22 March 2019 | Conference Researcher meets Curator Maastricht, NL

Paper Presentation:

Jamilla Notebaard & Dulce da Rocha Gonçalves:
A “biography-oriented” approach to researching art history in academic and public illustrated lectures in the Netherlands.

Conference organized by Stichting Academisch Erfgoed (SAE).

The full program can be accessed here.

Abstract:

Our research project into the use of the magic lantern as a tool for mediated science communication in the Netherlands (1880-1940) can be considered as the writing of the “biography” of the role of the magic lantern in knowledge transfer within two particular settings: the academic and the public lecture. The starting point of our research is the case of Willem Vogelsang (1875-1954), the first professor of Art History in the Netherlands. This case is particularly well documented, although the archival material is not concentrated in one specific archive (physical or digital; personal, academic or public). Our sources consist of newspaper advertisements and articles, educational annual reports, personal notes, photographs, speeches, drawings and, pivotal to our research, a large collection of lantern slides. These sources, their variety in format as well as in content, enable us to reconstruct the actual and broad context in which Vogelsang was using the magic lantern as a tool in transferring scientific art historical knowledge. As such, the use of a “biography-oriented” research approach allows us to start developing our wider and divergent research angles: the mapping of the stakeholders involved in the organization of illustrated public lectures about art history; and the role of the photographic slide in the formation of art history as a science.