About the conference

This conference will explore the ways in which artists and patrons in Britain devised and introduced new or distinctive imagery, styles and techniques, as well as novel approaches to bringing different media together. It is concerned with the mechanisms of innovation, with inventive and imaginative processes, and with the relations between conventions and individual expression. The conversation will therefore also address the very notions of sameness and difference in medieval art and architecture, and how these may be evaluated and explained historically. 



Topics for discussion can include authorship, creativity, experimentation, envisaging, representation, and regulation by guilds or patrons, as well as case studies of particular objects, buildings, commissions or practices.



When and Where

The conference will take place on 30th October – 1st November at The British Museum; it will include collaborations with the museum’s Department of Prehistory & Europe and opportunities to see works from the collection.