Marie Skłodowska-Curie Symposium: Translating the Sacred in the Nordic-Baltic Sphere from the Middle Ages to Modernity.
Riga, Art Academy of Latvia, and online.
Thursday 29-Friday 30 June 2023.
Kalpaka blvd. 13 (main building, main entrance); 4th (top) floor; Room 60
Download the full symposium program with abstracts here.
The symposium will be live-streamed via Zoom. The registration link to participate online via Zoom can be found here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAvfuqtqDgvGtxiWRZezlv1eHV3SZ7hT37c
For more information and in-person registration to attend the symposium in Riga, please contact rno@natmus.dk.
The Art Academy of Latvia, in cooperation with the National Museum of Denmark, is pleased to announce the upcoming Marie Skłodowska-Curie Symposium, “Translating the Sacred in the Nordic-Baltic Sphere from the Middle Ages to Modernity,” which will be held 29 and 30 June 2023 at the Art Academy of Latvia in Riga, and online via Zoom. The symposium is made possible thanks to generous support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 842830 (TRANSLATIO), hosted by the National Museum of Denmark.
The international symposium brings together scholars from across the humanities who examine the art, architecture, and material culture of the Nordic-Baltic region—comprising areas of present-day Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Historically, this region represents an integrated and culturally heterogeneous maritime space, its territories and communities mutually and globally interconnected over centuries by trade, imperial expansion, immigration, and religious pluralism. These conditions drove circulations, transformations and entanglements of visual and material cultures, and ideologies, practices, and theologies of the sacred both amongst and within historical territories, through exchanges, migrations, conflicts, and transformations both synchronic and diachronic. Against this background, this symposium explores the agentive and mediating properties of sacred things as composite objects, interrogating how sacred objects from diverse religious traditions enable the movement of ideas, styles, practices, and beliefs, within and between communities and territories in the Nordic-Baltic sphere, from the late Middle Ages through the Modern era.
PROGRAM
Thursday 29 June: Kalpaka blvd. 13 (main building, main entrance); 4th (top) floor; Room 60
9:00-9:30 Welcome and opening remarks
9:30-11:00 Session 1
Aleksander Musiał, Princeton University
Translating Immersion. Representations of baptism in 18th-century physiological debates across Europe
Sanita Bitko, Art Academy of Latvia
The importance of digital technologies in art history research methodology: the case of Riga Biķernieki Church
11:00-11:30 Coffee break
11:30-13:00 Session 2
Suzie Hermán, Princeton University
Portraiture and the Construction of Hanseatic Civic Institutions in the Sixteenth Century
Dr. Ruth Sargent Noyes, National Museum of Denmark
Nobles of Latgale (Latvia) as translators of the sacred during the Age of Partition (c. 1750-1800)
13:00-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-14:45 Session 3
Professor Juliet Simpson, Coventry University/ Heidelberg University
Translating Totentanz. Medieval Relics and Sacred Encounters in late 19th-Century Nordic-Baltic Art
14:45-15:45 Keynote
Professor Anu Mänd, University of Tartu/Tallinn University
Domestic Devotion and Material Objects in Late Medieval Livonia
Friday 30 June: Kalpaka blvd. 13 (main building, main entrance); 4th (top) floor; Room 60
9:00-11:15 Session 4
Dr. Kerttu Palginõmm, Art Museum of Estonia – Niguliste Museum
Sacred or secular, local or global: The Altarpiece of the Virgin Mary in Tallinn
Dr.habil.art. Ojārs Spārītis, Art Academy of Latvia
“Deus ex Machina” or moving sculptures in the interior of lutheran churches of Latvia
Dr. Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen, National Museum of Denmark
The Measurements of the Holy
11:15-11:45 Coffee break
11:45-12:45 Keynote
Professor Laura Tillery, Hamilton College
Title TBA
12:45-13:00 Closing remarks and discussion
TRANSLATIO 