Abstracts
The abstracts are subjected to changes.
FRIDAY - February 13th
Session 1 |
Embodied Processes: Reconstruction, Mediation, and Experimental Methods |
Emily Hirsch (Brown University) Art history |
Lucas Faydherbe and the Creativity of Clay in Rubens’ Workshop For just over three years, between 1637 and 1640, the Flemish sculptor Lucas Faydherbe (1617-1697) worked in the studio of the painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). As Rubens described of Faydherbe’s training under his aegis: “[he] has lived with me for more than three years and has been my pupil, and that, through the relationship that exists between our arts of painting and sculpture, he has been able, by my instruction and his own diligence and good disposition, to make great progress in his art.” The relationship of Faydherbe’s sculpture to painting is a recurring motif in the literature on Faydherbe, primarily due to this formative time spent in the Rubens workshop, but observations of Faydherbe’s ‘painterly’ style in sculpture do little to shed light on the sculptor’s actual education and artistic practice as it developed under Rubens. Focusing especially on Lucas Faydherbe’s ivory relief Dance of Children with the God Pan (c. 1639, Madrid) and its terracotta model (c. 1639, Brussels), this paper examines the development of the sculptor’s art both materially and theoretically during his time in the Rubens studio, and the central role of clay in this development. I offer a critical reassessment of the function of the Brussels terracotta, which has historically been thought to be made after the ivory rather than before, a misconception born from prioritizing the painterly attitude of the reliefs over a material-centric logic. Neither rote imitation nor perfunctory act, Faydherbe’s translation and transformation of a composition by Rubens from paint to clay to ivory highlights how modelling in clay emerged as a fundamental step in the sculptor’s creative process. |
Devin Jernigan (Yale University) Architecture |
Unraveling the Canvas: Interdisciplinary Methods for Recovering Lost Tent-Making Knowledge This paper examines the manufacturing techniques of early 20th-century canvas round oblong circus tents through the lens of art history, material culture studies, architectural history, and digital humanities. It argues that recovering artisanal knowledge requires combining traditional archival research with hands-on making practices and digital modeling to address the historical absence of documentation. Canvas tent manufacturing serves as a compelling case study of concealed technical knowledge. Tentmakers zealously protected their construction methods as proprietary secrets, resulting in a decline of these techniques as the industry waned. To reveal this making process, the research employs three complementary methodologies: First, newly discovered archival journals from a master tentmaker offer unprecedented insights into historical construction sequences and material choices. Second, embodied research was conducted by constructing a tent, uncovering tacit knowledge tied to the hands-on making process—such as the tension of rope and canvas, the logic behind seam and rope placement, and the geometric relationship between the flat pattern and the erected tent. Third, generative digital models were created using computational geometry, drawing on limited published sources, archival materials, and a background in architecture and textile construction to verify and fill gaps in historical drawings. This multifaceted approach demonstrates that tent construction required a sophisticated understanding of structural engineering, textile behavior, and geometry, elevating the practice from mere craft to a nuanced form of architectural thinking. The research highlights how tentmakers operated at the intersection of engineering and artisanship, utilizing empirical material knowledge to create portable architecture. This methodology can inform other scholars and practitioners about recovering lost technical practices across disciplines, spanning the humanities and science fields, especially where traditional documentation is lacking. This work contributes to ongoing discussions on embodied knowledge, trade secrecy, and the role of materials in shaping cultural practices. |
Katerina Bong (University of Toronto) Architecture |
Soil as Active Material in Early Modern Ferrara |
Anna Riley (Harvard University) History of Science |
Quartz Pebbles and Plant Ash: Cinematic Salvage in Herat From the 1960s to the present, stories have circulated about the famous blue glass made in Herat, Afghanistan. Of these, one story has been particularly durable, devised by American material scientist Robert Brill (1929–2021). Upon first witnessing the work of Herati glassmakers during a Smithsonian-funded expedition in 1968, Brill posited that their techniques were the last remaining “vestiges” of ancient Mesopotamian traditions. They made their glass from scratch using a combination of quartz pebbles and a plant ash called “ishgar.” Brill’s hypothesis coincided with contemporary debates over new translations of cuneiform glassmaking instructions and new archaeological excavations of ancient glass furnaces. Motivated to salvage this artistic tradition before it was lost, Brill made a documentary called “The Glassmakers of Herat” (1979). The film’s familiar storyline was shaped by romantic ideas of the authenticity of traditional handicrafts combined with anxiety about potential cultural loss as a result of oncoming modernity. Through the examination of expedition reports, scholarly texts, and objects themselves, this paper analyzes the making of the film as part of an earlier generation of scientific debate that continues to shape the perceived value and authenticity of Herati glass in the present. In uncovering the unlikely story and consequences of this film, this paper traces an intersection between the history of material science, salvage anthropology, and the study of craft practice outside of the Global North. |
Session 2 |
The Chemistry of Art: Scientific Approaches to Artistic Production |
Victoria Pfeifer (Louisiana State University) Art History |
Poisonous Pigments in Medieval Painting In the 1970s during archaeological work in Florence’s Duomo, the bones of a man, who died in the fourteenth century, were uncovered. For 30 years, the bones remain unidentified until Dr. Francesco Mallegni of the University of Pisa and Palermo analyzed them. He made an astonishing discovery: the bones belonged to the painter Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267-1337), identified by the high levels of lead in his body. 1 Whether the body is Giotto’s or not, the chemical analysis of the skeleton tells us much about the poisonous pigments that artists used in medieval Italy. I will discuss how these substances found their way into artists like Giotto, looking at the chemical components of some of the most toxic pigments, like lead white, vermillion, and orpiment and realgar. I will draw on the writing of Giotto’s follower, Cennino Cennini (c. 1360-1427), and discuss which pigments he knew were poisonous and which he didn’t. My hypothesis is that the lead- and mercury-based pigments, which in small doses poison only over a long period of time, despite being lethal, were too slow acting for their effects to be noticed. However, arsenic-based pigments could kill or injure almost instantaneously. The medieval literature cautions against using these pigments, which were recognized as toxic. This paper will also explore how these poisons related to the structure of artists’ workshops; younger apprentices grinding these pigments were more likely to suffer from the deleterious effects of the poisons. Finally, I look briefly at the economics of the pigment trade: what alternatives were available and why weren’t they in use? This paper focuses notably on the connections between art history, materiality, and chemistry. It also uses a Marxist lens to discuss the connections between poison and economy |
Olivia Massey (Cornell University) Archaeology |
Pigments and Prestige: Tracing Economic and Material Networks in the Production of Roman Wall Paintings at the Vacone Villa Pigments have played a central role in the decoration of public and private spaces throughout the Roman period, reflecting not only wealth and prestige, but also social attitudes and broader cultural practices at the time. While scholarship has long focused on the wall paintings themselves, examining socio-cultural aspects, decorative schemes, and stylistic evolution, recent research has begun to address the materials involved. This study uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine how scientific analysis can aid in our reconstruction of the past economic and material networks behind the production of wall paintings, focusing on the materiality of pigments, their symbolism, and value. Using X-ray fluorescence (XRF), a non-destructive analytical method, this research identifies the elemental composition of pigments used at the Roman villa of Vacone, located in the Sabina region of Italy. By identifying the material composition of pigments, I am able to differentiate between their quality and associated cost, examining aspects of intention and decision-making and what this says about the broader wealth of the villa. This analysis draws on ancient texts and previous scholarship to understand the value and utility of pigments, and how their visual impact was tied to their economic worth. Moreover, this study reveals how access to exclusive pigments reflected the villa’s economic standing and the social status of its owner. Ultimately, this research underscores the significant investments involved in the production of Roman wall paintings, highlighting the use of pigments. |
Han-Chun (Joanna) Hsieh National Taiwan University) Art History |
Reinventing the Pink Glaze: Experiment, Knowledge, and Material Modernity in Japanese Ceramics and Its East Asian Diffusion, 1880s-1940s This paper examines the modernization of Japan’s ceramic industry through the lens of a particular color—pink—renowned for its reliance on gold as a colorant and its technical sophistication. Treating the pink glaze as both a material and epistemic object, the study investigates how artisans, scientists, and state institutions collectively transformed the technological and intellectual foundations of ceramic production from the Meiji to early Shōwa era (1880s–1940s). It further considers how Japan’s pursuit of industrial modernity and its research into glaze technology circulated across East Asia through the reinvention of the pink glaze recipe. Using scientific analysis (pXRF and Raman spectroscopy), this research examines representative pink-glazed samples from the period to verify their pigment compositions. It provides the first material confirmation that Shoenji—a late-nineteenth-century Arita innovation introduced through the arrival of German technician G. Wagener (1831–1892) and his glaze experiments—is indeed gold-based. Archival records further indicate that by 1937, the Kyoto Ceramic Testing Institute developed manganese–alumina pinks as cost-effective substitutes for gold, marking a key material and ideological turn, from artisanal luxury to industrial efficiency. Analyses of wartime tableware confirm the large-scale adoption of this Mn–Al formulation, while similar compositions identified in Korean and postwar Taiwanese ceramics reveal the diffusion of Japanese glaze research across East Asia. By combining material science with art-historical inquiry and setting pink as a specific analytical parameter, this study moves from the material of pink glaze to its materiality. It offers scholars and museum conservation teams a new approach to reading modern Japanese ceramics—particularly those employing pink glazes—through the interrelations of color, material technology, and social agency. |
Jasper Montgomery (Queen’s University) Conservation Science |
Searching for the Spherulite: Controlling Emerald Green Morphology using Historic Recipes Emerald green, or copper (II) acetoarsenite, was a brilliant green pigment widely used by French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists until the introduction of equally vibrant non- toxic alternatives in the 1930s. Many late 19th and early 20th century oil paintings containing emerald green have since exhibited color alteration, prompting extensive research into its degradation pathways. These studies often rely on paint reconstructions yet are limited by the scarcity of authentic historic pigment samples, which may not resemble emerald green used in the painting to be reconstructed. While emerald green can be synthesized using modern materials, reproducing historically accurate particle morphology requires careful selection of synthesis conditions. This study examines the influence of historical preparation methods (1834–1965) on particle size and morphology of emerald green. By varying temperature, reactant concentration, and mechanical agitation particle sizes ranging from 3 to 20 μm were achieved, with crystal forms spanning plate-like, needle-like, and spherulitic morphologies. Synthesized samples were characterized with attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), polarized light microscopy (PLM), fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy (FORS), and scanning electron microscopy coupled to energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX). The results provide practical guidance for tailoring synthesized emerald green to match morphologies observed in real-world paintings, expand upon the limited information provided in historic recipes, and establish a foundation for art historical investigations into pigment manufacture and artist supply networks. |
SATURDAY - February 14th
Session 3 |
Peripheral Practices and Materials: The Un(der)valued in Art History and Making |
Sarah Bahm (Syracuse University) Art history |
Paracelsus and the Four Evangelists: Medici Porcelain and the Chemical Arts at the Casino di San Marco. In the 1570s and 1580s, Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici (r. 1574-1587) oversaw the attempted production of hard-paste porcelain at the Casino di San Marco in Florence, a palazzo which housed the duke’s artistic and scientific workshops. The production of porcelain under the Medici grand dukes has drawn the attention of art historians, historians of science, and conservators. At the center of this interdisciplinary dialogue lies the materiality of Medici soft-paste porcelain, celebrated as the first successful European attempt at porcelain production and criticized for its inferior chemical makeup as compared to the Chinese hard-paste porcelain it was intended to emulate. The rare surviving examples of Medici porcelain prompt unanswered questions about how early modern viewers understood both the raw materials and processes of making porcelain, the (super)natural qualities that porcelain possessed once fired, and the authenticity of Medici porcelain as “real” porcelain. This study addresses the materiality of Medici porcelain through Marco Beretta’s interdisciplinary framework of the “chemical arts,” which emphasizes the relationship between the applied arts (such as goldsmithing, glassmaking, and pharmacy) and the experimental sciences. This paper then argues for the first time that elite, educated guests to the Casino di San Marco would have viewed the materiality, modes of representation, and iconography of Medici porcelain as communicative of the transformative processes of Paracelsian alchemy. It demonstrates this through a close examination of the surviving three out of an original set of four Medici porcelain basins depicting the Evangelists in the center medallion (Fig. 1-3). Ultimately, this paper suggests that an elite visitor to the Casino di San Marco would have understood these basins at the intersection of ceramics and alchemy, revealing the permeable borders between the visual and chemical arts in the early modern period. |
Ruth Bryant (Utrecht University) Art History |
Transforming Baleen: Waste, Recycling, and Artistic Innovation in Seventeenth-Century Netherlands Over the course of the seventeenth century, fleets of Dutch whaling ships traveled to the Svalbard Archipelago, with the aim of rendering whale blubber to be boiled into oil (traanoile) to the demanding European market— a pursuit that brought them significant material and financial gain. During this period, Dutch whalers hunted and slaughtered an estimated 80,000 Bowhead (Balaena mysticetus) and Right (Eubalaena glacialis) whales, far surpassing their fellow European competitors. The thick blubber of the Bowhead and Right whale only constitute a small part of their bodies; instead, this thesis focuses specifically on baleen, or whalebone, the continuously-growing, keratin-based tissue that hangs from the upper jaw of non-tooth whales. Comparatively to oil, baleen was dismissed as a byproduct of little immediate value and limited commercial use. This study turns to the artistic transformation of baleen in the early to mid-seventeenth century by Netherlandish decorative artist Herman Doomer. Taking Doomer’s Spiegellist (mirror frame, 1640-1655) as a case study, this research traces baleen’s material biography from waste to domestic luxury. By adopting and refining a baleen-pressing technique, Doomer reimagined a marginal material into a striking example of Dutch Golden Age craftsmanship. His work invites us to question the material hierarchies and the place of low-value materials within the seventeenth-century Netherlandish decorative arts; to consider baleen’s artistic potential as a waste material tied to mimesis, substitution, and the exotic; and reflect on how its aestheticization conceals the environmental violence of its origins. Taken together, these aspects show how Herman Doomer’s conversion of baleen constitutes as a form of recycling—thereby positioning his work as a form of early modern “waste art”. By linking material culture with ecocritical and waste theories, this study demonstrates how art historical, object-based research can intersect with environmental humanities to reveal the entangled histories of craft, ecology, and economy. |
Jo Klevdal (UNC Chapel Hill) English and Comparative Literature |
“One Woman’s Necessity to Make a Living”: Universal Limited Art Editions and the Poetic Print In 1957 Tatyana Grosman, a Russian-Jewish émigré, founded Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), a fine-art lithography press which she ran out of her garage in Long Island. Using lithography stones her neighbors had found under their driveway and a press she bought for $15, Grosman worked to revive the art of lithography in the U.S. and endeavored to foster collaborations between authors and artists. Despite these humble beginnings, ULAE (which is still running today) boasts an impressive guest list. Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Grace Hartigan, Jim Dine, and Larry Rivers all made prints under Grosman’s guidance. To date, scholarship has yet to seriously consider ULAE in its own right. Beyond the brief history that accompanies Esther Sparks’ 1989 catalog, ULAE is often either a historical footnote of another artist’s oeuvre (Kimberly J Nichols et al’s “Preserving Process: Conservation of a Helen Frankenthaler Maquette for Card”) or part of a larger survey on print culture (Rachel Vogel’s "Leveraging the Limited Edition”). Treating ULAE as a footnote obscures the collaborative network, material production and commercial realities behind these publications. This paper reads ULAE as a vital site for artistic collaboration between authors and artists as well as a commercial endeavor that strove to provide artists (and Grosman) with a stream of revenue beyond gallery and museum sales.This talk will focus on processes behind ULAE’s first book, the 1960 collaboration between the poet Frank O’Hara and Larry Rivers. I argue that Stones positions poetry as fine art (read: limited, rare, material) rather than an infinitely reproducible text. In so doing, it focuses on the making of poetry, and the material, social reality of that making in relation to the visual arts. This project thus recontextualizes ULAE within literary history and frustrates the division between commercial and “high” art. |
Wushuang Tong (University of Edinburgh) Art Practice |
Modeling Life: Synthetic Clay between Art and the Life Sciences This paper examines how synthetic polymer-based clay (Super Sculpey), a material often associated with craft or hobbyist practice rather than “serious” art production, can operate as a medium of material intelligence in art–science collaboration. Through two sci-art projects developed with neuroscientists and reproductive scientists, I explore the ways in which this low-cost, tactile, and accessible substance reshapes the relationship between artistic intuition and scientific visualization. In Uterus. Art × Science (Science Museum London), a collaborative installation I created with aneuroscientist at King’s College London—supported by the Wellcome EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Biomedical Engineering—I employed polymer clay to visualize the influence of maternal mental and physical health on fetal brain development. In my ongoing project with the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Reproduction and the Babraham Institute, polymer clay becomes the structural basis of Pre-implantation Development, a maze-like reflection on early embryogenesis that invites empathetic engagement with IVF and the process of life’s beginnings. By tracing these works’ emergence within the shared “lab–studio” space, I argue that such minor media challenge hierarchies of artistic labor and material value while offering safe, flexible, and accessible modes of making—qualities that became personally significant during a period of pregnancy, when working with polymer clay provided both a physical and emotional continuity in my practice. This material has also proved vital for artists working in domestic or maternity contexts, or navigating health and life circumstances that restrict access to professional studios or materials. Bridging the humanities and STEM disciplines, this paper suggests that overlooked materials can foster new ways of thinking about care, collaboration, and creation, while opening accessible pathways for public engagement with the material and conceptual processes of science. |
Session 4 |
Digital Traces: Material Programming Across New Technologies |
Iris Bednarski (McGill University) and Gillian Wagenaar (University of Waterloo) Art history and history |
Back to the Drawing Board: Alternative Conservation and Digital Restoration of a French Book of Hours This summer, the DRAGEN Lab at St. Jerome’s University acquired through their rare books collection a French book of hours. The early-sixteenth century manuscript, replete with a delicate Gothic script, floral marginalia, and shimmering illuminations, is severely damaged. Water ruin has caused ink to smear and vellum to warp, while several pages are missing, presumably cut out by past owners for sale. This research presentation explores alternative conservation and digital restoration methods through the damaged book of hours. It tracks a collaboration between a medieval art historian and an historian-digital artist to consider how interdisciplinary partnerships and the digital humanities foster new avenues of art preservation. First, we situate through technical analysis and textual study the manuscript’s production in the late medieval/early Renaissance town of Tours. We then assemble a corpus of contemporaneous manuscripts from the region similar in composition and style. Finally, with this comparanda and the surviving underdrawings as a guide, we produce using Adobe Photoshop, Procreate, and Photopea restored images of the damaged pages and illuminations. Through this collaborative process, we model a creative alternative to increasingly popular machine learning based restoration tools in the art world. Such an approach underlines important questions of labour and authorship central to contemporary discussion surrounding the preservation of premodern and early modern material culture. |
Ting-Li Fina Chu (Taipei National University of the Arts) Museum Studies |
Curating the Immaterial: Evolving Approaches to Collecting New Media Art at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts This paper examines how the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA) has negotiated the challenges of materiality in collecting and exhibiting new media art since the early 2000s. While the museum’s early collecting logic centered on tangible objects—paintings, sculptures, and prints—the emergence of digital, interactive, and time-based media has compelled a fundamental rethinking of what constitutes an “artwork” and its material presence. Through an inquiry into how NTMoFA acquires, documents, and displays such works, this study explores the museum’s evolving strategies of preservation and presentation in response to technological change and institutional critique. Drawing on archival materials, acquisition records, and curator interviews, it traces the gradual shift in NTMoFA’s collecting policies—from emphasizing physical permanence to managing processes, interfaces, and audience Experience. By interrogating the material infrastructures behind digital preservation, this study redefines materiality as process rather than substance. It argues that NTMoFA’s engagement with new media art represents not only a practical challenge but also a conceptual expansion of collecting itself. Situating the museum within broader global discourses on digital materiality and the “immaterial” turn in contemporary art, it reveals how institutional procedures—maintenance protocols, documentation, and artist collaboration—mediate the ontology of artworks. By focusing on this Taiwanese case, the paper contributes to interdisciplinary discussions in art history, conservation, and museum studies, showing how institutions in non-Western contexts redefine materiality under technological and cultural globalization. It invites dialogue among scholars and practitioners concerned with the afterlives of digital artworks, offering a framework for understanding how conservation practice, institutional policy, and artistic process intersect in shaping contemporary material culture. Ultimately, it asks what it means for a national museum to “collect” the intangible, and how such practices reshape both the making and preservation of art. |
Hanna McNulty (Durham university) Archaeology |
Mammoths and Makers: Exploring Authorship and Artistic Identity in Gönnersdorf Mammoth Engravings (Rhineland, Germany ~15,800 BP) This paper examines the technical and stylistic traces of artistic creation in the engraved mammoth depictions from the Magdalenian site of Gönnersdorf (Germany, ca. 15,000 BP). While female and horse plaquettes from Gönnersdorf have received considerable study, the mammoth engravings remain largely unexplored. No research has yet examined the physical act of engraving, including tool interactions, handedness, and the individual preferences that shaped each depiction. This study uses Digital Surf MountainsMap, a software originally developed for surface metrology in engineering, to analyse high-resolution 3D scans of the engraved slate plaquettes. It identifies tool movements and micro-variations in incision depth, angle, and directionality. These subtle features, often invisible to the naked eye, reveal patterns of hand preference and engraving sequence that may distinguish individual makers. When combined with close stylistic analysis, examining consistencies in proportion ratios and style idiosyncrasies, this data allows the identification of recurring technical and aesthetic habits. The study has produced a preliminary list of probable individual engravers, each characterised by distinctive stylistic and technical preferences. By focusing on the physical and technical aspects of engraving, this research offers a new approach to understanding authorship in Palaeolithic art, grounded in the gestures and techniques that shaped each image. Ultimately, it demonstrates how digital surface analysis can bridge archaeology and art history, reminding us of the human presence in Palaeolithic art. |
Quanyi Zhao (University of Wisconsin) Arts |
Re-Materializing Intangible Heritage: AI Mediation and the Living Craft of Lacquered Leather Trunk Making This paper explores how artificial intelligence can mediate the re-materialization of intangible craft heritage through a case study of the Fuzhou lacquered leather trunk, a traditional Chinese craft that embodies the convergence of material knowledge, embodied practice, and cultural symbolism. Drawing on fieldwork with master artisan He Wei, I analyze how the craft’s layered processes—lacquering, leather softening, and polishing— encode embodied gestures and sensory knowledge that have been historically transmitted through apprenticeship. Building upon this material and ethnographic foundation, I introduce the concept of the “Virtual Heritage Bearer (VHB)”, an AI-mediated avatar designed to visualize and preserve the performative dimensions of craftsmanship. At this stage, the VHB exists as a conceptual prototype rather than a fully functional system; it does not yet include real-time motion or direct interaction between the virtual avatar and human users. Nevertheless, this framework opens up new ways to document and reimagine endangered craft knowledge in digital form, bridging art history, digital humanities, and conservation studies. Many forms of intangible cultural heritage lack comprehensive documentation such as videos or step-by-step process records, leaving valuable embodied knowledge at risk of disappearance. This project seeks to digitally preserve and reanimate such endangered craft practices, ensuring that these invaluable legacies of human creativity can be transmitted to future generations. By examining how AI systems can emulate and reinterpret the tactile, visual, and affective dimensions of traditional making, this study argues for a renewed understanding of materiality—not as a static property of matter, but as a dynamic process of cultural translation and sensory knowledge preservation. The research thus contributes to broader interdisciplinary discussions about the future of heritage transmission, the aesthetics of digital materiality, and the ethical implications of algorithmic mediation in cultural preservation. |
