Sorry for cross posting
A symposium on
Women, Gender, Class and
Victorian Cultural Philanthropy
Saturday/Sunday 16/17 November 2002
Conference Centre
Sir James Matthews Building
Southampton Institute
Southampton UK
Southampton Institute will host an international symposium on ‘moral
aesthetics’ or the Victorian notion that the purpose of art was to improve
or civilize man. The topics covered are wide ranging, including the Arts
and Crafts Movement, the Home Arts Movement, Settlements, individual women
artists, women as patrons and consumers, education and the influence of
Wilde and Morris. It will also examine gender roles and boundaries.
Although there are exceptions, generally speaking women did not have the
financial resources to endow art galleries, museums or libraries.
Similarly they were constrained as benefactors in terms of collection
giving. What they did have was plenty of time and many felt morally
impelled to find a vocation. Indeed for many women philanthropy was
literally a life-saver, a relief from boredom and stagnation, and offered a
means of extending their physical and social boundaries. A mission in the
East End of London was exciting, simulating and rewarding. The role of
women in social work is well documented and accounts have centred on women
and child welfare, education, housing and sanitation. This symposium seeks
to address the complex notion of ‘cultural equality’ or how the working
classes were to be raised to appreciate the values of the middle classes.
The upper and middle classes enjoyed what we now think of as culture, the
arts. Some believed that the poor deserved the same ‘riches’ or
privileges as the elite. How such notions were argued , how culture was
transmitted, and issues of inclusion and resistance are the focus of this
symposium.
The keynote speaker will be Prof. Regenia Gagnier, Exeter University, well
known for her work on Oscar Wilde, Aestheticism and Commodity Culture and
Individuality.
Other speakers include Dr Maggie Andrews, Prof Edward Bird, Jan Carder,
Jim Chesire, Elizabeth Crawford, Dr Meaghan Clarke, Fiona Darling-Glinski,
Richard Frith, Janet Floyd, Tony Garland, Heather Haskins, Prof Janice
Helland, Sara Lenaghan, Dr Ruth Livesey, Dr Diana Maltz, Joseph McBrinn,
Morna O_Neill, Elaine Cheasley Paterson, Dr Talia Schaffer, Hilary
Underwood, Jaya Venkatraman, Kim Wahl, and Shelagh Wilson.
Registration fee £70 or £60 for students and members of the WHN.
This includes tea, coffee and lunch. The symposium dinner is extra.
Accommodation is not included. For further details contact Dr Anne
Anderson, FMAS, Southampton Institute,
Southampton SO14 ORF, UK. E-mail [log in to unmask] Web-site
www.solent.ac.uk/artandlife for a registration form.
Programme.
Saturday 16th November
9.15 Welcome and introduction
from Anne Anderson
9.30-11.00 Earlier Traditions
Edward Bird
To Train or to Educate: The role of the schools of Art and Design in the
education of the industrial workforce during the nineteenth century.
Jim Cheshire
Women as patrons and producers of ecclesiastical art 1850-1870
Talia Schaffer
From Mending to William Morris: Women's Work in Margaret Oliphant's Phoebe
Junior.
11. 00-11.30 Coffee
11. 30- 1.00 The Home Arts Movement
Shelagh Wilson
The Origins and Intentions of the Home Arts and Industries Association
Hilary Underwood
'It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it': oral evidence and Mary
Watts's Compton enterprises.
Elaine Cheasley Paterson
Homemade Industry: Mary Seton Watts and the Compton Potters' Art Guild.
1.00-2.00 Lunch
2.00-3.3.0 Rural Life
Anne Anderson
Lady Lovelace and Rural Regeneration
Janice Helland
Stitching Identity and Selling 'Irishness’ in late nineteenth-century
embroidery.
Joseph McBrinn
Reviving Peasant Arts and Industries in the north of Ireland, 1894-1914:
Sophia Rosamond Praeger and the forgotten workshops of the Irish Decorative
Arts Association and the Irish Peasant Home Industries
3.30-4.00 Tea
4.00 - 5.30 London
Heather V. Haskins
Help or Hindrance? Cultural Philanthropy for Women from the Arts & Crafts
Exhibition Society
Morna O'Neill
"'Everyday Heroic Deeds': Walter Crane at the Red Cross Hall"
Diana Maltz
Aestheticism in the Slums: University Settlement and the Case of the
Toynbee Travellers Club.
6.00-7.00 Key Note : Regenia Gagnier
Followed by drinks and the conference dinner (dinner not included in the
registration fee)
SUNDAY 17th November
STRAND 1
9.30-11.00 The Female Touch
Elizabeth Crawford
‘Rhoda and Agnes Garrett, House Decorators, Cabinet Makers, and Designers
of all the Details of Household Furniture and Upholstery, No 2 Gower Street
(corner of Bedford Square), London, W.C.’
Fiona Darling-Glinski
The Privilege of Patronage: Mary Thornycroft and the Sculptural Aesthetic
Kim Wahl
Artistic Play or Sartorial Delimitation?
The Changing Rhetoric of Health and Beauty in ‘at-home’ British Tea Gowns.
11.00-11.15 Coffee
11.15-12.45- Into the new century
Janet Floyd
Florence White: from country crafts to domestic service
Maggie Andrews
Not just Jam and Jerusalem – The WI as a rural battleground over
definitions of ‘craft’ in the inter-war period
Jan Carder
Dream of an Independent Life: Painted Fabrics Ltd
12.45- 1.30
Discussion- Framing the debate and ways forward
Chaired by Regenia Gagnier
1.30-2.30 Lunch
SUNDAY 17th November
STRAND 2
9.30-11.00 Social Missions
Meaghan Clarke
‘East End Missions’: The Art of Improvement in the Press 1880-1900
Ruth Livesey
Art for the People or the People as Artists? Aesthetics, Subjectivity and
Socialist Thought
Richard Frith
‘The Worship of Courage’: Moral Aesthetics and Aesthetic Morality in
William Morris’s Sigurd the Volsung
11.00-11.15 Coffee
11.15-12.45 Wildean Influences
Tony Garland
Breaking the Gender Didactic: The Femme Fatale in English Decadence
Jaya L. Venkatraman
The Artist as Critic as Teacher: Wildean Eye-Openers
Sara Lenaghan
Art and the Aesthete: The feminizing influence of art in the fiction of
James and Wilde
12.45- 1.30
Discussion- Framing the debate and ways forward
Chaired by Regenia Gagnier
1.30-2.30 Lunch
|
