Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will be hosting the symposium Stradanus at Cooper Hewitt as the culmination of its multi-year Stradanus Project on November 6-7, 2025.
The museum is home to 143 sheets of drawings and inscriptions by the Netherlandish artist Johannes Stradanus (1523-1605). With support from the Getty’s Paper Project Initiative and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Collections Program, Cooper Hewitt embarked on The Stradanus Project, an effort to conserve, research, and digitize Stradanus’s drawings, which served as preparatory designs for his engravings.
In 2021-2022, Cooper Hewitt conducted a conservation survey of all of its Stradanus sketches. Based on this information, the team selected 39 sheets for lining removal and treatment, which was completed in 2024. As a result of conservation work and research, drawings and inscriptions that have been obscured for more than a century have been newly revealed.
Over two days, 14 curators, scholars, and conservators will present new research on Stradanus. In addition to these presentations, there will be viewings of Cooper Hewitt’s Stradanus holdings in the Drue Heinz Study Center for Drawings and Prints.
Please visit Cooper Hewitt’s website to register for the symposium.
Program
Thursday, 6 November 2025
9:30 a.m.–9:45 a.m.
Opening Remarks
Maria Nicanor, Director, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York
Caitlin Condell, Associate Curator & Head of Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design Department, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York
9:45 a.m.–11:00 a.m.
Panel I
Julia Siemon, Bard Graduate Center, New York
Stradanus: Word and Image
Karen Bowen, Unaffiliated
Tracing the Distribution of Prints Designed by Johannes Stradanus
Alessandra Baroni, Scuola dell’Arte della Medaglia, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Rome
Preparatory Sketch or Study After? New Reflections on the Chronology and Function of Stradanus’s Drawings at Cooper Hewitt
11:00 a.m.–11:15 a.m. Coffee Break
11:15 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Panel II
Rebecca Pollak, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
Stradanus Drawings at Cooper Hewitt: Workshop Practice, Collecting Histories, and Conservation
Heather Hendry, Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts, Philadelphia Considering Color Change in Iron Gall Ink Drawings: A Case Study in the Treatment of Stradanus Drawings
Anders Svensson, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
Stradanus’s Corrections–A Case Study of the Drawing The Battle of Marciano I
Jamie Kwan, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York
Assembling Stradanus: Reconstructing Sheets and Binding Groups in Cooper Hewitt’s Collection
3:00 p.m.–4:45 p.m.
Study Sessions I and II
Drue Heinz Study Center
Study Session I will begin at 3:00 p.m.
Study Session II will begin at 4:00 p.m.
Friday, 7 November 2025
9:30 a.m.–9:45 a.m.
Opening Remarks
Matilda McQuaid, Acting Director of Curatorial, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York
Caitlin Condell, Associate Curator & Head of Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design Department, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York
9:45 a.m.–11:00 a.m.
Panel I
Anca-Delia Moldovan, University of Warwick, Coventry
Sketching the Thread: Women and Silk Production in Johannes Stradanus’s Drawings
Dontay Givens II, New York University, New York
Phantasmagoric Landscapes, Hunting with Jan van der Straet
Zoe Langer, Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville Lia Markey, Center for Renaissance Studies, Newberry Library, Chicago Gloria Moorman, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame
Stradanus and Dante
11:00 a.m.–11:15 a.m. Coffee break
11:15 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Panel II
Kate Heard, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor
Nobile Spectaculum’: Stradanus’s Life of the Virgin Revisited
Joana Moura, Independent Researcher
Stradanus’s ‘Descent from the Cross’: Connecting the Dots Dispersed Across Different Geographies
Rhoda Eitel-Porter, Print Quarterly, London
Stradanus and the Artist’s Studio
3:00 p.m.–4:45 p.m.
Study Session III and IV
Drue Heinz Study Center
Study Session III will begin at 3:00 p.m.
Study Session IV will begin at 4:00 p.m.