Work in Progress Spring 2025 - PhD student joint session

Mary Clayton-Kastenholz (Warburg PhD): 'Sketching theories of display in the South Kensington Museum: 1857-1899'

The South Kensington Museum, predecessor of the Victoria and Albert Museum and Science Museum, is often cited as a model institution for 19th century museums. This paper will explore, through photographs and textual sources, the display of objects within the institution between 1857 and 1899. It will speak to the varying didactic intentions present within the collections of museum, and examine the interpretive techniques employed by museum actors to convey themes and messages at the object, case, and collection level. By also comparing the methods of the South Kensington to those of other contemporary institutions, the paper will provide an insight into the theory and practice of museum display in the 19th century more broadly.  

Mary Clayton-Kastenholz is a CDP PhD Student affiliated with the Warburg Institute, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Science Museum. Her thesis title is A new history of the South Kensington Museum: 1852-1899.

Florence Forte (Warburg PhD): 'The Latin Letters of Battista Malatesta da Montefeltro'

Battista Malatesta da Montefeltro (1383-1448), daughter of the Count of Urbino, is one of the earliest women to receive notable recognition from contemporaries for her eloquence, learning and morality in fifteenth-century Italy. Her Latin letters, dated to around 1416-1417, have survived in one fifteenth-century manuscript and they have never been translated into a modern language before. In this talk, I will briefly outline how editing and translating this small corpus relates to my wider PhD research, before sharing my preliminary analysis of selected aspects of these letters within the broader context of humanism, rhetoric and letter-writing amongst both men and women in the early Renaissance. 

Florence Forte is a third-year PhD student at the Warburg Institute. Her thesis title is The Life, Texts and Networks of Battista Malatesta da Montefeltro (1383-1448).

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