Flemish and European tapestry played a pivotal role in the art, liturgy, and propaganda of the courts and churches of late medieval, renaissance and baroque Europe. Yet by the late nineteenth century, when art history was developing as a discipline, tapestry was ranked among the lesser, so-called decorative arts. As a result the medium was virtually written out of the history of art, at best relegated to a very marginal status. Tapestry scholarship proper, spearheaded by Flemish art historian Guy Delmarcel (University of Leuven), only began to mature in the 1970s and 1980s, reaching a zenith in the highly acclaimed Tapestry in the Renaissance and Tapestry in the Baroque exhibitions organized by Thomas P. Campbell at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2002 and 2007.

The Berkeley conference will be the very first on Flemish and French tapestry organized at a US university; indeed, it will be the very first conference anywhere on 18th-century tapestry. It will bring together the great founding figures in the field and fresh new voices, scholars from museums and from the academy. The aim is to blur traditional borders between the fine and the decorative arts (1) by analysing the painterly qualities of 18th-century tapestry, and (2) by exploring the uses and importance of 18th-century tapestries in contemporary collections and interiors vis-à-vis painting.

The proceedings will be published in the Studies in Western Tapestry series (Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, Belgium).

Program (download PDF)

Prof. Dr. Koenraad Brosens | University of Leuven (Rubens Chair UCal Berkeley, fall 2013)
Prof. Dr. Katlijne Van der Stighelen | University of Leuven
Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Honig | UCal Berkeley

Participants:

K. Alen (University of Leuven)

P.-F. Bertrand (Université de Bordaux)

C. Bremer-David (Getty, Los Angeles)

K. Brosens (University of Leuven)

M. Chapman (San Francisco Museums of Art)

E. Cleland (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

G. Delmarcel (University of Leuven)

J. Emerson (Seattle Art Museum)

E. Honig (University of California-Berkeley)

F. Knothe (University of Hong Kong)

Y. Maes (De Wit-Royal Manufacturers of Tapestry)

E. Pradier (Université de Bordeaux)

K. Schmitz-von Ledebur (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)

A. Slegten (University of Leuven)

K. Van der Stighelen (University of Leuven)

J. Vittet (Mobilier national, Paris)

H. Vlieghe (University of Leuven)

H. Wyld (National Trust, London)

With the generous support of De Wit-Royal Manufacturers of Tapestry (Mechelen, Belgium)

Co-sponsors:

Flanders House New York

University of Leuven, History of Art Department

Flemish Research Foundation (FWO-Vlaanderen), Brussels

UC Berkeley (Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities)

Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3, EA 538