant in Goya’s work and reveal the role played by his collaborators in his studio.
The Museum’s scientific team is assisted in this project by one of the specialists of Goya’s work, Juliet Wilson-Bareau, and the event has received personal support from the French Minister of Culture.
Nearly 90 works loaned by museums and private collections around the world (France, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Switzerland, UK, USA) will be on display in the Jacobins’ Church (Église des Jacobins), an Agen architectural jewel and an emblematic place for the Museum’s temporary exhibitions.
Click here for an exhibition leaflet, and here for practical information.
Thu, 6 February 2020
17:30 – 19:00 GMT
502 Teaching Hub, TR4
160 Mount Pleasant
Liverpool
L3 5TR
Free but please register at this link
Over the past two decades, Portugal’s colonial rule in Asia, South America, and Africa has been subject to increasingly intense debate both within academe and society at large. Innovative research has begun to question benign and Euro-centric approaches to the Portuguese imperial past and has now arrived at profoundly different views which expose the violent and exploitative character of colonial rule.
This set of new perspectives on Portugal’s colonial past, however, is also the result of an unprecedented involvement of activists and civic groups in public debate. One important example are the Associations of Portuguese of African descent, which campaign against still-prevailing forms of celebrating the Portuguese colonial past. These include the recent decision to create a ‘Museum of Discovery’ dedicated to Portugal’s maritime glory, or the monument dedicated to the Jesuit missionary António Vieira.
Scholarly revision and community activism both face hostile opposition. This talk discusses the main developments in an ongoing debate that continues to intensify, and that in itself highlights the importance of fostering critical debate about Portugal’s colonial past.
Professor Pedro Cardim’s main area of research is the history of the early modern Iberian world, with a focus on the interactions between Portugal and the Spanish Monarchy. He also works on the Portuguese colonial empire and the early modern Atlantic world. He has published numerous books and articles, including Portugal y la Monarquía Hispánica, ca.1550–ca.1715 (2017) and Polycentric Monarchies: How Did Early Modern Spain and Portugal Achieve and Maintain a Global Hegemony? (2012, with Tamar Herzog, Gaetano Sabatini and José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez). He has held visiting professorships at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, New York University, Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès, and Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Seville).
For a podcast featuring Professor Cardim, see here: http://historyhub.ie/pedro-cardim-hispania-portugal-spanish-monarchy-16th-17th-century.
ARTES 