Viewers past and present have celebrated the stunning visual effects of Dutch and Flemish art, but the artworks’ sensory effects (and affects) did not—and do not—stop at sight alone. Attend the Center for Netherlandish Art’s 2025 colloquium and learn more about how sensory experience created a bond between artwork and space for early modern individuals. The program features presentations from CNA Research Fellows Laura Eliza Enríquez and Jessica Sternbach as well as other emerging scholars. This hybrid event enables the next generation of Dutch and Flemish specialists to share their research with an international audience

Register for the keynote presentation with Dr. Judith Noorman on Thursday, May 15.

Program

Session One
CNA Research Fellows

9:30–10:30 am

Sweetness, Labour, and Virtue: Taste Dialectics in Godfried Schalcken’s Young Woman Eating Sweets (1680–5)

Presented by Laura Eliza Enríquez, Concordia University and CNA research fellow

Tuning In, Drowning Out: The Emotional Affect of Sound and Silence in Dutch 17th-Century Musical Paintings

Presented by Jessica Sternbach, Temple University and Flanders State of the Art Fellow, CNA

Session Two
Emerging Scholars

11 am–12:15 pm

Snakerijn: The Ambivalence of Sight, Touch, and Desire in Rembrandt’s 1636–38 History Scenes

Presented by Annie Correll, Art Institute of Chicago

Scented Knowledge: The Pomander as a Site of Female Medical Exchange

Presented by Jasper Martens, University of California, Santa Barbara

Realms of the Senses: The Besloten Hofjes and Women’s Cultivation of Ideal Spiritual Identity Through Sensorial Environments

Presented by Meredith Wilbur, University of South Florida

The Founders of the Center for Netherlandish Art at the MFA are Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and Susan and Matthew Weatherbie.