COURSES, CONFERENCES & TALKS

Conferences & Symposia

The Lecture Theatre

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V&A conferences offer an opportunity for academics, professionals, researchers and others with a substantial interest in the subject to share the results of recent research and discuss topical issues relating to V&A collections.

Symposia are inter-disciplinary events that explore the relationship between design and other aspects of culture. They aim to reveal connections between the historical and the contemporary, making the V&A's collections relevant to today's debates and research. Invited speakers include academics, writers, visual arts practitioners and specialists from other fields. 

• Hair Stories
• Maharaja
• Sustaining Identity 2
• Plaster and Plaster Casts: Materiality and Practice
• Call for Papers - [Record] [Create]: Oral History in Art, Craft, and Design

Book online or email bookings.office@vam.ac.uk

The delegate registration form below is optional and, if completed, will be circulated to attendees at the conference. Completed forms should be emailed to tickets@vam.ac.uk two weeks before the event.

Delegate registration form (PDF file, 21KB)
Delegate registration form (Word file, 31KB)

 

Hair Stories

Practice, Culture, Theory
Friday 20 November
Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre
10.30-17.30

Investigate the cultural and historical significance of hair in a cross-disciplinary event that covers fashion, art, film, gender, politics and identity. Leading academics, hair practitioners, journalists, cultural commentators and artists will explore the expressive and representational possibilities of hair and the stories that it can tell - on the street, on film and in the salon.  Speakers include Steven Zdatny, Carol Tulloch, Alistair O'Neill, Caroline Cox, Pauline Frankel, and
Mark Hayes.

£25, £20 concessions
Book online or call +44 (0)20 7942 2211

In collaboration with the London College of Fashion

 

Maharaja

Representation and Reality
Saturday 21st November
Lecture Theatre
10.30-17.30

Examine the multiple legacies of India's kings in this one-day symposium. Explore their impact on the cultural history of the sub-continent, their role as international patrons, the creation and continuing prevalence of the stereotype and the present-day identity of the maharaja. Curators and academics will cover various aspects of Indian culture, art and architecture and textiles and dress.  The morning session will focus particularly on royal patronage and material culture and the afternoon with examine changing representations of the maharajas. Speakers will include Barbara
Ramusack, Rosemary Crill, Susan Stronge and Karni Singh Jasol. 

£45, £36 concessions
Book online or call +44 (0)20 7942 2211

Programme
10.00 Registration and refreshments
10.30 Joseph Watson, Learning & Interpretation, V&A: Welcome 
10.40 Rosemary Crill, Senior Curator, Asian Department, V&A: The Stuff of Royalty: Textiles and Dress in Courtly India 
11.15 Susan Stronge, Senior Curator, Asian Department, V&A: The Court of Tipu Sultan
11.50 Deepika Ahlawat, Research Curator, Asian Department, V&A: Beds of Crystal and Chairs of Glass: Western Material Culture in India’s Palaces
12.25 Discussion and questions from the audience
12.40 Lunch (not provided)  
Opportunity to visit ‘Maharaja: the Splendour of India’s Royal Courts’
14.20 Divia Patel, Curator, Asian Department, V&A: Images of Power and the Power of Images: the Changing Representation of the Maharajas
14.55 Karni Singh Jasol, Director, Mehrangarh Museum, Jodhpur: Forts, Palaces, Museums: Re-presenting India’s Royal Heritage
15.30 Discussion and questions from the audience
15.45 Refreshments
16.15 Barbara N. Ramusack, Charles Phelps Taft Professor, University of Cincinnati: Indian Princes Then and Now: Politicians, Celebrities and Entrepreneurs
16.50 Panel Discussion on India’s Heritage Industry with
HH Maharaj Kumar Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar,
HH Rajkumari Padmaja Kumari Mewar,
Barbara Ramusack, Charles Phelps Taft Professor, University of Cincinatti,
Anna Jackson, Deputy Keeper, Asian Department, V&A and Curator of Maharaja: the Splendour of India’s Royal Courts,
Deepika Ahlawat, Research Curator, Asian Department, V&A
17.30 Close

 

Sustaining Identity 2

Contemporary Architecture
Thursday 26 November
Lecture Theatre
10.30-17.30

Join the debate about the role of architecture and its potential to sustain a sense of local identity, both in terms of cultural heritage and the conservation of the environment. Led by Juhani Pallasmaa, Sustaining Identity 2 will unite visionaries and practitioners from different generations, cultures and geographies to prove that people-centred space is still possible and desirable.

£45, £36 concessions
Book online or call +44 (0)20 7942 2211

Part of the V&A+RIBA Architecture Partnership and the RIBA Trust 'International Dialogues: Architecture and Climate Change' Programme.

Programme
Keynote speaker and curator:  Juhani Pallasmaa
 
Policy Makers / Urban Planners / Environmentalists:
Farrokh Derakhshani,  Director of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture
Lodovico Folin-Calabi, UNESCO World Heritage Centre
Jane da Mosto, Venice in Peril
 
Architects:
Charles Correa, India
Sean Godsell, Australia
Paul Brislin, Arup Associates, London
Jonathan Kirschenfeld, New York
Pezo von Ellrichshausen Architects, Chile
Iñaki Abalos, Spain
Gawie Fagan, South Africa

Moderator:
Jonathan Glancey, Architecture & Design Editor, The Guardian

 

Plaster and Plaster Casts

Materiality and Practice

Friday 12 & Saturday 13 March 2010
Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre
10.00-17.30

Plaster casts have received increasing scholarly attention over the last few years, above all in relation to their place in the history of collecting, issues of display, and the conservation of the plasters themselves. This conference will focus on issues of reception and artistic practice, positioning plaster and plaster casts in the wider context of recent sculpture research. For the first time it will bring together sculpture and architecture in the context of plaster. Led by Eckart Marchand (The Warburg Institute, London), Marjorie Trusted (Senior Curator of Sculpture, V&A) and Charles Hind (RIBA), speakers are drawn from Britain, the United States, Poland, France Germany and Switzerland.

£70, £60 concessions for both days,
£35, £30 concessions for one day,
£30, students for both days
Ticket price includes buffet lunch.

To book call +44 (0)20 7942 2211

Supported by The Henry Moore Foundation

Provisional Programme:
Friday, 12 March 2010

10.00 Registration Coffee
10.20 Mark Jones (Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum), Welcome
Session 1 Casting the Body
Chair: Eckart Marchand,The Warburg Institute
10.30 Genevieve Warwick, (Glasgow University),
Plaster Casts and Portrait Busts:  Bernini and the Death Mask
11.00 Victoria Gardner Coates, (University of Pennsylvania), Re-Casting Pompeii
11.30 Discussion
11.40 Ellery Foutch, University of Pennsylvania),
Embodying the Medium: The  Plaster Cast of Eugen Sandow
12.10 Mark Elliott, (University of Cambridge), Ethnographic Plaster Casts
12.40 Discussion
13.15 Lunch (provided)
Session 2 Makers and Uses
Chair: Helen Smailes (National Gallery of Scotland)
14.15 Charlotte Schreiter, (Humboldt University), Artists or Craftsmen?  'Formatori' in
 Sculptors’ Workshops and Art Manufactories in the 18th and early 19th Centuries
14.45 Joanna Lubos-Koziel, (University of Wroclaw), Plaster Casts in the Service of  Religion: plaster casts and other mould-made sculptures in catholic practice in the  second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th-century. 
15.15 Discussion
15.30 Coffee / Tea
Session 3 Plaster Casts and Classicism in the Nineteenth Century   
Chair: Marjorie Trusted (Victoria and Albert Museum)
16.00 Karen Lemmey, Metropolitan Museum, New York, Permanent in Plaster: A  Final Medium in Nineteenth-century American Sculpture 
16.30 Kate Nichols, University of Bristol,
Mechanical Reproduction, Mass Audiences and  Beautiful Manufacture
17.00 Discussion
17.30 Close

Saturday, 13 March 2010

10.00–10.15  Arrival
Session 3 Artists’ Practice, Modern and Contemporary
Chair: Petra Lange-Berndt (University College London)
10.15 Christoph Zuschlag, University of Koblenz-Landau, Plaster Casts in   Contemporary Art
10.45 Jennifer Way, University of North Texas, “To make my paint more   concrete”: Plaster as Painting’s Commodity Form in the Art of Claes   Oldenburg
11.15 Coffee / Tea
Session 4 Architecture and the Decorative Arts
Chair: Charles Hind (RIBA and Victoria and Albert Museum)
11.45 Claire Jones, University of York, Plaster as Historic Resource and Creative Medium  in Nineteenth-Century French Decorative Art
12.15  Francine Giese-Vögeli, University of Bern, Rafael Contreras Munoz and the  Plaster Casts of the Alhambra in Granada
12.45 Discussion
13.15 Lunch (provided)
14.15 Isabelle Flour, University Paris 1, Plaster Casts, Historicism and Eclecticism in  Architectural Practice in Britain, 1850-1900
14.45 Wallis Miller, University of Kentucky,
Plaster Casts and Modern Theory:  Exhibiting  Berlin Architecture in 1901
15.15 Coffee / Tea
Session 5 Plaster Casts and Other Reproductive Media
Chair: Charles Saumarez Smith (The Royal Academy, London)
15.45 Carolyn Yerkes, Columbia University, AParallel of Charles Errard’s  Architectural Engravings and Plaster Casts.
16.15 Stefanie Klamm, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Plurality of  Media: Uses of Plaster Casts in 19th-Century Classical Archaeology
16.30 General Discussion
17.15  Close

 

Call for papers - [Record] [Create]: Oral History in Art,Craft and Design

Friday  2 - Saturday 3 July  2010
2010 Oral History Society Annual Conference
In association with the V&A and National Life Stories at the
British Library

Oral history has become a significant methodology for understanding the contexts of art and design practices. This international conference will bring together the global community of those working with oral history in the fields of architecture, art, craft and design (incorporating fashion, product design, photography, and new media).

Increasing numbers of community projects are now exploring their histories through testimony-based art, craft and design activities. And with the growing use of web-based communication, designers, artists, historians and other arts-based researchers are also engaging with the problem of creating appropriate environments in which oral histories can be stored and disseminated to different audiences and users. The relationship between content and form is one that researchers in art and design are particularly well-placed to explore. Rather than privileging the authorial voice in the arts, the conference seeks to examine the meaning and function of oral history in creative practice. The conference will, therefore, focus on three major themes:History, Practice, and Interpretation.

History: The contribution of oral history to the documentation and preservation of creative practices; the creation of creative identities through oral history narratives; the interconnections between the individual practitioner and their wider cultural context; the narratives of creativity; the construction of alternative histories; memories of lost practices.

Practice: Creative practice using oral history and memory work; designers as mediators in oral history projects/works; ethical considerations in using individual memories for art/design work; the use of images as memory prompts; arts-based community oral history projects; oral history as visual narrative.

Interpretation: Oral history as producer of meaning; oral history and testimony in the museum and gallery; narrative research in the arts and oral history; oral history and arts education; the problem of oral history as biography; the border between orality, aurality, and visuality.

Proposals are invited of 200-250 words that address one of the three major themes of the conference for talks or presentations of 20 minutes, or panels of one hour. Proposals should clearly state how oral history has informed the project/work/research described, and how it will be used in the presentation. Please send to Belinda Waterman, [Record] [Create] conference administrator, email belinda@essex.ac.uk by the 30 of November 2009.

Partners:
Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London
National Life Stories at The British Library Sound Archive
University of the West of England, Bristol