Location
Lincoln College
Throughout history and across cultures people have set up statues in public spaces – to honour rulers, to reward benefactors, to worship gods and goddesses or simply to admire. This conference brings together leading historians, art historians and archaeologists to discuss the role played by public statues in historical cultures ranging from ancient China to modern Turkey, from Palmyra to Georgian England. Key issues to be explored include the ways in which the setting of public statues contributed to their meaning, the ways that audiences responded to public statues and what contemporary discourses reveal about the role of statues in society. Looking at public statues as a widespread historical phenomenon should suggest new perspectives for considering the specific case studies considered and will generate discussion concerning shared problems of evidence and methodology in approaching the subject. The event is open to anybody with an interest in sculpture, public space or comparative history.
http://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/public-statues-across-time-and-culture
Attendance costs £7.50 per day. Lunch costs £13.50 per day. Please register using the online store:
Questions can be directed to christopher.dickenson@classics.ox.ac.uk
This event is generously supported by the Marie Curie Fellowship, John Fell Fund, the Zilkha Fund and the Craven Committee.
Programme (please not that some changes may be made)
Day one – Wednesday 28th September
10:00 Opening – Dr. Christopher Dickenson (Oxford)
10.30 Dr. Matthew Craske (Oxford Brookes) “The erection of public monuments to historical figures and the politics of nostalgia in early Hanoverian England”
11:30 Tea and coffee
12:00 Prof. Sheila Dillon (Duke University) “Public Sacred Space, Private Portrait Statues: the case of the City Eleusinion in Athens”
13:00 Lunch for speakers and chairs, optional for delegates
14:00 Dr. Peter Dent (University of Bristol) “Looking up in Public: Subordinating the Viewer in the Squares of Medieval and Renaissance Italy”
15:00 Tea and coffee
15:30 Dr. Kathleen Christian (Open University) “‘Statues in Renaissance Rome and the Possesso of Leo X, 1513”
16:30 Prof. Lukas Nickel (University of Vienna): “Public Sculpture in Early Imperial China, 3rd to 2nd century BC”
17:30 Reception
Day Two – Thursday 29th September
9:30 Prof. Rubina Raja (Aarhus University) “Public display of statuary in Palmyra – between tradition and innovation”
10:30 Dr. Paroma Chatterjee (University of Michigan) “Ancient statues as markers of time in the Parastaseis and Theophanes Continuatus”
11:30 Tea and coffee
12:00 Dr. Campbell Price (Manchester Museum) “How accessible was elite temple sculpture in Pharaonic Egypt?”
13:00 Lunch for speakers and chairs, optional for delegates
14: 00 Dr. Stijn Bussels (Leiden University) “Shiver and Admire in the Dutch Golden Age. Artus Quellinus’ Statues in the Amsterdam Tribunal”
15:00 Tea and coffee
15:30 Faik Gür (Özyeğin University) “High Modernism and the Politics of Public Statuary in Turkey”
16:30 Summing up and general discussion