TWENTIETH ANNUAL GRADUATE STUDENT SYMPOSIUM
IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ART
Saturday & Sunday, March 25–26, 2023, 1 to 4 PM ET
Co-sponsored by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) and
the Dahesh Museum of Art. This event will be held online; register at: https://tinyurl.com/grad-symposium
Special thanks to the Dahesh Museum of Art for the Dahesh Museum of Art Prize for the Best Paper(s),
a gift from the Mervat Zahid Cultural Foundation
Saturday, March 25, 2023
1 PM: Welcome: Nancy Locke, Pennsylvania State University, President, Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art; Amira Zahid, Trustee, Dahesh Museum of Art
1:10 – 2:30 PM: First Session & Discussion
Patricia Mainardi, Graduate Center, City University of New York, AHNCA Program Chair, Moderator
Margarita Bucceroni-Tellenbach, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf & Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, “Native Americans in Nineteenth-Century Roman Sculpture.”
In the nineteenth century, Rome was the European center of sculpture and the point of origin for American sculpture. This presentation brings into focus a rich body of works depicting Native Americans, created by both Europeans and Americans resident in Rome between 1820 and 1900.
Margarita Bucceroni-Tellenbach is a doctoral candidate at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf & Technische Universität Dresden. Her research focuses on nineteenth-century sculpture in Italy. She received her BA and MA at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, Heidelberg, with theses on the Byzantine origins of El Greco’s paintings and on Ferdinand Pettrich’s “Indian Museum.” She has been an intern at the Vatican Museums, a curatorial and research fellow at the Dresden State Art Collections, and, most recently, research assistant to the Director General of the Dresden State Art Collections.
Virginia Magnaghi, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy, “Giovanni Bastianini in the Making. On Forgery and Visual Culture in Florence at the Time of Italy’s Unification.”
Magnaghi studies the sculptor Giovanni Bastianini (1830–1868) in order to investigate the broader topic of artists’ visual culture in Florentine workshops around the time of Italy’s unification (1848–1871). Rather than focusing on his faults as a so-called forger, she shifts attention to his iconographic choices, looking at his work as a mirror of the values upon which the process of nation-building relied.
Virginia Magnaghi is a doctoral candidate at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, where she is completing a doctoral dissertation on the representation of nature in Italy during the inter-war period. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Stratagemmi prospettive teatrali, and has been a Research Fellow and Cultural Program Assistant at the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) in NYC.
Jordan Hillman, University of Delaware, USA, “Humoring the Police: Comic Remediations of Authority in Fin-de-Siècle Paris.”
In the decades before 1900, the proliferation of policemen on the streets of Paris was matched by their increased visibility in avant-garde prints, posters, and illustrations. This presentation explores how artists used humor, an especially powerful—and potentially dangerous—tool, to challenge the serious and authoritative image of the police force.
Jordan Hillman is a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware. Her dissertation, “Mediating Authority: Representations of the Police in Paris ca.1900,” has been supported by fellowships from UD’s Graduate College and the Paris Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art. She has presented her research at numerous conferences, and published sections from it in Visual Arts Research and Athanor. She was a research assistant at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and an intern at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. She is currently completing her dissertation research as an affiliate of the Université Paris Nanterre.
2:30 – 2:40 PM: Break
2:40 – 3:40 PM: Second Session & Discussion
Marilyn Satin Kushner, New-York Historical Society, Moderator
Alonso Moctezuma, Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México, Mexico, “Between La Bohème and Mexican Modernisms: Opera, Literature, Visual Culture, and the Fin-de-Siècle Representation of the Male Artist.”
Moctezuma analyzes how the representation and consumption of Puccini’s opera La Bohème influenced the development of Mexican Modernisms between 1897 and 1910. He studies the agency that opera, literature, and visual culture had in the construction of the image of the fin-de-siècle male artist.
Alonso Moctezuma is completing his MA in Art Studies at Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México, where he is finishing his thesis on opera, spectatorship, and Mexican masculinities during the nineteenth century. His research focuses on opera, literary, and visual culture of the nineteenth century, approaching the subject through gender studies and decolonial theory. He has presented his research at numerous conferences and published in La ópera de México (Mexico City, 2023) and Les Cahiers du Grimh. Image et musique (Lyon, 2022).
Barbára Romero-Ferrón, Western University, Canada, “Concept(s) of Spanish Art through the Nineteenth Century. Network Analysis of Exhibitions in Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, 1800–1939.”
Romero-Ferrón applies network analysis to explore the construction of the concept of Spanish art from 1800 to 1939. Using temporary exhibitions as the main object of study, her project seeks to achieve a better understanding of the diversity of the concepts displayed in these exhibitions and the artists associated with them.
Barbára Romero-Ferrón is a doctoral candidate at Western University where she is completing her dissertation by constructing a data-driven exhibition history of nineteenth-century Spanish Art. She previously earned a BA and MA at the University of Málaga, Spain. She was a Visiting Researcher at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and is currently a Graduate Intern at the Getty Research Institute.
3:40 – 4:00 PM: Discussion among Participants
Sunday, March 26, 2023
1:00 PM: Welcome: Nancy Locke, President, AHNCA, and J. David Farmer, Director of Exhibitions, Dahesh Museum of Art
1:10 – 2:30 PM: Third Session & Discussion
Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Seton Hall University, and Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, Moderator
Isabelle Gillet, University of Michigan, USA, “Uprooted Exoticism: The Portrait of a White Aristocratic Créole in Restoration France.”
Gillet focuses on this portrait by Louise Bouteiller that shows Césarine de Houdetot flaunting her roots in Mauritius, the island celebrated for its famed Pamplemousses Garden and as the setting for Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s 1788 novel Paul et Virginie. Yet, Houdetot lived there for only four years—while it was still a French colony. The portrait bespeaks a complicated image, layered with devotion to the motherland, colonial nostalgia, and white creole identity.
Isabelle Gillet recently defended her doctoral dissertation, “Civility and Portraits of Women in France (1815–1848)” at the University of Michigan, where she is currently a fellow at the Institute for the Humanities. She holds an MA from Williams College and a certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Michigan. She has been a curatorial intern at both the Frick Collection and the Williams College Museum of Art, and has presented her research at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.
Alex Round, Birmingham City University, UK, “‘Sisters in Art’: Reassessing the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood.”
Alex Round examines the impact of friendships among Pre-Raphaelite women artists and writers, showing how they used their friendships to challenge the masculine structures of the art world and the wider Victorian culture. She discusses their lives, their individual and collaborative achievements, and their creative agency as distinct from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Alex Round is completing her doctoral dissertation, “‘Sisters in Art’: Reassessing the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood,” at Birmingham City University, UK. Her PhD is currently funded by Midlands4Cities, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She is a trustee of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, as well as co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Society Podcast Series and its Graduate Network. She has published in The Victorian Web, The Victorianist and the PRS Review and has an essay in the forthcoming summer issue of the Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. She is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology from University of Delaware Press, Forgotten Sisters: Overlooked Pre-Raphaelite Women.
Miha Valant, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, “Province and Modernity: The Carniolan Institute for Artistic Weaving in Ljubljana around 1900.”
Miha Valant discusses the Carniolan Institute for Artistic Weaving in Ljubljana, the former Austrian province of Carniola (present-day Slovenia). He shows how this short-lived Institute aimed at modernizing the quality of local weaving with modern design and tried to establish itself in the Austrian craft system and contemporary market.
Miha Valant is completing his dissertation at the University of Ljubljana, where he also earned his BA and MA. His research focuses on the art system in present-day Slovenia, through a focus on the organization of art and art societies in the second half of the nineteenth century. He is currently a member of the exhibition committee for “Moderno!/Modern!” in preparation by Moderna galerija and partner institutions in Zagreb, Belgrade, and Paris.
2:30 – 2:40 PM: Break
2:40 – 3:40 PM: Fourth Session & Discussion
J. David Farmer, Dahesh Museum of Art, Moderator
Emily Madrigal, University of Virginia, USA, “Plaster Subjunctives: Édouard Dantan’s A Life-Casting at the Haviland Atelier, Auteuil, 1887.”
Édouard Dantan’s A Life-Casting at the Haviland Atelier, Auteuil, exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1887, was the first work in the history of French painting to picture the plaster life-casting process. Madrigal tracks its critical reception and examines the stakes of visualizing a sculptural process in nineteenth-century France.
Emily Madrigal is a doctoral student at the University of Virginia with a research focus on the materials of sculpture, specifically plaster in nineteenth-century France. She received her BA from Princeton University and her MA from Williams College. She interned at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Venice, and has published her research in Thresholds MIT.
Bojana Rimbovska, University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha, New Zealand, “From Quarries to Courts: Visualizing the Production and Movement of Plaster Casts across Imperial Space.”
Drawing on Henry Cole’s account of molding and casting operations at Sanchi, India, Rimbovska considers the ways in which the production and distribution of plaster casts was entangled with processes of colonization and environmental destruction, and with the museological cultures that helped to facilitate the spread of these fragile facsimiles across imperial space.
Bojana Rimbovska is a doctoral student at the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha where she completed her BA with First-Class Honors and her MA with Distinction. Her research focuses on replication and flows of material culture in the long nineteenth century, with a specific interest in colonial antipodean contexts. She has presented her research at conferences of the Association for the Study of Literature, Environment & Culture of Australia & New Zealand.
3:40 – 4:00 PM: Discussion among Participants
2022 – 2023 Jury: Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, J. David Farmer, Marilyn Satin Kushner, Nancy Locke, Patricia Mainardi, Caterina Pierre;
Technical Director: Caroline Koch
The symposium is free and open to the public, but registration is required at: https://tinyurl.com/grad-symposium
For the complete program: https://www.ahnca.org; www.daheshmuseum.org. For further information: info@daheshmuseum.org