14 December 2011

Queen's House Conference 2012

Queen's House, Greenwich (1614-17). Photo: © Bill Bertram 2006, CC-BY-2.5

This year's Queen's House Conference is entitled 'Inigo Jones, the Queen's House and languages of Stuart culture'.

The building has had many uses over the centuries, and is slated to play a role in the 2012 Olympic Games ...

The conference will be held at the National Maritime Museum on the 15-16th February and feature a series of talks on topics including:


  • Inigo Jones and his collaborators
  • The Stuart court and cultural idioms: influences, exchanges and controversies
  • Inigo Jones and the historiography of English architecture
  • Jonesian performance: architecture, masques and courtly performance
  • Jonesian interiors: architecture, painting and the decorative arts
  • Inigo Jones and the 18th century: new research on English Palladianism
  • Whitehall, Covent Garden and the new London
  • The culture of Catholicism in 17th-century England.


Queen's House was built between 1614-17 in Greenwich, the first neo-classical building in England. Commissioned by Anne of Denmark, wife of James I, it is more closely associated with Charles I's wife, Henrietta Maria, who made alterations in the 1630s.

Inigo Jones' tulip staircase at Queen's House: the first centrally unsupported staircase in a
wholly classical building in England. Photo: Mcginnly. GNU Free Docmentation License

The English Civil War swept away the royal court, though the building retained an official role, with naval Generals lying-in-state there after their deaths during the Commonwealth. The building subsequently became part of Greenwich's Naval Hospital, before being restored in the 1980s and 1990s. Now open to the public, it displays artwork owned by the National Maritime Museum.

Greenwich Park, directly behind Queen's House, will host the equestrian events during the 2012 Olympic Games. Queen's House itself will be used to host VIPs - a decision of which its Stuart commissioners would no doubt approve ...

Official plans showing how the House will be incorporated into the temporary venue can be seen here.

The fee for the two-day conference is £80, including refreshments.

To find out more and book, click on the links below:

Programme
Speakers' abstracts
Booking form

Inigo Jones, the Queen's House and languages of Stuart culture

No comments:

Post a Comment