Before 2020, Covid reached these shores, before social distancing, before lockdown, before homeschooling, before facemasks; before Zoom; before misguided handshakes and reasonable judgements, a group of academics, students, translators and interested parties met in Glasgow to hold the final event in the ‘Decadence and Translation’ project. We had a fantastic time, filled with discussion, debate and engagement. For a report on that day and what was discussed, see the previous blogpost by Eleanor Keane.

After the event, a small group of us were lucky enough to be admitted to the storage facility for the Hunterian Museum and Gallery at Kelvin Hall. This former exhibition centre and sports hall reopened in 2016 as a joint space shared between the Hunterian, Glasgow Life and the National Library of Scotland. Over the past few years, the Hunterian have been transferring to secure storage at Kelvin Hall much of its extraordinary and collection of objects and works of art.

You can see here a short video of our visit to the facility, filmed and edited by Eleanor Capaldi:

We’re very grateful to Alicia Hughes (Assistant Curator at the Hunterian) for showing us round and talking to us about the facility at Kelvin Hall. We were privileged to see an extraordinary range of material, from stuffed animal heads to this image by the French artist, Odillon Redon.

 

The planned activities of the Decadence and Translation’ project have all been completed now, but we are working on future events and a legacy to take advantage of the fascinating discussions and research we encountered. Plans for the future include edited issues of scholarly journals and other exhibition. So do keep an eye out for further announcements this site and via Twitter

In the meantime, whilst lockdown continues you may also be interested in:

• A Virtual Exhibition of Poems inspired by Paintings and Objects at the Hunterian – including wonderful work by Jeffrey Robinson in response to Whistler
• The most recent issue of Volupté – the journal of the British Association of Decadence Studies
• Digital tours of Fin de Siècle and Decadent Sites – via the Newsletter of the British Association of Decadence Studies
• A fascinating series of blogposts on topics from Verlaine and Rimbaud to Parsifal and Proust on the Rimbaud & Verlaine Foundation website
• A Collection of Open Access Primary Texts and Secondary Materials relating to Aubrey Beardsley – at the Aubrey Beardsley Library