Acknowledgements
Insects and Colors between Art and Natural History originated as an online workshop during the COVID-19 pandemic in winter 2021 thanks to the digital infrastructure of the Technische Universität Berlin and of the Universität Konstanz, to which the editors of this volume are affiliated. The workshop was the result of the fortunate encounter of the two editors in 2020 as well as their efforts in the identification of a common point of contact between their research projects. At that time, V.E. Mandrij was writing their Ph.D. thesis “‘One could ornament a painting with the wings of a butterfly’: Otto Marseus van Schrieck (1620/21–1678) and the Lepidochromy technique” within the graduate program Changing Frames. Art History and Art Technology in Exchange (Universität Konstanz, founded by the VolkswagenStiftung) and Giulia Simonini was the postdoctoral fellow in the project “Colour Orders, Colourants and Colour Terminology” within the research group Dimensions of techne in the Fine Arts (Technische Universität Berlin, founded by the German Research Foundation).
The online workshop was a real success with ten international speakers, five panel chairs, and more than fifty people attending the event from all over the world. We take this opportunity to thank again all speakers and chairs: Florike Egmond (Leiden University), Kay Etheridge (Gettysburg College), Hanneke Grootenboer (University of Amsterdam), Erma Hermens (Hamilton Kerr Institute), Dominik Hünniger (Deutsches Hafenmuseum), Stefanie Jovanovic-Kruspel (Naturhistorisches Museum Vienna), Karin Leonhard (Universität Konstanz), Brian Ogilvie (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Hossein Rajaei (Naturkundemuseum Stuttgart), Katharina Schmidt-Loske (Biohistoricum, Museum Koenig Bonn), Friedrich Steinle (Technische Universität Berlin), Beth Tobin (University of Georgia), and Grace Touzel (Natural History Museum London).
We owe our deepest gratitude to Karin Leonhard and Friedrich Steinle for their support and assistance during all phases of this project. Our thanks go likewise to the libraries of the TU Berlin and Universität Konstanz for funding the open access publication of this book. We are also thankful to Lea Stengel for her precious assistance for the index of the manuscript, to Martin Bleisteiner for his wonderful copy-editing work, and to Alessandra Giliberto for her great help. And finally, we are grateful to the editors of the series Emergence of Natural History and, especially to Dominik Hünniger, who invited us to submit the proceedings of the workshop to the Brill series, without whom this book would probably have never seen the light of day.