OSK/Van Gogh Museum Visiting Fellow in the History of 19th Century Art

Artists’ and Collectors’ Museums: Display, (Self-)Representation, Evolution

Dates: suspended due to measurements with regard to COVID-19
23Venue: van Gogh Museum & University of Amsterdam
Open to: RMA students
Credits: 6 EC
Coordination: Dr Rachel Esner
To register: please contact Dr. Rachel Esner: r.esner@uva.nl (putting “VGM Visiting Fellow” in the subject line). Please supply a short statement of motivation.

From 7-11 June 2020 (Research) MA students in Art History and related fields will have the opportunity to participate in the annual Van Gogh Museum Visiting Fellow in the History of Nineteenth-Century Art seminar, sponsored by the Van Gogh Museum and the University of Amsterdam.

The aim of the Van Gogh Museum Visiting Fellow in the History of Nineteenth-Century Art seminar is to provide MA students with the opportunity to study a single yet wide-ranging subject in nineteenth-century art through an intensive one-week workshop taught by a leading scholar in the field and supported by the Van Gogh Museum. The seminar will introduce students to important issues in the study of nineteenth-century art and provide an impulse for further research. Its aim is to encourage interest in various aspects of the discipline, and to provide students not only with factual information, but more importantly with new methodological and theoretical perspectives on this important period in the history of art.

This year’s Visiting Fellow is Prof. Dario Libero Gamboni. University of Geneva, Switzerland. Gamboni completed his studies at the University of Lausanne and EHESS, Paris. He has pubished widely on various areas of nineteenth-century art history, with a focus on the period around 1900, including on the relationship between art and literature; iconoclasm and vandalism; the question of visual ambiguity; and the artists Paul Gauguin and Odilon Redon. One of his recent topics has been artists’ and collectors’ museums, the subject of this year’s seminar.

Museums created by artists and/or collectors constitute a worldwide phenomenon, with peaks around 1900 and today. The seminar aims at examining key aspects of their history, geography, anthropology, aesthetics and “social life,” all of which throw a unusual light on those of museums in general. Preceded by a public lecture entitled Destination and Experience: Artists’ and Collectors’ Museums in the Past and the Present, the seminar sessions will consider issues of display, arrangement and “disposition”; (self-) representation and monumentalization; and sustainability, heritage and adaptation.

The seminar will consist of three sessions of three hours each, plus an afternoon excursion. A public introductory lecture will take place at the Van Gogh Museum on Sunday, 7 June. The seminar meetings will take place at the Van Gogh Museum (Monday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Thursday from 1-4 p.m. Exact location to be announced.) The date and time of the excursion will be announced before the start of the seminar.

Students will be supplied with the themes of the sessions and a list of readings in advance (mid-January). These will introduce the material and issues of the seminar and are required, whether you are taking the seminar for credit or not (see below).

Extra information

As part of any art-history or related Research Master program, the Van Gogh Museum Visiting Fellow seminar can be followed as a 6 EC tutorial (limited to 5 students). On the basis of the readings supplied, tutorial students will be expected to develop a research question and proposal, plus a bibliography on their chosen topic for a paper of 3,000-3,500 words, on which their grade will be based. During the spring semester (blocks A and B) these students will meet three times together with the supervising lecturer (Dr. Rachel Esner) to discuss their proposed project. Before the start and after the end of the seminar students will then be expected to work on their projects independently. The final paper will be due at the end of June (date to be announced). Exact instructions will follow in January.

Students from the UvA can register as they would for a regular class (from 3 December). Students from other universities should send an email to the coordinator. As the number of places is strictly limited, preference will be given to Research Masters students; students from other programs will be admitted on a first come, first serve basis. Auditors (MA students and professionals) are, however, also welcome.

Interested in either the tutorial or attending as an auditor? Contact Dr. Rachel Esner: r.esner@uva.nl for more information (please put “VGM Visiting Fellow” in the subject line).