History of Art

This three-part lecture series addresses discourses of disability in the medieval and early modern periods. Recent studies of physical, mental, and sensual difference have directed attention to the ableist assumptions underlying much of art historical scholarship. The cultural and political contestation of the human body challenges the “normative” framework of our discipline as shaped by such notions as spectatorship and embodiment, the eye and the hand, contemplation and engagement, commonly modelled around a “median” Western body. While disability quickly gained traction in historical, literary, sociological, and media scholarship, art history has been slower to respond, particularly within earlier periods of study and non-European contexts.
Our three distinguished speakers will elucidate historical understandings of the body and disability from a variety of perspectives that invite a more inclusive conversation. We hope to encourage a broader discussion about exciting materials that speak to the methodological and ethical stakes, as well as global perspectives of disability studies.

https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/premodern-disability-histories

Workshop co-organized with Jess Bailey at Wellcome Collection, London, and the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 09-10 December 2021

Born within a decade of each other, pioneering art historian Aby Warburg and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome had bold visions for the material and visual study of culture and science. While Warburg was exploring alternatives to stylistic accounts of art through his “laboratory” of a growing library and photo archive inclusive of histories of science, Wellcome was amassing one of the most diverse collections devoted to the history of health. Today, their research communities continue to care for these legacies with a critical eye to their conceptual premises and contested histories.

This two-day workshop juxtaposes Warburg’s anthropological thought and his theories on tools or devices ("Gerät") developed against the backdrop of the First World War, with Wellcome’s simultaneous collecting of medieval and early modern technologies of disability. Ranging from surgical tools to clappers owned by sufferers of leprosy, from "materia medica" manuscripts to experiments in metal prosthesis, Wellcome conceived of these objects as part of a "universal" history of the human being. We are interested in the roles played by such items in framing disabled persons in the past, as well as their use in recovering marginalized histories for the present. Through considering instruments of medical practice, visual means of social exclusion, and technologies of mobility, we hope to challenge conventional accounts of the history of science and art. Workshop participants are encouraged to explore the intellectual potential alongside the affective and inclusive concerns of the material histories of disability. By engaging hands-on with collection and archive materials, we will ask among other questions: Who had the knowledge to produce instruments or tools of disability? How much did makers, health practitioners, and users collaborate in devising them? How practical were these technologies? Whose aesthetic sensibilities did they serve? In what ways did these objects participate in the cultural construction of disability? What are the ethical stakes of terminology in histories of art and science, as well as in our archiving of historical disability? In what ways are our inquiries today shaped by Warburg and Wellcome's turn-of-the-century scholarly enterprises?