• Skip to main content

Historians of Netherlandish Art

  • News
  • Resources
    • HNA Initiatives
    • HNA Resources
  • About HNA
    • Membership
    • Contact Us
    • Support HNA
Search:
Member Login:

Lost your password?

Log in

Not a member? Join Now
Our Websites:
Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art HNA Reviews

Historians of Netherlandish Art

Menu
  • All News
  • HNA News
  • Personalia
  • Exhibitions
  • Museum News
  • Opportunities
  • HNA Conference
Deadline: December 9, 2022

Women in Art and Music: An Early Modern Global Conference

Wednesday, October 18, 2023
The Juilliard School, New York, NY

Friday, October 20, 2023
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

The Juilliard School, New York, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of  Art, Washington, DC, are excited to announce a co-hosted global interdisciplinary symposium on women  in art and music in the early modern period (ca. 1500–ca. 1800). Our goal is to think broadly about women  as creators, as part of the cultural and global economy, and as experts in their chosen field of art. We  suggest that visual art and musical performance were so tightly enmeshed at this time as to form their own  language, particularly in women-centered spaces. We, therefore, seek a new way of addressing this shared  space—not necessarily as an interdisciplinary zone where art and music always converge—but one in  which modes of creation are shared in codependent and overlapping ways in the early modern period.

The National Gallery of Art’s recent acquisition of the Bolognese painter Lavinia Fontana’s portrait of 16th century Bolognese singer and lute player, Lucia Bonasoni Garzoni (b. 1561)—the first painting by an early  modern Italian woman artist to enter the museum’s collection—is the impetus for this interdisciplinary  conference. A prolific artist, Fontana depicts Garzoni in an exquisite and highly detailed portrait alongside  her lute, displayed on the table next to a score which accurately represents music for a lute with soprano  voice. We might imagine these notes emanating from her instrument in concert with her dulcet voice, garnering her the praise she received from her literary contemporaries and poets, as one asserted, “And the  host of the Graces, and the whole array of Virtues, testify to this in singing her glories and honors.”

On April 23, 1595, Lavinia Fontana’s eleventh and last-born child was baptized in Bologna, and documents  show that none other than Lucia Bonasoni Garzoni served as the child’s godmother, linking the two women  together personally, in addition to professionally. This picture tells the story of two women, one a painter  and the other a musician, who were able to overcome obstacles in a patriarchal society to succeed in the  artistic spheres of painting and music. This early modern synergy between a painter and a singer will be the  springboard for exploring how women succeeded as artists and musicians in the early modern period on a  global stage, whether independently or collaboratively.

Early modern scholarship has recently suggested that identity is a process, a fluid phenomenon rather than  fixed formation, in which the interaction between groups (be they national, religious, social, gendered, or  racial) is the crucial point of study. What happens when we apply this idea to the realm of artistic identity? Some questions to consider: How does reading art and music as coexistent entities enhance our  understanding of women in the early modern era? When women depicted or included other women in their  art what were the societal ramifications? How did art and music-making offer women pathways for social  advancement or even independence in the early modern period? How did issues of social class and race, in  addition to gender, play into possible advances for women on the global stage in art and music?

We hope that the comingling of a museum and a conservatory will help to answer some of these questions  in a lively and engaging symposium. Live music will be provided alongside papers at both institutions by  the ensemble Sonnambula and musicians from Juilliard’s Historical Performance program, to reveal how  crucial musical performance is to the study of music and the sister arts in the early modern period.  Musicians will be on-hand to play any music discussed in papers as needed; public performances will also  occur on both days of the symposium.

We invite paper submissions from scholars across the humanities that engage with early modern women as  artists and/or musicians from the disciplines of history, music history, historical performance, and art  history, in addition to other relevant disciplines. Papers are encouraged that consider cross-cultural  connections in how they address issues of artmaking and performance, in both secular and religious  contexts in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and beyond. Proposals that include music or performance  as part of the talk are welcome. A selection of papers will be published following the conference in an  edited volume published by the Center and distributed by Yale University Press.

To submit a proposal, please send the following by email to the co-organizers of the conference:

Dr. Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, Curator and Head of Italian and Spanish Paintings, National Gallery of Art e-straussman-pflanzer@nga.gov

Dr. Elizabeth Weinfield, Professor of Music History, The Juilliard School; Director, Sonnambula eweinfield@juilliard.edu

  • A paper title (15-word maximum)
  • A paper abstract (250-word maximum)
  • CV/resume with your full name, affiliation, title (or “Independent Scholar”), and e-mail address

Deadline: Friday, December 9, 2022

Published on November 7, 2022

  • News
  • Resources
    • HNA Initiatives
    • HNA Resources
  • About HNA
    • Membership
    • Contact Us
    • Support HNA
  • Become a Member
  • Member Login
Search:
Join our Mailing List:
Visit our Facebook page
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Instagram
© 2023 · Historians of Netherlandish Art. All Rights Reserved. · Terms of Use
Design by Studio Rainwater