Category: Research
New Release: Charles-Paul Landon
June 4 2025

Picture: mare et martin
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from the French publishers mare et martin that a new volume on the painter and art critic Charles-Paul Landon (1760-1826) has just been released (spotted via @mweilc). The publication, written by Katell Martineau, appears to focus on both his painterly and written works.
Funded PhDs to Study Classical Architecture at Cambridge
June 4 2025

Picture: cam.ac.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The University of Cambridge are inviting applications for two fully funded doctoral studentships to study Classical Architecture at the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture (CSCA).
According to their website:
The award(s) will be held in either the Department of History of Art or the Department of Architecture, which jointly form the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art. The projects will be supervised by one of: Dr Frank Salmon (CSCA Director); Assistant Director Dr Elizabeth Deans (CSCA Assistant Director); and Professor James Campbell.
The successful candidate(s) will have defined their own topics and questions, appropriate to the primary research material available and to the research interests, broadly defined, of one of the three specified supervisors (who should be named in the application), as well as to the CSCA mission statement.
Given the international range of classical architecture of the past 600 years, visual and archival research may involve travel and time spent abroad, for which official permission from the University to Work Away would be needed, in addition to the agreement of the Centre’s Director.
Applications must be in by 20th June 2025.
Good luck if you're applying!
New release: Beyond Adornment - Jewelry and Identity in Art
May 29 2025

Picture: yalebooks.co.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Yale Books and the J. Paul Getty Museum have this month released a new book on Beyond Adornment - Jewelry and Identity in Art. The volume was written by Yvonne J. Markowitz and Susanne Gänsicke.
Here's the blurb:
Artistic renderings of the human figure—in portraiture, sculpture, and other media—in a range of allegorical, historical, and religious images often showcase jewelry. The ornaments depicted in such designs offer an abundance of information that not only heightens our understanding of the subject but also provides insights into the imagination of the artist. Jewelry enhances our enjoyment of works of art because it is visually compelling, sensuous, and laden with an array of associations and symbolic meanings.
Bringing together spectacular and significant art objects depicting figures wearing sumptuous personal adornments that define who they are within the specific milieus in which they lived, this richly illustrated and accessible volume represents a novel, interdisciplinary approach to the ways in which jewelry can be studied and understood.
Upcoming Release: The Art Market and the Museum
May 28 2025

Picture: bloomsbury.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Bloomsbury will be publishing the interestingly titled The Art Market and the Museum: Institutional Collecting, Display and Patronage since the Mid-Nineteenth Century next month. The volume was edited by Frances Fowle and MaryKate Cleary.
According to the publisher's website:
This book considers how art market stakeholders, including art dealers, collectors and agents, have shaped museum collections and affected exhibition practices since the mid-nineteenth century. Based on new archival research and data analysis, it explores the role of dealers not only in selling directly to museums, but in influencing museum collecting priorities, as well as potential donors. It also examines the important but hitherto overlooked contribution of the female curator-agent.
The book is divided into three sections, which address the relationship between art dealers and museums, women as art agents and influencers, and the strategies of entrepreneurial collectors. Featuring contributions from a wide range of international specialists in the market for decorative arts and antiquities, as well as European modernism, The Art Market and the Museum explores the origins and development of the modern Western art market and the global art networks that operated not only in Paris, London and New York, but in cities such as Glasgow, Vienna, Melbourne and Kansas City. It is perfect reading for scholars and researchers on the history of the art market, museum studies and art history more broadly.
Curate Ottoman Collections in Qatar
May 28 2025

Picture: Qatar Museums
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Qatar Museums are hiring a Curator for Ottoman Lands.
According to their website:
Roles and responsibilities:
-Assist with day-to-day documentation and research of the collection
-Responsible for all curatorial matters relating to the Ottoman world.
-Contribute to (temporary and permanent) display and exhibition development.
-Handle public queries, Educational and Communication Division requests, and scholarly requests.
-Must be able to work within a team, be flexible and self-motivated. Liaise with museum conservators, registrars and other colleagues on a regular basis.
-Other activities as requested by the Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs.
Curiously, there is no salary or closing date indicated. Do get in touch if you've found this important information somewhere...
Good luck if you're applying!
Bader Collection Online
May 27 2025

Picture: Agnes Etherington Art Centre
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, that the Bader collection has been uploaded online. The entire collection is now searchable via the museum's website.
According to their website:
The Bader Collection is the strongest holding of Old Masters in any Canadian university art gallery, and the most comprehensive collection of authenticated paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn and his circle in any institution within Canada. Comprised of over 500 paintings, sculptures and works on paper that span the fourteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, the collection contributes fundamentally to the study and enjoyment of early modern European art in Canada and abroad.
A result of the highly discerning eye of Dr Alfred Bader (1924-2018), The Bader Collection has brought international stature and renown to Agnes’s collections.
Help with Research at Tate
May 21 2025

Picture: Tate
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Tate are looking to hire a Research Assistant (part time).
According to their website:
We are looking for a detail-oriented individual with excellent organisational skills to support the Managing Editor with the delivery of Tate’s peer-reviewed online journal, Tate Papers. Demonstrating excellent written and verbal communication skills as well as a broad knowledge of digital platforms, you will fact-check and copy-edit research texts and upload them to the Tate website.
You will also be responsible for updating the Tate Research webpages and supporting the Managing Editor to create and deliver content for social media and newsletters.
This role requires a meticulous individual who can effectively manage deadlines and is passionate about art, its history and sharing research online.
This part-time role comes with a salary of £15,764 per annum (FTE £31,527) and applications must be in by 27th May 2025.
Good luck if you're applying!
Reminder: Burlington Prize for Southern Netherlandish Art 1400-1800
May 20 2025

Picture: Burlington
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A reminder that the application deadline for the Burlington Magazine and the University of Cambridge's new Prize for Research on Southern Netherlandish Art 1400-1800 will be upon us soon.
A reminder of the details:
Established to inspire the development and publication of innovative object-based scholarship, the winning entrant will receive a prize of £1,000, with publication in The Burlington Magazine’s annual issue dedicated to Northern European Art, plus a one year print and digital subscription.
We seek previously unpublished essays of 1000–1500 words from early career scholars worldwide.
This is defined as within 15 years of their most recent post-graduate degree. Submissions should be in English and should include candidate’s CV, all as a single PDF.
Applications must be in by 1st September 2025.
V&A Doctoral Placements
May 20 2025

Picture: V&A
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London are advertising 14 doctoral placements which start in the autumn. According to their website 'V&A Doctoral Placements are only open to students currently studying on a funded PhD.'
Here are a list of the projects available:
-Cataloguing a Contemporary Music Archive
-Cataloguing Printed Scores and Libretti in the Bunnett Muir Musical Theatre Trust Archive
-Craft and Natural Materials in Exhibition Design
-Developing a Digital Research Repository for the V&A
-Developing Frameworks for Born-Digital and Hybrid Collections
-Henry Cole’s travel diaries: knowledge, acquisitions and networks
-Investigating Functional and Multi-Sensory Objects in the Young V&A Collection
-Ludwig Gruner: Art Advisor to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Cataloguing and contextualising a collection of drawings and photographs
-Methodologies of audience-led collections research with children, young people and families
-Provenance Research on Ethiopian Objects
-Provenance Research on Southeast Asian Art Collections at the V&A
-Provenance Research on the NAL’s Acquisition of German Books During the Nazi Era
-Surveying and Cataloguing Roger Fenton’s Photography Collection
-Zero Waste Approaches to Exhibition Making
New Ambassadors Book
May 16 2025

Picture: National Gallery Global
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Tudor historian and curator Tracy Borman has just released a new book in partnership with The National Gallery entitled Holbein: The Ambassadors (One Painting, One Story).
According to the blurb:
Holbein’s Ambassadors is one of the most famous paintings in the National Gallery. It is also one of the most intriguing. Laden with hidden symbols and mysteries, the work has been the subject of intense debate among historians during the five centuries since it was created.
Here Tracy Borman unpicks the secrets of this enigmatic artwork, painted during a turbulent time in English history as Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church in order to marry the young Anne Boleyn. From Holbein’s experiences as a German-Swiss émigré who rose to a position as the ‘King’s Painter’, to the two French ambassadors’ troubles at court, this book illuminates the fascinating story behind a masterpiece of the Tudor era.
Upcoming: Michel Dorigny (1616-1665) Monograph & Catalogue Raisonné
May 16 2025

Picture: Arthena
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from France that the publisher Arthena will be releasing a monograph and catalogue raisonné on the artist Michel Dorigny (1616-1665) in June. Known for being a student and collaborator of Simon Vouet, this volume by Damien Tellas will cover his life as a decorator and painter.
As is the custom with new catalogue raisonnés, this effort with earn Tellas a place in much coveted 'Heroes of Art History' section of this blog.
The Fitzwilliam Museum are Hiring!
May 13 2025

Picture: The Fiztwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge are hiring a Senior Curator: Historic & Modern Paintings.
According to the job description:
You will shape and deliver collections-based research, displays, public programming and curatorial work on these collections to support the Museum's Vision and Mission, the Research & Impact Strategy and the Business Plan. We particularly encourage approaches that consider the present-day and global relevance of these collections, and how communities connect with these objects and artworks. You will be encouraged to work collaboratively within the Fitzwilliam Museum and across the University of Cambridge.
The post-holder will be knowledgeable about, and have experience of working with Historic & Modern Paintings, have experience of exhibitions/displays, and be committed to developing new collection perspectives, including researching, teaching, exhibiting and publishing the work of diverse and underrecognised artists or cultures.
The job comes with a salary of £46,735-£59,139 and applications must be in by 1st June 2025.
Good luck if you're applying!
Manage Research at Tate
May 13 2025

Picture: Tate
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Tate are hiring a Research Convenor, Programmes and Publications (parental leave cover).
According to the job description:
We are looking for a talented person with strong experience in research management to lead our research team, during a period of parental leave. With strong communication skills, you will support the Director of Research and Interpretation in advancing Tate’s research aims over the next year.
The Research Convenor (parental leave cover) will lead a team of Special Project Researchers to ensure that research targets are met. You will also work alongside the Director to help shape a programme of research development and dissemination.
The job comes with a salary of £44,094 per annum and applications must be in by 20th May 2025.
Good luck if you're applying!
Getty Provenance Index Update ?
May 2 2025

Picture: https://www.getty.edu/research/provenance/
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News has arrived that the Getty Provenance Index, one of the most important tools in provenance research for the art trade, has been updated. Press reports are heralding the news that 12 million records are now available through the website.
I've had a quick play around with the new system and it appears overly complicated indeed (compared to the old one, at least). Perhaps it is time to get studying the user guide.
To take a quote from the 'Conceptual Introduction':
In its pre-Arches form, the Getty Provenance Index represented provenance information gathered from historic documents by replicating the tabular structure of the source material as flat-file records, meaning each entry was a single, independent row without links to other data points. In the remodeled Getty Provenance Index in Arches, those flat-file records have been transformed into a linked open data system. This means each entity is uniquely identified and connected to other relevant data using controlled vocabularies and semantic connections. This remodeling from relational to graph data transforms the implicit relationships recorded in a flat-file row into an explicit, relational web of entities that consolidates people, objects, places, and events into uniquely identified resources.
In Arches, Getty Provenance Index data is generated through events. Often, but not always, these events are related to historic transfers of ownership. These events create data that populates one of nine Resource Models used in the Provenance Index: Activity, Group, Person, Physical Object, Place, Provenance Activity, Set, Textual Work, and Visual Work. These models are based on the Linked.Art metadata application profile of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) reference model.
Right. I better start thinking in terms of 'events', I suppose.
Thoughts and experiences from AHN readers are always welcome!
Update - Bendor adds: WHAT THE HELL HAVE THEY DONE? True, I am not tech minded, but from my first look, Getty have taken a resource which was astoundingly helpful and easy to use, and made it impossible to use, and utterly bamboozling. For example, the old search function allowed you to easily search for items by all manner of categories, from previous owner to lot title. Now it seems impossible to do this. And the guides to help you figure it all out are, I'm afraid, fairly unintelligible. Please bring back the old system?
Burlington - Latest Issue
May 2 2025

Picture: burlington.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
This month's edition of The Burlington Magazine focuses on French Art.
Here's a list of the main articles featured within:
Rosalind Joy Savill (1951–2024) - By Stephen Duffy and Christopher Baker
A new border from Abbot Suger’s Saint-Denis - By Michael W. Cothren and Mary B. Shepard
Friendship tokens: Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s paintings for Madame de Pompadour - By Yuriko Jackall, John K. Delaney and Michael Swicklik
British press reaction to the London exhibitions of David, Lefèvre, Wicar and Lethière - By Humphrey Wine
Recasting and republicanising Millet’s horizons: Félicien Rops, Jean-François Raffaëlli and Jean-Charles Cazin - By Richard Thomson
Bravery, ingenuity and aerial post: an enamelled bowl by Joséphine-Arthurine Blot - By Daniëlle O. Kisluk-Grosheide
Antoine Caron and Italy - By David Ekserdjian
Getty Provenance Index Update (ctd.)
May 2 2025

Picture: Getty Provenance Index
Posted by Bendor Grosvenor
Dear AHNers - we have an art historical emergency on our hands. I'm afraid the newly updated Getty Provenance Index (which Adam first reported below) is a disaster. I've no doubt it was built with good intentions. Art historians everywhere will always applaud the Getty for investing so much in making the raw materials of art history available for everyone, for free. But the new Getty Index simply does not work.
I would say that we must hope the Getty can fix it, but it seems the new site has been years in the making. I'm told it will not be easy to change. Our best hope is that they retain the old Index as a standalone website. The old Index is still available here. If it ceases to be made available (and I gather the plan is to soon switch it off) then provenance research will go backwards by decades. The new website threatens not only to be a setback for regular provenance research, but restitution claims too.
Regular AHNers will I'm sure be familiar with the old site. As you can see from the image above, it was possible to search by multiple categories, including: artist, title, owner, date, auction house, and so on. You could find within seconds a specific painting from millions of entries, covering art sales over the last four hundred years. An entry would have the date of sale, auction house, often dimensions, all displayed easily. Sale data from 1933-45 was especially detailed, which, combined with other databases like LostArt.de made searching for potentially looted artworks more accessible than ever before.
Within the old Index system, you could also bring up the whole contents of a particular sale. The sale entry would often have a long note compiled by one of the Getty's amazing provenance researchers, giving further information about who was selling what, when and where.
Hardly any of this is now possible in the new Index. There is no equivalent way of searching by specific criteria, like former owners. Even when you find a painting, it is a struggle to find basic information about it, like when it was sold, or at which auction house. The research notes about the sales seem to have vanished. I've had some discussions among fellow art historians who have been trying to use it. None of us can get the results we used to. The new user guides are jargon heavy and hard to understand. So far, we cannot believe how much of a setback the new site represents, nor that the Getty has spent so long and so much on making the Index worse. (If someone from Getty wants to get in touch to show we are mistaken, please do!)
The old Getty Index was one of the most transformative art historical tools of the last two decades. Anyone, anywhere could do provenance research which would either have taken months in an archive, or was simply impossible before. Here's a couple of examples from my own work.
Sometimes, the Getty Index made breakthroughs extraordinarily easy. For example, when the above early 17th painting of three girls holding fans came up for sale at auction in 2008, the sitters were unidentified. I simply put the word 'fan' into the Getty's title box, and amongst the 133 paintings sold with that word in the title, soon found that the painting at auction had been sold in 1824 with comprehensive details about the sitters' names. Other research proved that this evidence was correct, and that the sitters were indeed three sisters from the Egerton family.
Of course, provenance research is rarely so easy! But without the Getty Index, it would have been almost impossible to find in this case. Sadly, I have tried to replicate the 'fan' search on the new Index site, with no success. You cannot search among titles, indeed there appears to be no title category at all. There are a mystifying number of other categories, like 'identifier for object', but few usable art historical terms. Moreover, you cannot bring up a large number of items to search through at a time, like those 133 paintings with the word 'fan' in the title. The most I can get is 5 results at a time, and wading through the results is very laborious.
Another example. When I was investigating a painting of a mystery bridge in Derby Museum for Britain's Lost Masterpieces for the BBC, I was able to find on the Getty Index an entry for a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby of the Ponte Nomentano.
The entry onthe old Getty Index told me the painting was in Wright's posthumous sale, and was unfinished. It was a match for our painting. There were also links to digital scans of the original catalogues in other databases.
It is possible to find this painting on the new Index site, if you put in 'Nomentano', but even then it is hard to find the artist's name, let alone further information about the sale, and so on. The results page - with headings like 'Object Used in Data Assignment' - suggests that the new Index has been designed more with 'data' in mind than art history.
All of us who have worked on provenance research are enormously grateful for all the work the Getty and its scholars have done to support our field. If we lose the Getty Provenance Index as it was, it will be an extraordinary step backwards for art history, and all the work the Getty has done over almost 40 years will be diminished, or even redundant. What can be done? We must somehow get the Getty to agree for this old site to remain online. If you can, please email the Getty at ProvenanceIndex@getty.edu to make the case for this.
Update - a reader writes:
I suppose to be fair one should try to work with the new format. It may be possible to get it to do what the old one did with a little persistence ...
The same reader writes short while later:
I’m wrong. It is rubbish.
Update II:
A reader with experience of construction art historical databases writes:
'Linked data' [the idea behind the Getty's new database] was the next big thing in the internet about 15 years ago [...] The idea is simple: to offer a highly structured and logical scheme into which every single bit of historical data can fit. The vision then was that the internet was going to become one vast repository of information that was linked logically.
I'm really surprised to see that this approach has survived. It's fine when you have lots of data but in fact the Getty provenance index is quite 'thin' - it has tons and tons and tons of lists of pictures, and (ok there is a bit more, but) that's about it. So when you create a really fancy structure, all the user really sees is the structure - you can't really see the small amount of data within, because it's hidden by all the scaffolding surrounding it. They haven't done any user testing among people who actually use the database for art history - or if they did, they just ignored it. I have no idea, for example, how to get a catalogue view. Looking up an artist and trying to get a simple list of everything he did - that doesn't seem to be possible. Nowhere do we learn which bits of data are the direct primary source and which are extrapolations.
This rings true with my attempts to use the new database so far. Most of what I see is the structure.
Funded PhD to study 'The Non-Elite Painting and Decorating Trade in Britain 1600-1800'
April 30 2025

Picture: jobs.cam.ac.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The University of Cambridge and the Museum of the Home are welcoming applications for a fully-funded AHRC studentship to study the very interesting subject of The Non-Elite Painting and Decorating Trade in Britain 1600-1800.
According to the advert:
This PhD will explore the lives and careers of people who painted and decorated working-class and lower-middle-class homes and lodging houses in the early modern period. The project will involve extensive archival research in numerous British collections. The successful candidate will also be involved in the museum's upcoming redisplay of the early modern period rooms.
This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Matthew Walker (Assistant Professor in Architectural History), Dr Frank Salmon (Associate Professor in the History of Art) at Cambridge; and, at the Museum of the Home, by Marina Maniadaki (Exhibitions and Project Manager) and Louis Platman (Curator and Research Manager).
The studentship comes with an annual maintenance grant to cover living costs (£19,237 stipend + £600 CDA allowance pa at current rates) and applications must be in by 25th May 2025.
Good luck if you're applying!
The 'Necropastoral' Landscapes of Frans Post
April 30 2025

Picture: University of York
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The University of York, who are hosting the aforementioned Global Baroque Conference later this summer, have released the title of one of their key note addresses. Necropastoral Worldscapes in Dutch-occupied Brazil will be delivered by Angela Vanhaelen, Professor of Art History at McGill University, Montreal, on 10th July 2025.
According to the university's website:
This lecture examines a series of plantation landscapes made in seventeenth-century colonial Dutch Brazil. Taking up the concept of the necropastoral, this paper investigates how these seemingly idyllic scenes indicate the enormous human and environmental degradation perpetuated by the forcible extraction of labour from enslaved African people and of sugar from the Atlantic Forest.
In a related note, I remember coming across this wall text for a Frans Post (on loan from a museum in Brazil) exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. in 2022:
During the period of the Dutch colonization of a portion of northeastern Brazil, Post painted the first representations of the “New World.” After his return to the Netherlands, he continued painting Brazilian themes but with fantastical elements, as seen in Landscape with Anteater, in which an anteater and an armadillo appear larger than life. Even more fanciful than the oversized creatures is the painting’s depiction of Black people living in relative harmony with Indigenous people and European colonists, giving the false impression that the violence and conflicts of slavery and colonialism did not exist there.
The future of Frans Post appreciation (or a growing lack of it) is yet to be seen.
Southern Netherlandish Art Programme Summer School 2025
April 28 2025

Picture: University of Cambridge & Rubenshuis
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News has arrived that the History of Art Department at the University of Cambridge and the Rubenshuis in Antwerp are inviting applications for a Summer School for Southern Netherlandish Art this July.
According to the document supplied (click here for more details):
This is a call for applications to a Summer School in Antwerp/Brussels and Cambridge/London from Tuesday 1st July to Thursday 10th July.
The focus will be Southern Netherlandish Art, 1500-1700. The summer school is organised by the History of Art Department and Trinity Hall, the University of Cambridge, and the Rubenshuis, Antwerp. The programme is kindly funded by the Government of Flanders. [...]
The programme aims to bring together 12 promising emerging researchers to explore Southern Netherlandish Art through lectures by experts in the field and guided tours of museum collections, churches, and private collections in stately homes. The summer course will present a unique opportunity to expand the participants' networks in Belgium and England.
Applications must be in by 12th May 2025.
Free Lecture: Places of the Mind, Portraits of the Soul: Drawings by Jonathan Richardson and John Constable
April 25 2025

Picture: YCBA
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News has arrived that this year's Milein Cosman Lecture at the Slade School of Fine Art in London will be entitled Places of the Mind, Portraits of the Soul: Drawings by Jonathan Richardson and John Constable. The free-to-attend talk will be presented by the art historian and scholar Dr Susan Owens.
According to the talk's blurb:
Born a little over a hundred years apart, Jonathan Richardson (1667-1745) and John Constable (1776-1837) both used drawing to pursue projects of intense introspection. Richardson made a sequence of self-portraits in which he explored the process of his own ageing with pathos and wit, while Constable parted from his family home in Suffolk with a series of intensely emotional drawings of significant places. In this lecture, Dr Owens will look at drawing’s role in soul-searching and taking stock.
The talk will take place in London on 6th May 2025 and more booking details can be found through the link above.