Faculty Member, Art History/Humanities
University of British Columbia, Art History, Visual Art & Theory
The Courtauld Institute of Art, Art History
McGill University, Art History & Communication Studies
Henry G. Fairbanks Visiting Humanities Scholar-in-Residence
About
Leah R. Clark is currently completing a book manuscript, Objects and Exchanges: Circulation, Replication, and Association in the Italian Courts that builds on her PhD thesis, “Value and Symbolic Practices: Objects, Exchanges, and Associations in the Italians Courts (1450-1500),” (awarded the McGill Faculty of Arts Insights Dissertation Award in 2010). This study argues for a reconsideration of the object’s function in court life, investigating how the value of an object is tied to the role it plays in symbolic activities, which formed the basis of court relations at the end of the fifteenth century. Her 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. Her book will explore how 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.
Her next project, “Material Translations: Collecting and Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Italian Courts (1450-1525)” will focus on the international exchanges of objects—porcelain, gems, paintings, jewellery, drawings—through commercial, diplomatic, and collecting networks in the Mediterranean at the end of the fifteenth century. She is interested in pursuing how these exchanges forged new interests and new associations between Italy and neighbouring Islamic states, particularly the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, and how engagement with these objects prompted cultural transmission and reflection. Her project therefore asks why certain objects gain cultural currency at this specific moment in time—a period both fraught with warfare and religious conflict and ripe with productive exchanges in mercantile, intellectual and artistic spheres—and will examine not only how these objects represent encounters, but how they were integral to those encounters.
Leah is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the CGS Doctoral Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, a fellowship from the Italian government, several awards from McGill Faculty of Graduate studies, including the McGill Arts Insights Dissertation Award, and she was nominated for the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies/University Microfilms International (CAGS/UMI) Distinguished Dissertation Award.
Leah teaches courses on Italian Renaissance Art, including seminars on collecting and cross-cultural exchange in the Renaissance.
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