Acknowledgments
The volume before you is the product of a long process that started in the spring of 2012 with Anne Helmreich from the Getty Foundation sounding me out on possible ideas for a project for their Connecting Art Histories program. The project I proposed, âFrom Riverbed to Seashore. Art on the Move in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean in the Early Modern Period,â was accepted in May 2013 and started with a call for participation in December 2013. Three traveling seminars in seven countries and two workshops and a conference in three more countries later, the essays that were generated from this intense activity are finally seeing the light of print.
Needless to say, a project that involved twenty-one people and travel in nine countries and that came to full maturity almost ten years later, required much organization and planning, not to mention discipline sometimes reminiscent of a military campaign. But beyond the inevitable logistical challenges, the project brought much satisfaction through discovery, exploration, and adventureâall of it exciting, fun, and quite literally mind-bending. And, as an added bonus, beyond scholarship it led to many friendships and a sense of extended family. So, in this spirit I want to thank all those who stayed the course and whom you will meet on these pages, and just as much those who participated only in some parts of this operation. Thank you, Jacek Bielak and Stanko Kokole for joining our group and adding your wisdom to our peregrinations in mind and in fact. A particularly warm thank you to three exceptional project assistantsâElizabeth Kassler-Taub, Victoria Addona, and Mathilde Bonvalotâwithout whom neither the voyages nor the volume would have come to a happy end. Thank you to JoÅ¡ko BelamariÄ for opening doors and connecting us to people and sites, as well as to so many hidden treasures, all along the Dalmatian coast; to Anca Oroveanu for inviting us into the enchanting New Europe College in Bucharest; to Ana-Maria Zahariade and Horia Moldovan from the Architecture School Ion Mincu in Bucharest for much help with organizing our Romanian trip; to the staff of the libraries at Harvard University and at the Harvard Art Museums for giving the project participants the opportunity to access books, rare collections, and hold a workshop within the museum premises; and many, many thanks to Joan Weinstein, Anne Helmreich, and most recently Miguel de Baca from the Getty Foundation for supporting the project with so much enthusiasm and for understanding its complexities with so much sympathy. Finally, a thank you to Clare Peploe for offering the wonderful heaven of peace where I could write and to Mark for sustaining me in this work gently and steadily and sharing with me his own fascination with distant shores and mobile worlds.