Upcoming Events
ASMOSIA XIV International Conference
15th - 20th September , 2025
Ljubljana, Slovenia
The conference will deal with the traditional research fields promoted by ASMOSIA with the aim of creating a basis for an interdisciplinary discussion, which should include contributions from different scientific and archaeological approaches. There will be a session dedicated to “Pigments and Paintings on Marble”.
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 15th January 2025.
For more information and the CfP, see: https://asmosia14.si/
Past events
The 12th International Round Table on Polychromy in Ancient Sculpture and Architecture
Art & Science Unite! Interdisciplinary Polychromy Research
18 – 21 November 2024
at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
See Updated Conference Information here.
For further information contact: PRT12@getty.edu
The 22nd International Congress on Ancient Bronzes - Bronzes in Context, Athens, Greece.
14-19 October, 2024
Including keynote lecture:
New research on the Delphi Charioteer: a monumental bronze sculpture created in Magna Graecia for the Sanctuary of Apollo
Sophie Descamps-Lequime (Musée du Louvre) and Benoît Mille, (Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France, Paris), introduced by Athanasia Psalti (Director, Ephorate of Antiquities of Phocis).
More information and full programme here.
The Congress opening on October 14 will be streamed: https://www.efa.gr/events/bronzes-in-context/
Bridges: Lecture on polychromy with Jan Stubbe Østergaard at the Swedish Institutes at Rome and Athens
15th October, 2024 - 18:oo (Rome) 19:00 (Athens)
"The recent history of research on the polychromy of Greek and Roman sculpture: The Copenhagen angle"
Since the 1980’s, research on the polychromy of sculpture and architecture in Classical Antiquity has experienced a break-through. Though still relatively small, the field is fully established as an interdisciplinary and international scholarly player producing results with an increasing impact on classical studies.
The lecture is historiographical, outlining the main phases of this positive development through the ‘lense’ of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. The museum became involved from 2000 onwards and has since become a recognized contributor to recent research. The lecture aims to throw light on the connections existing between a specific research venture – the Tracking Colour Project at the Glyptotek – and other, international research initiatives.
The lecture takes place in a hybrid format with live presence at the Swedish Institute in Rome, Via Omero 14, and via Zoom link.
"Colouring in a ‘Dark’ Age: Histories of Colour in the Post-Classical World" Conference, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.
20th September, 2024.
This international conference revisits the varied roles of colour in the societies around the Eastern Mediterranean from Late Antiquity to c. 1000. Long neglected in scholarship until recently, colour is increasingly recognised for its importance to all aesthetic visual experiences: unfixed, universal, present yet intangible, it serves as unique vehicle for emotions and expression. Renewed scholarly attention has uncovered its roles in the economic, social, and religious lives of both the Classical period and the post-High Middle Ages but has ignored the period between them. This conference seeks to fill the lacuna and debunk the ‘Dark Age’ moniker in literal terms. It recalibrates scholarly attention onto a critical historical context where thinking about colour continued to evolve and innovate, exploring contexts as diverse as Christian salvation texts and Sassanid Iran.
Online registration is available. To attend, please register here by September 19, 2024.
"Egyptian Blue – From Literature to the Artifact to the Lab" - 30th EAA Annual Meeting in Rome, Italy. Session #723.
28th - 31st August, 2024.
Organisers:
Anthony Baragona, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Alexandra Rodler-Rørbo, Austrian Archaeological Institute
Hilary Becker, Binghamton University
Giovanni Verri, Art Institute of Chicago
Ariadne Kostomitsopoulou Marketou, Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society
As the first artificial pigment, Egyptian blue has a millennia-long history of production, processing, working, and use. Experimental archaeology, archaeometry, and research into ancient texts make it possible to understand more about how this first synthetic pigment was made, distributed, and used. Technological choices in ancient production practices and the provenance of resources are interesting meeting points for discussing cultural change and trade interactions in human history. An interdisciplinary dialogue between archaeologists and natural scientists is desirable to address challenges related to the analysis of archaeological materials.
Contributions are invited that inspire this dialogue and discuss work on the development of analytical instruments and techniques, experimental approaches, analysis of production technology and material provenance.
Further details of the session can be found here.
The finalprogramme for the session can be found here.
VII COLLOQUIO AIRPA - Ostia Antica, Italy.
20th - 22nd June, 2024.
The theme of the meeting is "La pittura parietale in museo".
More information here.
International study day - "Crossed views on the use of polychromy in ancient societies". Odeon of the Archéopôle d'Aquitaine in Pessac.
6th - 7th June, 2024.
An international study day that presented all the work carried out by interdisciplinary research entitled:
“Tracking polychromy in Antiquity : attempt to restore colour at the oracular temple of Apollo at Delphi ”
Organized as part of the scientific events of the Major Research Program "Human Past" with the support of the FSAB (Federations of Archaeological Sciences of Bordeaux), the GPR Human Past and the LTC Incubator program.
More information here.
International symposium, kulturGUTerhalten, at the Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst (Sculpture Collection and Museum of Byzantine Art) in the Bode-Museum
Reconstruction – Addition – Retouching: History(ies) of the Restoration of Archaeological Treasures
29th - 31st May, 2024.
For more information about this symposium, please visit:
kulturGUTerhalten: Reconstruction – Addition – Retouching (smb.museum)
Full programme here.
Colloquium – "La couleur : matière, technique et perception", Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA)/Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF)
23rd - 24th May, 2024.
The aim of this interdisciplinary conference was to present the project carried out jointly by the National Institute of Art History and the National Library of France to develop AGORHA (research data platform of the National Institute of history of art), with a view to integrating material data on works of art, as well as the editorialization tool developed for the interrogation of this data from two corpora, painted panels and illuminations. The aim was to show how material data can become sources in the same way as documentary data and how the understanding of a work can be affected by these material and technical elements. French and international specialists shared their experience around the material data of polychrome works.
More information here.
Online Symposium - Archaeology of Colour. The Production of polychromy in sculpture up to the 16th century.
17th - 19th April, 2024.
This symposium was held online and was organized within the scope of the project Archaeology of Colour (PTDC/ART-OUT/5992/2020), a project dedicated to studying the polychromy of medieval and early modern Portuguese sculpture. The symposium aimed to engage scholars from different fields to enrich our understanding of the production of polychromy in sculpture up to the 16th century.
Papers will be published in a special issue of Conservar Património a peer-reviewed Open Access journal indexed in Scopus and Web of Science.
For more information about this symposium, please visit:
https://sites.google.com/campus.fct.unl.pt/archaeology-of-colour/home
Full programme here.
International Conference - Colours Revealed: Polychrome Monuments in the Roman Provinces Detection, Interpretation, Visualisation. Heritage Science Austria, ÖAW, Vienna, Austria.
20th - 21st March, 2024.
The conference focussed on the polychrome appearance of stone monuments in the Roman provinces. Although numerous examples with well-preserved colour settings from different regions of the Roman Empire have survived, research into them is still in its infancy. In contrast to the sculptural and architectural heritage of the Mediterranean region, no comprehensive studies on the use, the extent, and the materiality of coloured surfaces on stone are yet available for the peripheral areas of the empire.
For more information on the event, see here.
Download the programme.
Online talk by Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann on "Pigments on Marble" at the Interdisciplinary Colour Association Belgium (ICA-Belgium).
17th March, 2024. 10am CET.
ICA-Belgium celebrated International Colour Day (ICD) with an online event which included this free online talk.
For more information on the event, see here.
Research Seminar - Il colore nella cultura e nell’arte medievale: teorie, fonti, materiali (1100–1250). Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History
8th February, 2024. 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m (CET)
Speaker: Alberto Virdis
The conference proposed an investigation into some hotly debated problems in the culture of the central Middle Ages: the ambiguous status of colour, suspended between matter and light, therefore between divine and diabolical; the colour classifications proposed by encyclopedic treatises and scientific studies; the position of colour within medieval aesthetics.
More information here.
Conference - Colour Matters: Exploring Colour and Chromatic Materialities in the Long Nineteenth Century (1798-1914), Trinity College, Oxford.
6th -8th December, 2023.
This major international event was part of the ERC-funded CHROMOTOPE project (2019-2024), which analysed the artistic and literary impact of the invention of the first aniline dyes across Europe. It was scheduled to coincide with the exhibition ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion and Design’ (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 21 September 2023 – 18 February 2024), which will showed how the chromatic innovations of the second half of the nineteenth century transformed the arts and culture of Britain and its Empire.
For more information about this conference, please visit:
https://chromotope.eu/colour-matters-2023/
