2 PhD Positions in (Technical) Art History at Utrecht University

The PhD student will work within the research programme Dynamics of the Durable: A History of Durability in the Visual and Decorative Arts (DURARE). DURARE is funded by the European Research Council, by way of a Starting Grant awarded to principal investigator Dr Marjolijn Bol. You will be based at Utrecht University and will as such also be part of the Department of History and Art History, section Art History. DURARE will undertake the first comprehensive study of the impact of the artisan's and patron’s ambitions to craft, own and theorize durable objects on the long-term development of the visual and decorative arts in the West. To understand the history of durability in art, this research programme asks how artisans explored ways to make art objects durable and what determined the desire of patrons to order and own durable art objects. DURARE thus investigates the changing ideas and expectations about:

The acquisition of art: Ideas about how an art object might survive in the future;
The making of art: Which materials and techniques were used for this purpose?
The owning of art: What social practices and institutions were designed for an object’s survival?
This research programme will investigate the history of durability in art by integrating methodologies typical for the humanities and historical disciplines with historically informed reconstructions made in the project’s laboratory. We will use historical reconstructions as a historical-analytical tool to fill the gaps between the historical act of creation, the art objects and the textual sources that describe these actions or are the products thereof.

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2 PhD Positions in (Technical) Art History at Utrecht University