From the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art website:
J.W. Waterhouse Conference
(2 September 2009)
"On 2 September 2009, the Paul Mellon Centre and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, will co-host a one-day conference on the artist John William Waterhouse (1849-1917). The conference, organized with the Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition at the University of Bristol, complements the Royal Academy exhibition J.W. Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite (27 June to 13 September 2009) and the conference ticket includes a private view of the exhibition."
From information you can download at the website about "full conference and ticket / registration details":
John William Waterhouse (1849–1917)
A conference organised by the Paul Mellon Centre and the Royal Academy of Arts, 2 September 2009
"John William Waterhouse is amongst the most visible of artists in today’s popular culture. His painting, The Lady of Shalott, has consistently sold more postcards for Tate than any other work of art. Reproductions of his work on posters, prints, and greetings cards are invariably bestsellers, and there are dozens of websites that feature his art. Yet Waterhouse has been largely ignored in academic art history and museum practice. Although his paintings won medals at world’s fairs from the 1880s through to 1900, his role on the international art scene has been forgotten; scholars have yet to explore his complex engagement with ancient and modern literary traditions, or with the exciting new developments of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in archaeology, anthropology, comparative mythology, occultism and paganism. Only now is he receiving his first full-scale retrospective exhibition, at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands (14 December 2008–3 May 2009), the Royal Academy of Arts in London (27 June–13 September 2009), and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (1 October 2009-7 February 2010).
This conference brings together five scholars from different disciplines and the four co-curators of the exhibition to consider new perspectives revealed by this first, comprehensive showing of Waterhouse’s work. The conference is organised by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in collaboration with the Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition at the University of Bristol, with a generous gift from the Vice Chancellor, Professor Eric Thomas, and Mrs Narell Thomas. It will conclude with an evening reception and private view of the exhibition at the Royal Academy.
Full conference fee, including coffee, lunch, tea and reception at the Royal Academy of Arts: £40. Student and Senior Citizen concessions are available at a reduced rate of £20. To register for the conference please check availability with Ella Fleming at the Paul Mellon Centre: Email: events@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk; Tel: 202 7580 0311; Fax: 020 7636 6730 – then send a cheque made payable to the Paul Mellon Centre to: 16 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3JA, and include a stamped addressed envelope.
Conference Programme
Ronald Hutton (History Dept., University of Bristol)
Languages of Paganism in Victorian Britain
Christina Bradstreet (Birkbeck College)
Wicked with Roses: Waterhouse’s Soul of the Rose
Simon Goldhill (Dept. of Greek, Kings College Cambridge)
Sex in the afternoon: the ancient world and desire in Waterhouse
Nancy Marshall (University of Wisconsin - Madison)
Nymphs in the City: Waterhouse in the Context of Late
Nineteenth-Century London
Stefano-Maria Evangelista (Trinity College Oxford)
Ladies of Shalott: Waterhouse and Victorian Poetry
A roundtable discussion will be led by the co-curators of the exhibition: Elizabeth Prettejohn (Professor of History of Art, University of Bristol), Peter Trippi (independent art historian and Editor, Fine Art Connoisseur), Robert Upstone (Curator of Modern British Art, Tate), Patty Wageman (Deputy Director, Groninger Museum).
Evening reception and private view of the exhibition at 7 p.m. in the Sackler Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts."