Appel à candidature : « Graduate Student Summer Seminar, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven »

The Yale Center for British Art offers a biennial Graduate Student Summer Seminar, which takes the form of a week-long intensive course taught by a team of scholars from the Center and other institutions. At the heart of these seminars is an immersion in the collections of the Center and elsewhere at Yale University. Each seminar takes as its focus a specific topic that draws upon the strengths of the collections, and sessions are taught primarily in the Center’s galleries and Study Room.

In June 2013, the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) will offer a week-long graduate student seminar, open to doctoral candidates interested in learning about color and its historical development, manufacture, and use in a range of art works in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. The seminar, which is organized by the YCBA’s Conservation Department, will concentrate on the physical materials of color. The long eighteenth century plays a central role in the history of color, as the scientific revolution and the development of chemistry were, in part, fueled by the urge to synthesize pigments and dyes. The seminar will examine color from historic and scientific perspectives, explore its physical definitions and biological responses, and create a familiarity with the language of color as it evolved historically. Studio demonstrations and
some practice will be used to help inform art history students who may have had little or no experience in handling pigments and mediums in the studio. The aim of the seminar is to equip students with a fundamental understanding of the history and theory of color, and to develop an understanding of the appearance of color in paintings and works on paper. The lead instructors of the seminar are Mark Aronson, Chief Conservator, and Jessica David, Assistant Paintings Conservator at the YCBA. Other specialists, including curators, art historians, scientists, conservators, and artists, will be involved in teaching special sessions during the course.

Eligibility

The seminar is open to current PhD students within the United States and internationally, whose doctoral research focuses on issues relating to painterly practice and the materiality of paintings and works on paper. Up to ten students will be selected. Participants will be provided with economy airfare, ground transportation, meals, and accommodation at Yale. Students are expected to undertake reading assignments in advance of the seminar. A syllabus and details of assignments will be available in late spring 2013. It is anticipated that the seminar will contribute to their research historically, conceptually, and methodologically, and it is expected that the students’ own research, in turn, will cast light on the collections.

Apply

The 2013 seminar, Coloring Color: The History, Science, and Materiality of Paint, will take place from June 17–21, 2013. The instructors are Mark Aronson, Chief Conservator, and Jessica David, Assistant Paintings Conservator, at the Center. Full details and application instructions can be found in the call for applications.

The closing date for applications is Monday, March 4, 2013. Applicants should email a CV and a statement (no more than two pages) of how their research interests intersect with the focus of the seminar, and what they hope to gain for their own work by participating. Please send the application documents to Marinella Vinci (marinella.vinci@yale.edu).

For more information, see: http://britishart.yale.edu/research/yale-graduate-students/summer-seminar