Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "The royal museums of art and history: the history of its buildings ans its collections based on the museum's archives (RMACH)." "Inge Bertels" "Antwerp Cultural Heritage Sciences (ARCHES), Royal Museums of Art and History (KMKG-MRAH), Henry van de Velde" "Leaving aside a handful of recent scientific articles, the only general publication on the history of the Royal Museums of Art and History (RMAH), its buildings and the development of its collections is a Liber Memorialis, published in 1985 on the occasion of the museum's 150th anniversary. While the latter publication was aimed at a general public, no other encompassing scientific and critical study on the history of the RMAH that attempts at tracing this history against the background of broader (inter)-national socio-political and cultural developments, has so far been published, despite the fact that vast amounts of unstudied documentation are looming in the museum's institutional archives. Henceforth, the RMARCH project focusses on the history of the Royal Museums of Art and History (RMAH), based on its institutional archives. In collaboration with the archivist of the RMAH, the FED-tWIN researcher will work on eliminating the enormous backlog in archival description, (online) access and digitalisation of the RMAH institutional archives with the specific aim to make these archives available to the general public but also for further scientific research. Following the reorganisation of these archives, several research questions will be addressed that ultimately will result in a new critical and scientific study on the history of the RMAH. Special attention will be devoted to the various historical buildings of the different museums that form the RMAH but also to the different actors that were responsible for the development of its collections.RMARCH proposes a multi-disciplinary and cross-institutional approach that will build on the expertise of past and current research projects in both the RMAH and the University of Antwerp (UAntwerpen). The research opportunities that will emerge from opening up this important institutional archive will not only allow the FED-tWIN researcher with his/her focus and profile in archival studies and architectural history to rewrite the history of the RMAH but also to play a crucial role in connecting, moderating and advancing them into the broader field of heritage studies. These are ranging from archival and (art and architectural) historical research to conservation and restoration but also in new research fields such as digital humanities and the development of digital documentation, data visualisation and imaging technologies. In this respect, the synergy between the disciplines Heritage Studies and Conservation-Restoration of the Faculty of Design Sciences of the UAntwerpen also offers a unique opportunity to deeply embed this project into academic education and training and in cooperation with the two research groups Henry van der Velde and Heritage & Sustainability." "[Exhibition Project] James Ensor in context : Ensor and the history of European art from the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp" "Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp" "For the exhibition, Ensor in context, 73 paintings and 59 drawings from the Ensor collection of the KMSKA will travel around Japan through 17 March 2013. What makes the exhibition special and how does the Japanese museum culture differ from ours?Japan has only relatively recently strongly embraced the modern museum culture, which in Europe is also only 250 years old. Thus was the Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan (National Museum) established in 1872 after a Japanese delegation had made acquaintance with similar institutions during a visit to the United States 14 years prior. Today, the Japanese museum public is the largest and most avid in the world. The Japanese museum visitor seems to be indefatigable. According to Toshiharu Suzuki, conservator in the Toyota Art Museum, the unbridled visual hunger has been an important facet of Japanese culture for centuries. ""In Japan, we have a long and strong tradition of love-for-figures that continues until today in animation and manga (and porn movies, I guess).""Ensor Back in JapanIn 1972, an ensemble of paintings, etchings and drawing by James Ensor traveled for the first time to Japanese museums in Kamakura, Nagoya, Fukuoka and Kyoto. From 1983 to 1985, other Japanese cities had their turn. The Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp organised an Ensor exhibition in 2005 in which special attention was given to Ensor's importance given to the art of the Far East with the title: Japonism to Modernism. On 14 April 2012, an Ensor exhibition was again opened in the Toyota Art Museum that subsequently traveled to Ehime, Tokyo and Iwate and will end on 17 March 2013 in Okayama. In the exhibition, Ensor in context. Ensor and the history of European Art from the Collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, the museum visitor can explore the history of the Flemish and European art of the 15th to the 20th Century with the art of Ensor's highly varied oeuvre. In Toyota, Ensor was yet again the guest in a building of the architect Yoshio Taniguchi. The latter was in support of the renovation of the MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) in New York, where in 2010 a large Ensor exhibition also took place.Ensor in Japanese CollectionsApparently, Ensor is on the wish list of Japanese conservators. Collector Tokishi Sakai gifted in 1992 a Still Life to the Museum of Modern Art in Nagaoka. The city museum of Himeij specialises in modern Belgian art and has in addition to Ensor (a Still Life with Fruit, Flowers and bare lights [lumières effeuillées]) also paintings and prints by Léon Frederic, Fernand Khnopff and Xavier Mellery. Two other museums, in the province of Aichi, are able to boast of masterworks by Ensor: The Portrait of the painter surrounded by masks of 1899 was purchased by the Menard Art Museum in Komaki (the museum also possesses the lovely Self-portrait of the artist at his harmonium of 1932). The Toyota Art Museum purchased Ensor's first Garden of Love (1888) in 1993. Shortly before or after WWI, both paintings were sold to his friend Emma Lambotte-Protin, who with her husband, Dr. Albin Lambotte of Liège moved to Antwerp. Serious financial problems compelled them in turn to sell the majority of their collection of Ensor paintings. The Royal Museum got the chance in 1927 to purchase The Oyster-Eater (1882), Adam and Eve (1887) and a few other pieces for the sum of 1 million Belgian Francs (+/- 25.000 euro). A lack of funds made the museum to limit itself to 6 works. Consequently, the Antwerp lover Cléomir Jussiant bought from Lambotte, among others, the Portrait of the Painter Surrounded by Masks, the Garden of Love and Children at morning toilet (1886, bought by the Flemish Government for the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent in the meantime). The works likewise traveled to Japan. If paintings could miss each other, then it must have been a nice reunion for The Oyster-Eater and the famous self-portrait surrounded by masks.Whoever has read Haruki Murakami's three-part 1Q84, knows that literary criticism is a booming genre in Japan. Art criticism, such as we know in Europe and the United States, is, however, not practiced at all. Conservator Toshiharu Suzuki of the Toyota Art Museum told me that the newspapers and magazines don't do any more than to mention an exhibition and do not further publish editorials in which an expert critiques an exhibition. Japanese museum conservators deduce the perceived value of an exhibition by reactions from individual visitors, tweets, emails, comments in the guestbook or to the gallery monitors.The museum experiences of Toshiharu SuzukiToshiharu Suzuki is a young conservator and I have bombarded him for a time with a battery of questions via emails. Toshi is a specialist in European art history. Although Toyota is nothing more than the hometown of the personnel for the eponymous automobile factory, its museum houses a very nice collection of modern art, with works by Ensor, Schiele, Brancusi, Foujita, Bacon and Boltanski amongst others. As a teenager, Toshi loved Oasis and The Beatles, Hollywood productions, Jean-Luc Goddard and Western fashion. When he also took an interest in contemporary Japanese art, he initially found it to be a poor imitation of Western examples. At the University of Tokyo, Toshi wrote his first art historical work on Gerhard Richter. Gradually he became fascinated by the relationship between art and society and thus during a vacation with his parents in Paris, he discovered the late-19th-century monumental Symbolist art of painting of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, the author of the well-known, very religiously tinted Poor Fisherman (1881). Because of the centuries-old reservations of many Japanese for Christianity, I asked Toshi about his own opinions of religion. As a child, he repeatedly visited the Buddhist temples on the top of the sacred mountain Koyasan. They did this in the hopes that repeated visits to Koyasan would contribute to the healing of the eye disease that young Toshi suffered from. Toshi still believes that a visit to a holy place can be healing but he does not view himself as a believing Buddhist by any means. Like many Japanese, he often visits a Shinto shrine, but is no converted Shintoist. Toshi told me that like us, the Japanese museum visitor appreciates the artistic qualities and the cultural importance of Christian or Buddhist images. ""We naturally accept the existence and power of figures and images, so that we don't hesitate much to worship images in a museum. Even when we are strongly and spiritually moved, it is not usual for us, either, to put our hands together in front of a sculpture or an image in a museum, I guess. (...) I rather wonder whether western art lovers don't feel any holiness in front of, for example, a painting of Fra Angelico or Jan van Eyck.""Many Japanese art lovers are definitely just like Toshi Suzuki: curious, open, accessible and at the same time opinionated and elusive. The time has come, I believe, to prepare the next Ensor exhibition along with intriguing conservators such as Toshi Suzuki." "In Search of Meaning: Thinking Information Visualization within Art History Research" "Katrien Verbert, Jan Aerts" "Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Art History, Leuven, Leuven Statistics Research Centre (LStat)" "This dissertation presents our work at the intersection of Art History (AH) and Information Visualization (InfoVis). In this text, we describe our efforts towards understanding the relationship between AH and InfoVis scholarship, along with conceptual and practical contributions to the growing interest in Digital Art History. More concretely, this dissertation aims to answer the following research questions:RQ1: How can we design InfoVis tools that specifically support art historicalresearch material and practice?RQ2: What is the relationship between InfoVis and humanistic research? How can it guide the design process for building usable visualization tools to support humanistic research?To answer these questions, we followed a reflective design approach that brings together critical reading of the literature, empirical research, and technical contributions. This approach allowed us to build upon the expertise of infovis and humanist participants in our user research, and to complement the conceptual approach with quantitative and qualitative empirical findings. All of this led to the development of new conceptualisations as well as the reflection on methodology, tools, and findings. As a result, we contribute a discussion about the place of InfoVis in art history research (and the humanities at large). Through our Layers of Meaning framework, we highlight the importance of semantics in visualization interfaces, and demonstrate their link to usability, trust, and adoption. We introduce a novel graph-drawing algorithm that implements an added layer of semantics, and find that this layout leads to lower cognitive load, improved perception, and higher personal preference ranking. Next, we demonstrate how this algorithm can be used by designing and developing a novel network visualization interface specifically designed to support historical social network research. The NAHR visualization does so by supporting multi-dimensional social types throughout time, thereby enabling a high-level view on community dynamics.Finally, we propose a re-evaluation of the role of digital tools in humanistic research by introducing the notion of digital satellites. This conceptualisation aims to encourage designers and scholars to think about the entire spectrum of functions that digital research tools hold in humanistic research contexts, and proposes ways to improve their longevity and effectivenes" "Understanding the technological and economical history of enigmatic green copper sulfate pigments in Flemish Renaissance art." "Geert Van der Snickt" "Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (KMSKB), Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK/IRPA), Antwerp Cultural Heritage Sciences (ARCHES)" "The beginning of the 16th century marked the start of a prosperous time for Flanders with the flourishing of culture, trade and science directly reflected into the works of art of the Antwerp School. However, the year 1500 does not only mark a period of stylistic revolution, the works of art also change from a technological point of view with Flemish painters experimenting with innovative materials and techniques, an aspect that has remained understudied hitherto. In this framework, recent analytical studies signaled the use of copper sulfates, an unknown green pigment type, that seems to witness the artist's pursuit to expand the limited range of pigments and enhance the realistic representation of nature. The aim of this research is to understand (a) the use (prevalence, technique, relation to other green pigments), (b) the provenance (where was it produced), the production method (historical technology) and (c) the trade (how and why did it come to Flanders) of these new materials. This will be done by combining the study of textual historical sources and the physical reproduction of the technology with a chemical screening of paintings and illuminated manuscripts. In this way, we propose exploiting the new vistas created by the recent introduction of chemical imaging techniques to enhance our understanding of the interplay of science, technology and trade with the bloom of Flemish Renaissance art and its stylistic innovations." "The organ history of the premonstratensian abbey of Averbode ca. 1434-2001. Six centuries of organ building art in Brabant." "David Burn" "Musicology, Leuven" "In the musicology of the Netherlands, the history of organ construction has its own place. For the Southern Netherlands, the organ history of the abbey of Averbode is particulary interesting. The size of the preserved old documents or the archive pieces go back to the fifteenth century. Other churches or abbeys also have valuable information, but it is often fragmented. Not only the size of the archives is important, but also the continuity. A chronological insight is given into a quasi-continuous organ history from the beginning of the fifteenth century until today. Information can be found about the late Gothic instrument, the Renaissance organ and its renovations to a Baroque organ and the new Rococo organ. After the period of the French Revolution, there is the transition from the classical to the romantic period. The building of the monumental romantic organ is a lasting reminder of this evolution. The present new Baroque organ illustrates the evolution of organ construction in the twentieth century.Both in older works and in more recent literature, the organ history of Averbode was the theme of several scientific publications. However, some of them restrict themselves to a fragmentary edition of archive pieces[1], or simply mention some instruments.[2] The sources are not further analysed or investigated within a broader organological context.Other researchers interpreted the sources from an obsolete and idealized romantic sound idiom. In that sense, there was almost no attention payed to the specific development of the organ type in the Southern Netherlands from the late Gothic to the Rococo period.[3]Yet other historians studied the individual instruments from the published archives, but they did not explain the link between the successive organs, their alterations and the evolution of the changing dispositions.[4] The present investigation wants to demonstrate that the publication of a synthesis of the organ history in Averbode — which has hitherto been lacking — is a valuable tool for the organological research of the Southern Netherlands and in particular of Brabant.The dissertation is structured chronologically. In addition to the discussion of the well-known and new archive pieces, the recent literature about organ building and organ builders working in Averbode, is critically discussed. The study begins with the earliest mentions of organs in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Subsequently the late Gothic instrument of Willem Boets van Heyst is discussed. The research focuses further on the activities of master Anthonis Toers and the specific developments of organ culture in the mid-sixteenth century. The organ of master Gielis Brebos of 1562 is a highlight of the sixteenth century organ history. The repairs, renovation, restoration and new construction by Martin Posselius, Jan Dillingen and Jan van Weert precede the in 1662 new built organ of Jan Dekens. Despite repairs and maintenance by various organ builders, the Jan Dekens organ is sold at the end of the eighteenth century. Averbode then asked Guillaume Robustelly to build a completely new instrument. Unfortunately, this remarkable instrument has only functioned during a short period. It is sold in the late days of the French time.After the reestablishment of the abbey in 1834, Arnold Graindorge builds a rather small instrument for the abbey church. However, this is replaced fairly quickly by a solid, romantic organ by Hippolyte Loret. This instrument has been preserved in an almost unspoilt state until today. However, it is waiting for a thorough restoration. In the quest for a new Baroque sound, Bernard Pels built a choir organ in 1979. As the Loret instrument became unplayable at the end of the twentieth century, the abbey chose to build a new transept organ by Léon III Verschueren in 2001. This Organ is the provisional endpoint of the rich organ history of the monastery of Averbode.In the second part of this study, all mentioned archives with regard to the instruments and their builders are published, with corrections where necessary. They are supplemented with other published transcriptions if they particularly concern the history of Averbode. Numerous newly discovered archive pieces of Averbode are published. They represent an important addition to what was already known, in particular concerning the design of the Renaissance organ (1530-1540), the difficulties in placing the Robustelly organ (1770-1773) and the ambiguities about the transitional instrument of Arnold Graindorge (1834-1844). The archives concerning the romantic instrument of Hippolyte Loret (1852-1859) have so far not been published. The construction history of the more recent instruments (1978, 1982 and 2001) are situated within the search for the authentic organ sound of mechanical organs with respect to the scientific research of ancient instruments. In supplementary annexes we offer a list of the main organists and composers connected to the abbey church of Averbode, the use of the organ in the premonstratensian liturgy, the relationship of Flor Peeters with the monastery of Averbode and the Organ Congresses which took place in the abbey.The registers on persons (organ builders), places, archives and authors want to be a service to the further critical examination of the organ culture in the Southern Netherlands. In this sense, this dissertation situates itself in the tradition of similar music historical monographs on the art of organ building in a particular church or location, or on a dynasty of organ builders that transcend local historiography[5]. [1] Norbertine and historian Placied Lefevre published in the years 1930 a lot of source material about the art history of Averbode with the fragmentary mentions of the organ history. P. Lefevre, Textes concernant l'histoire artistique de l'abbaye d'AverbodeIn Revue Belge d'Archéologie et d'Histoire de l'Art, 1935, 45-58. P. Lefevre, Textes concernant l'histoire artistique de l'abbaye d'Averbode aux Xviie Et XviiiE SièclesIn Revue Belge d'Archéologie et d'Histoire de l'Art, 1936, 151-176; 331-350 En 1937, 57-76.[2] E. Ganbat, Historique de la facture et des facteurs d'orgue avec la nomenclature des principales orgues placées dans les Pays-Bas et dans les provinces flamandes de la Belgique, suivi de la Galerie biographique d'organistes célèbres et d'une Notice sur les maître de Chapelle Et organistes de la cathédrale d'Anvers, Anvers, 1865, Avec une introduction et une nomenclature par Ghislain PotvliegHey, Frits Kaino, Amsterdam, 1972; J. Kreps, The Organ in The, Villagracia, 1933.[3] F. Van Der Mueren, Het orgel in de Nederlanden. Verre traditie -  gebruik in de kerkelijke diensten -  meubel - decoratieve houtversiering -  orgelregistratie -  orgelliteratuur - parallel-vergelijking tusschen al deze bestanddeelen, Leuven, 1931.[4] Jan (Trudo) Gerits (ex-confrater) published in the years 1960 and 1970 numerous articles on Averbodes organ history without however writing a monograph and clarifying the interconnections.[5] Good examples in Belgium and the Netherlands are: Persoons 1981; Lemmens 1985; van Nieuwkoop 1988; van Biezen 1995." "Unlocking the photographic archives of the pioneering years of egyptology at the Royal museums of Art and History in Brussels." "Marleen De Meyer" "Archaeology, Leuven" "SURA (Arabic for photo) is an inderdisciplinary project that ties together Egyptology, digital imaging, archival studies and digital humanities to valorise the historical collection of ca. 7000 glass plate negatives kept in the Egyptological library of the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels (RMAH)." "Development and systemactic application of non-invasive spectroscopic imaging tools for technical art history and conservation of painted artworks (MACRO-IMAGING)." "Koen Janssens" "Antwerp X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy (AXIS), Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK/IRPA), AXES (Antwerp X-ray Analysis, Electrochemistry and Speciation)" "The purpose of this project is the development and systematic application of non-invasive spectroscopic imaging tools for technical art history and conservation of painted artworks. As method of choice, macroscopic X-ray fluorescence will be employed, but also other methods. The imaging capabilities will be mostly used on works by Flemish artists present in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna." "Painters and Communities in Seventeenth-Century Brussels: A Social History of Art in a Digital Framework" "Koenraad Brosens" "Art History, Leuven" "This dissertation describes in two parts the importance of social structures on the artistic production of seventeenth-century Brussels painters. The first part is quantitative and uses the custom-built Cornelia database to analyse a vast amount and wide array of serial archival data about the (social) lives and careers of all 349 master painters who were registered in Brussels Guild of Painters, Goldbeaters, and Stained-Glass Makers between 1599 and 1706. The second part is qualitative and links the results of part one to the artistic production of a select number of painters with remarkable profiles. The Court of Brussels, the local art market and the city's celebrated tapestry industry are amply discussed." "Osaka Idols in the Brussels Limelight. The Belgian Reception of Kamigata-e and their late Acquisition by the Royal Museums of Art and History in a Western European Context" "Jan Van der Stock" "Art History, Leuven, Japanese Studies, Leuven" "The principal objective of this project is a thorough investigation of the Belgian reception of kamigata-e and their relatively late acquisition by the Brussels Royal Museums of Art and History (henceforth RMAH).It appears that during the fin de siècle kamigata-e were initially ignored by Belgian Japonisants, upstaged as they were by the prints produced in Edo. Despite the RMAH having laid the foundation of their Japanese prints collection in this period, the bulk of the Osaka prints were not acquired until the 1920s. It is mainly thanks to the endeavors of Jules Bommer (1873–1950), former curator at the institution, that the RMAH can now boast ownership of no less than 685 kamigata-e. Nonetheless, this collection has hitherto remained largely unexplored.After having revealed the causes of the aforementioned disregard for Kamigata prints, this dissertation aims to compare their late acquisition by the RMAH to the inclusion of these prints in other representative public collections in Western Europe. In doing so, it aspires to verify that the indifference to kamigata-e was consistent throughout fin-de-siècle Western Europe." "A Belgian artist in Italy: Italian Art History and Culture in the work of Jan Vercruysse (1948-2018)" "Wouter Davidts" "Department of Art, music and theatre sciences" "This research will investigate the artistic, intellectual and institutional interaction between the Italian and Belgian art scene during the 1980s and 1990s. This broader exchange will be analysed through a profound study of the artist Jan Vercruysse (1948-2018). To this end, underexposed aspects of Belgian and Italian art of the last quarter of the 20th century will be reassessed."