CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

Call for Papers: HNA Conference 2024 – Britain and the Low Countries (London and Cambridge, 10-13 July 2024)

2024 marks the first time in the forty-year history of the Historians of Netherlandish Art that the biennial conference will be held in the UK. Cultural, political and economic exchange has been pivotal to the histories of the UK and the Low Countries and these relationships have taken on new significance and have new potential as the UK renegotiates its relationship with Europe after Brexit. ‘Britain and the Low Countries: Cultural Exchange Past, Present & Future’ considers the extraordinary depth and breadth of the relationships between the constituent nations of the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

The conference is comprised of workshops in London and Cambridge on 10 and 13 July (details to come) and 40 paper sessions to be delivered at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on 11 and 12 July. Thirteen of the sessions relate to the subject of Britain and the Low Countries. These fall under three broad themes: technology and the natural sciences, key themes in scholarship on British-Netherlandish culture, and medium-based scholarship in the British-Netherlandish context. There are 25 further sessions on a broad range of themes and 2 career-development sessions.

The call for papers is open for all sessions. Each session is 90-minutes long and, unless otherwise specified, will comprise three 20-minute papers and 30 minutes for discussion. Applicants must be HNA members and are allowed to submit multiple proposals but may not participate in more than one session. The organizers ask that applicants inform the session chairs about the other sessions they are applying to. Unless specified otherwise, please send proposals of ca. 500 words, clearly stating the goals of the paper, along with a CV (no longer than one page) to the email address(es) ascribed to the session descriptions.

Deadline: Friday, 29 September 2023. Applicants will be notified by the Session Chairs no later than four weeks after the submission deadline.

See below for a list of the sessions or visit the HNA website for more information and session descriptions.

Sessions at a Glance

  • Copies and Reproductions in Netherlandish Art, 1400–1800
  • Existential In(ter)ventions: Modernity as Makeability in the Dutch Republic
  • Infinite Concordances: Elaborating on Visual Typology in Early Modern Netherlandish Art
  • The ‘inventions’ of early Netherlandish painting: thirty years since Hans Belting and Christiane Kruse’s Die Erfindung des Gemäldes: Das erste Jahrhundert der niederländischen Malerei (1994)
  • Embracing the Digital Age: New Prospects for Researching Northern European Art with Computational Methods
  • The “More-Than-Human World” in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Visual and Material Culture
  • The Multidimensionality of Netherlandish Grotesques
  • What is Anglo-Dutchness?
  • Netherlandish-isms: Making Nationhood and Art History
  • Reading Pendants and Multiples in Dutch and Flemish Art
  • Gender & the Home across Cultures
  • Remarkable Women Artists: 1500-1700
  • Multiple Masculinities in Netherlandish Art
  • Sound and Silence: Soundscapes, Noise, Music, and Quiet Pauses in Dutch & Flemish Art
  • New Views on Vermeer: Reflections, Opinions, Reconsiderations
  • ANKK sponsored session: Moving Dutch Knowledge: Collections as Knowledge Repositories and Sites of Transformation and Transfiguration
  • Museums in Conflict: Lessons Learned, c.1930-1950
  • Technical Art History: Material stories-Object itineraries
  • Do We Belong Together? Case Studies into Portrait Pendants
  • The interconnected nature between Britain and the Low Countries in the production and decorating of glass
  • Art and Nature in the Dutch Colonial World
  • Worldly Images and Images of the World in Netherlandish Art
  • Half the World Away: Cultural Circulations between Isfahan and the Early Modern Low Countries
  • Mutual appreciation and exchanges between artists of northern and southern Europe 1590-1725
  • Culture and climate change
  • The landscapes of artists from the Netherlands who worked in Britain during The Long 17th Century
  • ‘Soft power’: the material legacy of William and Mary
  • Netherlandish migrant artists and the emergence of creativity in late-seventeenth-century London
  • Collecting and Exchange Between North Sea Neighbours
  • Netherlandish Art in Renaissance Florence: Architectural Exchanges from North to South?
  • Print Culture between the UK and the Low Countries
  • ‘Print Exhibitions in the Making and Related Research’
  • New research on Dutch and Flemish Drawings in the UK
  • Immigrants and Excellence: Sculptors from the Low Countries at the English and Scottish courts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
  • Connecting Threads: Tapestries and Cultural Exchange in the Low Countries and England
  • Material depiction and (cut-out) trompe l’oeils: The enchantment of material depiction by Netherlandish painters and the development of British traditions
  • Visual Sovereignty in Dutch and Indigenous Histories
  • Visual Cultures of Cartography in the Low Countries (1500-1800)
  • Professional Insights and Practical Advice for Early Career Researchers
  • Pecha Kucha Workshop for Graduate Students and Early Career Researchers