In association with Strange Beauty: Masters of the German Renaissance
(The National Gallery, London: 19 February – 11 May 2014)

11 & 12 April 2014
The National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing: Sainsbury Lecture Theatre

INFORMATION

Conference organized by Professor Juliet Simpson (Buckinghamshire New University-Wolfson College, Oxford) in collaboration with Dr Susan Foister (The National Gallery) and Dr Jeanne Nuechterlein (University of York).

TICKET PRICES

Full Conference Rate (2 days including tea and coffee: both days): £75; Concession Rate: £55

Conference Rate (single day including tea and coffee): £40; Concession Rate: £30

ALL TICKETS CAN BE BOOKED AND PURCHASED FROM THE NATIONAL GALLERY (follow link to Strange Beauty, then to ‘Related Events’ tab, then Strange Beauty Conference)

Click here for programme and details

Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, November 8–9, 2013

During his lifetime, Richard Wagner’s (1813–1883) only visit to the Nordic countries was to Norway: in July of 1839 his ship Thetis was caught in a storm and sought refuge in Sandvika. There is also a legend that Wagner visited the Imatra rapids in eastern Finland during his stay in St. Petersburg in 1863.

Wagner’s music, however, not only visited the Nordic countries, but also became a permanent resident in the national opera houses there. Rienzi was first performed in Stockholm in 1865, followed by Der Fliegende Holländer (1872), Lohengrin (1874) and Tannhäuser (1878). The Royal Opera in Copenhagen began its Wagner performances with Lohengrin (1870), soon followed by Die Meistersinger (1872) and Tannhäuser (1875). In Kristiania and Helsinki regular Wagner performances started much later, as national opera institutions with regular programmes began only in the 20^th century. However, touring or temporary companies performed Wagner for Nordic audiences, for instance, in Finland with Tannhäuser (Helsinki, 1857). The first Wagner opera performed in Riga was Der fliegende Holländer (1843) and in Tallinn, Tannhäuser (1853). Lohengrin reached St. Petersburg in 1868.

Several singers originating in the Nordic countries made unforgettable careers thanks to Wagner repertoire, including Olive Fremstad (1871–1951), Lauritz Melchior (1890–1973), Kirsten Flagstad (1895–1962), Birgit Nilsson (1918–2005) and Anita Välkki (1926–2011). In addition to singers, many conductors, such as Armas Järnefelt (1869–1958), and stage directors, including Stefan Herheim (b. 1970) and Kasper Holten (b. 1973), have developed a special attachment to Wagner’s operas.

• Keynote speakers: Barry Millington (UK), Hannu Salmi (Finland) and Eero Tarasti (Finland). The inauguration of the conference: Tiina Rosenberg, the rector for the University of the Arts Helsinki.

Continue reading →

A seminar will be organized in celebration of the 60th birthday of Professor Pirjo Lyytikäinen, who is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the Birch and the Star.

The language of the seminar if Finnish.

Kotimaisen kirjallisuuden professori Pirjo Lyytikäinen täyttää 60 vuotta 10.10.2013. Järjestämme hänen kunniakseen perjantaina 11.10.2013 juhlaseminaarin “Esitetty nainen taiteissa”.

Seminaarissa julkistetaan professori Lyytikäisen juhlakirja “Kirjallisuuden naiset. Naisten esityksiä 1840-luvulta 2000-luvulle” (SKS), jonka ovat toimittaneet Riikka Rossi ja Saija Isomaa. Myös päivänsankarin uusin teos “Leena Krohn ja allegorian kaupungit” (SKS) julkistetaan samassa tilaisuudessa.

Seminaari pidetään Helsingin yliopiston pienessä juhlasalissa (Fabianinkatu 33, 4. krs), ja se on kaikille avoin. Lämpimästi tervetuloa! Continue reading →

Call for Papers

The decades around 1900 were a period of such varied experimentation that any attempt to apply labels, particularly those based on formal style, inevitably creates artificial exclusions and divisions. Despite much work in recent decades on the art, architecture and design of the period, it remains conceptually difficult to work outside the categories that are deeply embedded in our scholarly traditions. Symbolism and Art Nouveau are both labels whose definitions have been widened to try and accommodate the diversity and geographical range of the period. Both movements resist straightforward positioning in relation to the dominant discourse of Modernism. It remains challenging to reconcile the ideas of escape, nostalgia and the subjective dream space that prevailed at this time with the engagement with the contemporary world valorised by the label Modern.

This session invites researchers to consider how their work relates to the binaries that still linger behind our sense of what is progressive or modern but that were in such a tangled relationship at this period. Progress: retreat; forwards: backwards; reveal: conceal; clarity: obscurity. We welcome contributions with a focus on any area of visual or material culture between 1880 and 1920.

Please submit your proposal (max. 250 words) by 11 November 2013 to:

Charlotte Ashby c.ashby(at)bbk.ac.uk
Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff  Anna-Maria.vonBonsdorff(at)ateneum.fi

Click here for more information about the AAH Annual Conference 2014

Richard Wagner and the North

International Symposium, Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, November 8–9, 2013

ORGANIZERS: The University of the Arts (Sibelius Academy/DocMus and the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts), Opera on the Move project (the Academy of Finland), the Finnish Wagner Society, and the Birch and the Star Association.

Keynote speakers: Barry Millington (UK), Hannu Salmi (Finland) and Eero Tarasti (Finland). Continue reading →

A three-day interdisciplinary symposium is organized by Art History, Södertörn University, 11- 13 September 2013. Attention will be given to the avant-gardes of the period c. 1910-1930 across Europe, with a certain focus on those of the Nordic Countries, Central and Eastern Europe, and their orientation to the Parisian avant-garde.

Keynote speakers:

• Professor David Cottington (Kingston University, London)

• Professor Piotr Piotrowski (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan)

Venues: Södertörn University and Moderna Museet, Stockholm

At a time when modernist art history of the early avant-garde is urgently questioned from different positions, an exploration of theoretical tools for the study of the early avant-garde and its transnational strategies is needed, as well as a mapping of the research within the field that is now developing in different parts of Europe. This symposium is intended as a starting-point for such (a) collective project (s).

 avant-garde-Call_for_Papers.pdf  call.papers.full.version.pdf

We welcome scholars to submit proposals before April 15th, 2013.

Seminar on Beda Stjernschantz 10 April 2013 at Amos Anderson Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland

The seminar is open to the public but pre-registration is required. Anyone wishing to attend should send an email to itha.oneill(at)amosanderson.fi by 3 April 2013.

The Seminar is in English.

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Seminaari on yleisölle avoin, mutta osallistuminen edellyttää ennakkoilmoittautumisen. Ilmoittaudu lähettämällä sähköpostiviesti 3.4.2013 mennessä osoitteeseen  itha.oneill(at)amosanderson.fi

Seminaari on englanninkielinen.

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Programme

10–10.30 Registration

10.30 Welcome Speech: Museum Director Kai Kartio. Opening Words: Torsten Stjernschantz.

10.45 Juha-Heikki Tihinen, University of Helsinki

Tangible Elusiveness ­– Realized and Unrealized Artistic Ideas in the Oeuvre of Beda Stjernschantz

11.15 Asta Kihlman, University of Turku

“The unmoved eye and the look of eternity”

11.45 Nina Kokkinen, University of Turku

As an Initiate of Spiritual Art. Beda Stjernschantz’s Aphorism (1895) and Fin-de-siècle Occulture

12.15–13.15 Lunch break (not included)

13.15 Marja Lahelma, University of Helsinki

Beda Stjernschantz and the Timeless Ideal

13.45 Bart Pushaw, University of Chicago

A Swedish Karelia?  Beda Stjernschantz’s Everywhere A Voice Invites Us

14.15 Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

In search of sacred art  – Beda Stjernschantz and Anna Bremer on the Island of Vormsi 1895

14.45–15.00 Coffee break

15.00  Edyta Barucka, University of Warsaw

”I embrace the common…”: Beda Stjernschantz’s, Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s and Stanislaw Wyspianski’s botanical drawings

15.30 Salla Heino, Design Museum, Helsinki

Beda Stjernschantz’s Sketches for The Friends of Finnish Handicraft – Designing Finnish Textiles

16–17.30 Roundtable Talks

17.30 Cocktail Reception

Venue: Amos Anderson Art Museum, Yrjönkatu 27, 00100 Helsinki, Finland www.amosanderson.fi

An exhibition on the work of the Finnish artist Beda Stjernschantz (1867-1910) is scheduled to open at the Amos Anderson Art Museum in February 2014. Beda Stjernschantz was an important member of the generation of Finnish Symbolist artists that emerged in the 1890s but art historical research on her work is insufficient, in part due to her limited oeuvre. Thus, The Birch and the Star and Amos Anderson Art Museum are organizing a one-day seminar to bring together researchers who share an interest in Beda Stjernschantz and the art and culture of the fin-de-siècle. The aim of the seminar will be to coalesce and interpret existing art historical knowledge pertaining to Beda Stjernschantz and to reassess the significance of her work in an international context. Interdisciplinary by nature, the seminar will act as a springboard for the exhibition and will hopefully open up new and interesting perspectives on the artist who has hitherto remained under the scholarly radar.

The seminar is open to the public but preregistration is required. Anyone wishing to attend should send an email to itha.oneill(at)amosanderson.fi by     3 April 2013.

For further enquiries, please contact Marja Lahelma, marja.lahelma(at)helsinki.fi.

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Programme

10–10.30 Registration

10.30 Welcome Speech: Museum Director Kai Kartio. Opening Words: Torsten Stjernschantz.

10.45 Juha-Heikki Tihinen, University of Helsinki

Tangible Elusiveness ­– Realized and Unrealized Artistic Ideas in the Oeuvre of Beda Stjernschantz

11.15 Asta Kihlman, University of Turku

“The unmoved eye and the look of eternity”

11.45 Nina Kokkinen, University of Turku

As an Initiate of Spiritual Art. Beda Stjernschantz’s Aphorism (1895) and Fin-de-siècle Occulture

12.15–13.15 Lunch break (not included)

13.15 Marja Lahelma, University of Helsinki

Beda Stjernschantz and the Timeless Ideal – Pastoral (Primavera) and Autumn

13.45 Bart Pushaw, University of Chicago

A Swedish Karelia?  Beda Stjernschantz’s Everywhere A Voice Invites Us

14.15 Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

In search of sacred art  – Beda Stjernschantz and Anna Bremer on the Island of Vormsi 1895

14.45–15.00 Coffee break

15.00  Edyta Barucka, University of Warsaw

”I embrace the common…”: Beda Stjernschantz’s, Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s and Stanislaw Wyspianski’s botanical drawings

15.30 Salla Heino, Design Museum, Helsinki

Beda Stjernschantz’s Sketches for The Friends of Finnish Handicraft – Designing Finnish Textiles

16–17.30 Roundtable Talks

17.30 Cocktail Reception

Venue: Amos Anderson Art Museum, Yrjönkatu 27, 00100 Helsinki, Finland www.amosanderson.fi

Towards the end of the nineteenth-century, European artists began to express a new profound interest in their unique local pasts and cultural inheritances. This growing sense of identity prompted a major flowering of Nationalist debate concerning the fast disappearing regional cultures throughout Europe. This was a discourse largely shaped by the desire within several countries for cultural and artistic, and ultimately social and economic, independence.

The project and its aim:

Established in 2009, the ‘European Revivals’ research project aims to reflect upon these national revivals in Europe, where art historical scholarship on the subject has already been broadly established. However, there has never been a joint project that examines this phenomenon on a wider-scale and that has sought to analyse the multifarious connections and correspondences, which helped shape the identities of each of these modern nations. The ‘European Revivals’ project, therefore, aims to study and show the similarities and differences of these countries for the first time on a European-scale and will explore different aspects at each conference. ‘European Revivals’ will continue to 2017 and will end with a publication and an international exhibition.

European Revivals – Modern Identities, International Conference will be held the 10th – 12th October 2012. Our aim is to continue the project in Helsinki by drawing National Museums and Galleries and scholars together in the second European Revivals Conference at Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery.

The Modern Identities Conference will be accompanied by an extensive exhibition on Helene Schjerfbeck (1862−1946). The major retrospective exhibition shows artworks throughout her career from the 1870s to 1940s. The exhibition is open to delegates during the conference.

See the conference programme

Booking fee:
60 euros (speaker) or 100 euros (delegate) participating in the excursion
30 euros (speaker), 50 euros (delegate)

70 euros (student) participating in the excursion
30 euros (student) without the excursion

Conference fee will include the Reception on Wednesday, visiting the Ateneum Art Museum and Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946) exhibition, the conference programme (Wed-Fri) and coffee/tea.

Conference fees exclude: travel, accommodation and lunch (Thu-Fri).

The Excursion day on Saturday will include lunch, refreshments and visits to the museums and transportation.

Registration form and payment info

For further information please contact:

Conference Producer Anu Utriainen
anu.utriainen@ateneum.fi
tel. +358 9 17336 385, mobile +358 40 673 5064
Finnish National Gallery
Kaivokatu 2, 00100 Helsinki, Finland

Curator Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff
abonsdor@ateneum.fi
Finnish National Gallery
Kaivokatu 2, 00100 Helsinki, Finland