Journée d’étude : « Object Lessons: Sculpture and the Production of Knowledge » (Leeds, 3 Octobre 2015)

Object Lessons: Sculpture and the Production of Knowledge (Leeds, 3 Oct 15) Henry Moore Institute, Seminar Room, 74 The Headrow, Leeds LS1 3AH, UK, October 03, 2015

Programmed alongside the exhibition ‘Object Lessons’ in Gallery 4, this conference considers the relationship between sculpture and the production of knowledge in the nineteenth century. In the early nineteenth-century publications such as Elizabeth Mayo’s ‘Lessons on Objects’ (1830) (held in our Research Library collection) gained traction in Britain, North America and India as guides to an approach to education developed by Swiss educationalist Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) that advocated exposure to concrete objects to develop abstract thought. The belief in the capacity of sculpture to produce and circulate knowledge was shaped by the political, intellectual and moral economy of the nineteenth century and a utilitarian, rather than connoisseurial, model of the academy and the art gallery. This conference presents papers on a diverse range of subjects, objects and contexts from the development of sculpture collections to the uses of ethnographic models and stamps, united by the ways in which they were put to use as instructive objects.

PROGRAMME

11.00 – 11.20         Introduction Rebecca Wade (Henry Moore Institute)

11.20 – 11.50     The Korl Woman: Object Lessons and other Metaphors in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual Culture Sarah Anne Carter (Chipstone Foundation)

11.50 – 12.20     Setting up a Sculpture Collection at the Hamburger Kunsthalle: Questions to Alfred Lichtwark Anna Seidel (Humboldt University of Berlin)

12.20 – 12.40         Discussion

12.40 – 1.40         Lunch in the Boardroom

1.40 – 2.10     History from the Stamp Album: Pedagogy and the Material Past in the Philatelic Discourse of late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century Europe Samuel Raybone (Courtauld Institute of Art)

2.10 – 2.40     ‘Models for the edification of those who are not in the position to see them in real life’: The uses of the Collections of Miniature Ethnographic Models at the Horniman Free Museum Ryan Nutting (University of Leicester)

2.40 – 3.00         Discussion

3.00 – 3.30         Tea in the Boardroom

3.30 – 4.30         Keynote ‘The Original Object Lesson: On the Past and Present of Material Literacy’ Ann-Sophie Lehmann (University of Groningen)

4.30 – 5.00         Discussion