British art, Pacific subjects, Contemporary values:
The Modern Saga and Forgotten History of Reynolds’ Mai Portrait
17-18 Oct. 2024
CALL FOR PAPERS
A workshop associated with the Sir William Dobell Visiting Chair 2024
Centre for Art History and Art Theory
Australian National University, ACT
Convenor: Kate Fullagar, ACU & ANU
Keynote: Peter Brunt, Assoc. Prof of Art History, Victoria University at Wellington, New Zealand
In March 2023 the longstanding battle for ownership of Joshua Reynolds’ Portrait of Mai (1775) was resolved. After more than two decades of struggle to retain the work in public British hands for its “historical significance [as a] national treasure”, it was bought by a consortium of art
foundations, including the National Portrait Gallery and the Getty Trust.
This workshop provides a chance to discuss not only the painting, but also related issues including the practice of Joshua Reynolds, the spectre of empire in eighteenth-century art, the politics of contemporary art markets, the mechanisms of canonisation, and the nature of the Anglo-American cultural relationship. Most of all, this workshop will centre the topic that has been largely ignored in the twenty-year debate about the value of Reynolds’ Mai—the role of Mai himself, and of the Pacific zone, in British history.
Proposals for short (15-20 minute) papers welcomed on any of the above topics, especially:
• Mai and the eastern Pacific in the late eighteenth century
• Joshua Reynolds and his legacy
• Contemporary western art markets
• Empire and western art
• Tapa and tattoo
• Tahitian history
• Museum and gallery practice around representations of the Pacific
Email 100-word proposals and a short bio to kate.fullagar@acu.edu.au by 16 August 2024.
Some small bursaries available for speakers. Public event; free though rego will be essential.
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