Leah R. Clark’s research explores the roles objects play in creating networks in the fifteenth century through their exchange, collection, and replication. She joined the OU in 2013, having taught a wide range of courses in Canada and America including Art History courses on the Italian Renaissance, collecting, art in the Italian courts, and cross-cultural encounters in the early modern world, in addition to cross-disciplinary courses in the Humanities.
Her current book project is concerned with the collection and exchange of objects in the Italian courts. The project examines the courts of Italy (particularly Ferrara and Naples) through the myriad of objects—statues, paintings, jewellery, furniture, and heraldry—that were valued for their particular iconographies, material forms, histories, and social functions. The constant circulation of precious objects in the late fifteenth century reveals a system of value which placed importance not only on ownership, but also on the replication, copying, and translation of those objects in an array of media. The objects of analysis are thus considered not only as components of court life, but also as agents that activated the symbolic practices that became integral to relations within and between courts, operating as points of contact between individuals, giving rise to new associations and new interests.
Dr Clark is also pursuing a project that examines the intersections between collecting spaces in the Italian courts and cross-cultural mercantile and diplomatic exchanges in the Mediterranean.
She has presented at numerous international conferences including the Renaissance Society of America, the Association of Art Historians, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Courtauld Institute of Art, and the Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art (CIHA).
She is the recipient of various awards and fellowships including the CGS Doctoral Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), research funding from the Italian government, and she received the McGill Arts Insights Dissertation Award for her PhD thesis, ‘Value and Symbolic Practices: Objects, Exchanges, and Associations in the Italian Courts (1450-1500).’
At the OU, she is currently involved in The arts past and present (AA100), Exploring art and visual culture (A226), and is a contributor to the new MA in Art History.
Students interested in topics concerning early modern Italy, and in particular those related to collecting, court culture, cross-cultural relations and exchange theory should contact Leah Clark at the address below.
Contact: leah.clark@open.ac.uk
‘Collecting, Exchange, and Sociability in the Renaissance Studiolo’ Journal of the History of Collections, (online October 2012; in print, forthcoming 2013)
‘Transient Possessions: Circulation, Replication, and Transmission of Gems and Jewels in Quattrocento Italy.’ Journal of Early Modern History 15. 3 (2011): 185-221.
‘Replication, Quotation, and the ‘Original’ in Quattrocento Collecting Practices’ in The Challenge of the Object / Die Herausforderung des Objekts, Congress Proceedings (CIHA). Edited by G. Ulrich Großmann/Petra Krutisch. Nuremberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum Press, forthcoming, fall 2013.