8th Annual Ards Conference "Alabaster as Material for Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture"
Musée Du Louvre, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris
18–20 January 2022
9:00–17:00 CET

The 8th ARDS annual colloquium focuses on alabaster as a material for European sculpture from the 14th until the 17th century.

Much research has been carried out on this subject over the past few decades in several European countries, both in universities and in laboratories, and in particular on the occasion of restorations carried out in museums and historic monuments. New analysis methods have improved our knowledge of the origin of alabaster and the quarries exploited during this period, supply and trade circuits - often long distance - have been brought to light, restorations have enabled to specify the implementation of the material. The results have been the subject of seminars, study days and major publications.

In order to present the general public with a summary of the current state of our knowledge, M Leuven and the Musée du Louvre jointly organize an international exhibition on this theme in the fall of 2022. This exhibition will show how and why alabaster was used for sculpture in Western Europe during the late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque period. This exhibition will bring together high-quality sculptures, small-format objects with monumental achievements, from the Louvre and M’s collections, as well as from numerous public and private collections.

This Paris colloquium brings together specialists in this material, whether they are geologists, restorers, historians or art historians. The scientific committee of the conference invited researchers to submit papers via a call for papers and has selected 15 papers, which resulted in a highly qualitative and varied programme.