PROGRAMME

30 May

Claudia Swan, Washington University in St. Louis

Lecture followed by discussion

Featherwork in the Kunstkammer

In this presentation of work-in-progress, Claudia Swan will offer observations on the presence and role of featherwork artefacts, feathers, and other ornithological specimens in Kunstkammer collections from the early 16th century through to the early 18th century.

Claudia Swan is the Mark S. Weil Professor of Art History and Archaeology in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis, and a scholar of early modern northern European visual culture with a concentration in the Dutch world. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has published articles and book chapters on early modern art, science, and collecting; on the imagination; on Dutch visual culture; and on mediated goods, Dutch trade, and piracy. Recent publications include a special issue of NUNCIUS on early modern geometries; a study of Dutch liefhebberij as a market sensibility, her monograph Rarities of these Lands: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Dutch Republic (Princeton University Press, 2021), and the co-authored
Conchophilia: Shells, Art, and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2021).

June

Recorded guided tour, followed by q&a and discussion

July

Three ten-minute presentations followed by discussion