The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
N EWSLETTER Yale University
January 2015 Issue 41
The Paul Mellon Centre – A New Chapter Since 1996 the Centre has been situated in a handsome Georgian townhouse at number 16 Bedford Square, a development which was lauded at the time of its construction in the late eighteenth century as ‘without exception the most perfect square’ in London. Now, owing to a pressing need to expand our facilities – and a desire to remain in the present location – the Centre is to expand into the adjoining property at number 15, the two buildings being brought together to provide an enhanced space and improved facilities for our readers and those who attend our ambitious programme of academic events. The complexities and sensitivities involved in uniting two historic Grade I listed properties have been at the forefront of the expansion project. The Centre is therefore delighted to have secured the services of the architects, Wright and Wright, who have extensive experience in projects of this delicate nature, notably joining together four townhouses on the west side of Bedford Square for the Architectural Association. While respecting the historic interiors and integrity of numbers 15 and 16 Bedford Square, the expanded premises of the Paul Mellon Centre will provide improved storage and readers’ facilities for our growing library and archives collections, new lecture rooms and seminar rooms, as well as a dedicated common room and lecture room for our Yale in London programme, which will serve undergraduates from Yale University. As a result of the expansion, and the related construction and refurbishment, we will be closed to the public until late summer 2015. During the renovation period regular updates about the Centre’s activities, its staff, collections, and
Front elevation, 15–16 Bedford Square © Wright & Wright Architects
external events programmes will be published on our website, blog (http://blog.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk), and social media platforms. We will share news of the programmes that will continue to receive our support, and report upon some exciting online developments at the Paul Mellon Centre.
Director of Studies: Mark Hallett Assistant Director for Finance and Administration: Sarah Ruddick
Deputy Director of Studies: Martin Postle Assistant Director for Research: Sarah Victoria Turner
Advisory Council: Iwona Blazwick, Alixe Bovey, David Peters Corbett, Penelope Curtis, Anthony Geraghty, Michael Hatt, Nigel Llewellyn, Richard Marks, A ndrew Moore, A ndrew Saint, Shearer West, A lison Yarrington Company Registered in England 983028 The Paul Mellon Centre
16 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3JA
Registered Charity 3138 Tel: 020 7580 0311
Fax: 020 7636 6730
www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk
THe PAUL MeLLON CeNTRe
COLLECTIONS
Collections Expansion Project
Part of the Paul Mellon Centre Archive is moved from the top floor of No. 16 Bedford Square to street level. Photograph: Frankie Drummond-Charig
The expansion of the Paul Mellon Centre creates a fantastic opportunity to improve resources for the Centre’s Library, Archives and Photographic Archive, readers and staff. Space has been a particular issue as the collections have grown considerably over the past twenty years and have completely filled No. 16 Bedford Square, spreading throughout almost all the rooms. With this in mind, when the expansion project started, the Librarian and Archivist surveyed all of the material and requested that the architects try to provide twenty years’ worth of expansion space. Better facilities for readers and staff as well as increased security for the collections were also required. The architects have produced plans that will bring all the material together in the lower ground floor and Collections staff will be accommodated in new offices there, with more space to work. The Archive and some of the Library will be stored in mobile shelving with improved temperature and humidity control. Other exciting developments include an exhibition area to display collections material, as well as improved facilities for researchers such as extra material on open access and a designated area to have a drink and eat lunch. As the building work will be so extensive, it was decided to move the Collections out of the building for the duration. In preparation for the move, the material has been assessed and sorted, the Library and Photographic Archive have been cleaned, and many books and journals have been bound. The Archives have been re-organised, and much material has been sent for conservation. Jamie Briggs, a removals company with experience of moving library collections, was selected and discussions began to prepare the move. The building, a five-storey Georgian townhouse, with no lift, posed considerable access issues. An external lift (one of only four in the country) was used to remove material through upper windows and down to the lorry below. The move, which saw approximately one kilometre of books, journals, photographic images and archive material packed up and moved offsite in only five days, was a huge success and it is all now in secure specialist storage with appropriate environmental conditions. Collections staff are now looking forward to moving everything back in to new and improved storage areas and re-opening the Public Study Room in 2015.
Research Events, September to December 2014 The Centre hosted a number of study days and workshops for researchers and curators in the autumn term, including one at the National Museum of Wales to coincide with the Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting exhibition; a brainstorming meeting for curators and researchers associated with Gainsborough’s House in Suffolk; a workshop on the topic of Moral Painting and Social Satire around 1750: Hogarth and Europe at Tate Britain; an exhibition development workshop at the V&A entitled The Work of England: Luxury Embroideries of the Middle Ages 1170–1539; and a scholars’ morning for the Constable: The Making of a Master exhibition at the V&A.
The autumn term Research Seminar series, which focused on art and visual culture in the twentieth century, took place on consecutive Wednesday evenings in October. Professor Lynda Nead, Professor Anne Wagner and Professor Lisa Tickner were the trio of distinguished scholars who gave exciting and thought-provoking papers. We collaborated with British Museum curators Lloyd de Beer and Naomi Speakman and academic advisors, Professor Sandy Heslop and Dr Jessica Berenbeim, on Invention and Imagination in British Architecture 600 – 1500, a conference at the British Museum (30 October–1 November). The event sold out and was an extremely lively gathering of students, curators and researchers in the field.
ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES
THe PAUL MeLLON CeNTRe
T HE PAUL M ELLON L ECTURES 2015 Penelope Curtis, Director of Tate Britain
Sculpture on the Threshold Mondays, 19 January–16 February 2015, 6.30–7.30 pm, Sainsbury Wing Theatre, The National Gallery This series of five lectures, sponsored by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, takes a wide-ranging look at the underlying forms of sculpture. Focusing on four key aspects – the vertical, the horizontal, the closed and the open – the lectures explore sculptural forms across time, and suggest fundamental continuities. Taking examples from the early medieval to the present, and looking at utilitarian as well as idealising formulae, the series suggests that we bring a deep subliminal understanding to our experience of sculpture, and that sculpture occupies a position on the physical and conceptual threshold of our familiar world. Penelope Curtis, now Director of Tate Britain, has published principally on sculpture after Rodin, but as curator of the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds she also developed a wide-ranging programme examining the materials and meanings of sculpture across time and place. These lectures draw on that experience. 19 January: The Vertical (From Nelson’s Column to the Ruthwell Monument) 26 January: The Horizontal (From Westminster Abbey to Keith Arnatt) 2 February: The Closed (From Pandora’s Box to Damien Hirst) 9 February: The Open (From Martin Creed to Castle Howard) 16 February: The ensemble (From Bethan Huws to Rilke’s Rodin)
Harry Bates, Pandora, exhibited 1891 Photo: © Tate, London 2014
Tickets are available now at £6 (£4 concessions) per lecture: Online: via The National Gallery http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/calendar/paul-mellon-lecture-19-january-2015 In person: Tickets can be purchased on the door
Research Programme Spring 2015
Invention and Imagination in British Architecture 600 – 1500 conference at the British Museum
Whilst the Centre is closed, we are collaborating on a number of events off-site, details of which can be found on our website. In partnership with the National Gallery and Birkbeck, University of London, the Centre is co-organising a major conference, Animating the Eighteenth-Century Country House (5–6 March 2015). Mark Hallett and Sarah Turner are convening a panel at the next Association of Art Historians conference which will be held at the University of east Anglia from 9–11 April. Their panel, British Art through its Exhibition Histories, 1760 to now, will take exhibition culture as a lens through which to examine the history, presentation, marketing and reception of British art, both in the UK and internationally.
THe PAUL MeLLON CeNTRe
GRANTS
Grant Awards At the October 2014 meeting of the Centre’s Advisory Council the following Fellowships and Grants were awarded: CURATORIAL ReSeARCH GRANTS Compton Verney to help support a research curator for 8 months to work on the project Hart Silversmiths: A Legacy The Foundling Museum to help support a research curator for 1 year to work on the project The Fallen Woman Gainsborough’s House to help support a research curator for 1 year to work on the project Cataloguing and Researching the Collection of Gainsborough’s House Greenwich Foundation for the Old Royal Naval College to help support a research curator for 1 year to work on the project Painted Hall Conservation: Understanding Sir James Thornhill’s Masterpiece National Museums Liverpool to help support a research curator for 1 year to work on the project Online Dictionary of the Liverpool Autumn Exhibitions and Spring Exhibitions (1871–1938) The National Trust to help support a research curator for 3 years to work on the project National Trust Furniture Research, Publication and Online Catalogue Project Nottingham City Museums and Galleries to help support a research curator for 1 year to work on the project The Ballantyne Collection of 20th-century British Studio Ceramics Turner Contemporary to help support a research curator for 1 year to work on the project The Waste Land University College London to help support a research curator for 1 year to work on the project Cultural Legacies of British Slave-Ownership PUBLICATION GRANTS (AUTHOR) Mirjam Brusius: The Absence of Photography: William Henry Fox Talbot, Photography and the Antique Sacha Craddock: The Contemporary Art Society: A Biography James Delbourgo: The Man Who Collected the World: Sir Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum John Hannavy: The Victorian Photographs of Dr Thomas Keith and John Forbes White Karen Hearn: Cornelius Johnson Owen Hopkins: From the Shadows: The Architecture and Afterlife of Nicholas Hawksmoor Samuel Shaw: From Bradford to Benares: The Art of William Rothenstein Mark Swenarton: Cook’s Camden: The Housing Programme of the London Borough of Camden under Sydney Cook 1965–73 Nick Thurston: Somebody’s Got To Do It: Selected Writings by Pavel Büchler since 1986 Beth Williamson: Between Art Practice and Psychoanalysis Mid-20th Century: Anton Ehrenzweig in Context George Younge: Old English Sources of the Theological Windows at Canterbury Cathedral (1174–c.1200)
PUBLICATION GRANTS (PUBLISHeR) Afterall: Designing Exhibitions, Exhibiting Participation: ‘an Exhibit’ 1957 Boydell and Brewer Ltd: The Art of the Church Screen in Medieval Europe (Making, Meaning, Preservation) Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi: The Stained Glass of Herkenrode Abbey in England Dulwich Picture Gallery: Winifred Knights 1899–1947 Heraldry Society: The Display of Heraldry: The Heraldic Imagination in Arts and Culture, 1500 to the Present Day Lund Humphries Publishers: Edward Ardizzone National Museums Scotland enterprises Ltd: Scottish Photography: The First Thirty Years Pallant House Gallery: Leon Underwood: Pioneer Modernist Paul Holberton Publishing: Cornelius Johnson Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies: The Smithfield Decretals (BL, Royal MS 10 E IV): Tales from the Margins of a 14th-century Law Book Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum: Slade Painters in Dorset: The Edwardians Society of Antiquaries of Scotland: Scottish Glass 1750–2006 The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds: George Morland: Art, Traffic and Society in late 18th-century England UCL Press: Project 75 University of Greenwich Galleries: Stockwell Depot (1967–1982) and The London Artists’ Studio Movement Walpole Society: The British in Spain Williamson Art Gallery and Museum: From Renaissance to Regent Street: The Della Robbia Pottery and the Influence of the Cultural Tourist ReSeARCH SUPPORT GRANTS Juliet Davis for research on Dispersal: A Landscape on the Edge Natasha eaton for research on The Conditional Image: Art, Indenture and Empire in the Indian Ocean, c.1780–c.1947 James Finch for research on David Sylvester: Art Writings Clare Griffiths for research on Clare Leighton (1898–1949): A Life Engraved Sharon Irish for research on Stephen Willats, 1970–2012: Coded Landscapes, Cybernetic Towers, and Urban Journeys Sandro Jung for research on Thomas Stothard, 18th-Century Book Illustration, and his Designs for James Harrison, Thomas Cadell, and William Davies
FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS
THe PAUL MeLLON CeNTRe
Sherry Lindquist for research on Nude Trinities and Other Anomalies in Books of Hours made for the Butler Family of London Claudia Marx for research on The Restoration of Major Medieval Churches in Victorian England and Wales Nathan O’Donnell for research on BLAST and the ‘Springs of Creation’: An Investigation of Vorticism, Irish Art and the Connections between Wyndham Lewis & Eileen Gray Judy Raymond for research on The Colour of Shadows: Richard Bridgens and his Images of Slavery in Trinidad Maria Stavrinaki for research on Prehistoric Modern. The different Uses of Prehistory by ‘Force One’ and the Independent Group Mengting Yu for research on Women Artists, the Avant Garde and London: 1901–1914 eDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMe GRANTS Art Institute of Chicago towards a two-day symposium Ireland: Art on a World Stage, 1690–1840, 20–21 March 2015 Birkbeck College and Tate towards a two-day symposium Artist and Empire: New Perspectives, 1780 to Now, 27–28 Nov 2015 Bristol Museum and Art Gallery towards a seminar How to Interpret Art and the British Empire for 21st-century Audiences: Roderick MacKenzie’s Delhi Durbar of 1903 in Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, mid-February 2015 Centre for eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York towards a three-day international conference Disseminating Dress: Britain and the World, 28–30 May 2015 Victoria & Albert Museum towards a two-day symposium A Collector of Secrets: Sir Balthazar Gerbier (1592–1663) in Cultural Diplomacy and the Arts, 4–5 June 2015 ANDReW WYLD ReSeARCH SUPPORT GRANTS (funded by the Andrew Wyld Fund) Ben Pollitt for research on The Drawings and Watercolours of Kamchatka by John Webber Marrikka Trotter for research on Creative Landscapes: Geology and Architecture in Robert Adam’s Late Watercolours BARNS-GRAHAM ReSeARCH SUPPORT GRANT (funded by the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Charitable Trust) Beth Williamson for research on America in the Borders: William Johnstone’s Landscape Painting 31 January 2015 is the closing date for applications for the next round of Fellowships and Grants. See details and application forms at www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/259/
George Romney A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings Alex Kidson This magnificent catalogue, in 3 volumes and with nearly 2,000 illustrations, will restore George Romney to his long-overdue position – with his contemporaries Reynolds and Gainsborough – as a master of 18th-century British portrait painting. With this product of impressive and thorough research undertaken over the course of twenty years, Alex Kidson asserts Romney’s status as one of the greatest British painters, whose last catalogue raisonné was published over 100 years ago. In more than 1,800 entries, many supported by new photography, Kidson aims to solve longstanding issues of attribution, distinguishing genuine pictures by Romney from works whose traditional attribution to him can no longer be supported. The author’s insights are guided by rich primary source material on Romney – including account books, ledgers, and sketchbooks – as well as secondary sources such as prints after lost works, newspaper reports and reviews, and writings by Romney’s contemporaries. Alex Kidson is Senior Research Fellow, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, and was curator of the 2002 bi-centenary exhibition George Romney 1734–1802. June 960 pp. 305x254mm. 1600 colour + 350 b/w illus HB Boxed Set ISBN 978-0-300-20969-3 £180.00
THe PAUL MeLLON CeNTRe
FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS
A Natural History of English Gardening 1650–1800 Mark Laird
British Silver: State Hermitage Museum Catalogue Marina Lopato
Inspired by the pioneering naturalist Gilbert White, who viewed natural history as the common study of cultural and natural communities, Mark Laird unearths forgotten historical data to reveal the complex visual cultures of early modern gardening. Ranging from climate studies to the study of a butterfly’s life-cycle, this original and fascinating book examines the scientific quest for order in nature as an offshoot of ordering the garden and field. Laird follows a broad series of chronological events – from the Little Ice Age winter of 1683 to the drought summer of the volcanic 1783 – to probe the nature of gardening and husbandry, the role of amateurs in scientific disciplines and the contribution of women as gardener-naturalists. Illustrated by a wealth of visual and literary materials – paintings, engravings, poetry, essays and letters, as well as prosaic household accounts and nursery bills – the book fundamentally transforms our understanding of the english landscape garden as a powerful cultural expression..
Despite its comparatively small size – just over 370 items, dating mainly from the 18th century – the collection of British silver in the Hermitage is renowned for its variety and quality. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, the introduction of european dining habits and Russian Anglophilia contributed to the acquisition of large quantities of British silver. Most of the pieces were functional rather than decorative, such as dinner or toilet services specially commissioned by members of the imperial family and the aristocracy. Marking the 250th anniversary of the State Hermitage Museum, this catalogue offers a grand presentation of these glorious silver items, supported by new research and documents. In her introduction, Marina Lopato details the complexities of Russian and Hermitage history to set the scene for the objects. Sumptuous illustrations showcase the exceptional nature of the Hermitage’s British silver, most evident in four monumental wine coolers that are among the best known pieces of British silver anywhere in the world.
Mark Laird is an historic landscape consultant. He teaches landscape history at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Marina Lopato is curator of european silver at the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
Giles Waterfield is an independent curator and writer.
June 400 pp. 305x254mm. 750 colour + 150 b/w illus. HB ISBN 978-0-300-21320-1 £100.00
June 304 pp. 280x245mm. 40 colour + 240 b/w illus. HB ISBN 978-0-300-20984-6 £45.00
May 448 pp. 290x248 mm. 300 colour + 100 b/w illus. HB ISBN 978-0-300-19636-8 £45.00
The People’s Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions in Britain, 1800–1914 Giles Waterfield This innovative history of British art museums begins in the early 19th century. The National Gallery and the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria & Albert Museum) in London may later have been at the centre of activity, but museums in cities such as Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Nottingham were immensely popular and attracted enthusiastic audiences. The People’s Galleries traces the rise of art museums in Britain through to the First World War, focusing on the phenomenon of municipal galleries. This richly illustrated book argues that these regional museums represented a new type of institution: an art gallery for a working-class audience, appropriate for the rapidly expanding cities and shaped by liberal ideals. As their appeal weakened with the new century, they adapted and became more conventional. Using a wide range of sources, the book studies the patrons and the publics, the collecting policies, the temporary exhibitions, and the architecture of these institutions, as well as the complex range of reasons for their foundation.
FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS
The Cobbe Cabinet of Curiosities: An Anglo-Irish Country House Museum edited by Arthur MacGregor
Samuel Palmer: Shadows on the Wall William Vaughan
Samuel Palmer was one of the This lavishly produced volume leading British landscape painters of presents a survey and analysis of a the 19th century. Inspired by his fascinating cabinet of curiosities mentor, the artist and poet William established around 1750 by the Cobbe Blake, Palmer brought a new family in Ireland and added to over a spiritual intensity to his period of 100 years. Although such interpretation of nature, producing collections were common in British works of unprecedented boldness country houses during the 18th and and fervency. Pre-eminent scholar 19th centuries, the Cobbe museum, William Vaughan – who organised still largely intact and housed in its the Palmer retrospective at the original cabinets, now forms a unique British Museum in 2005 – draws on survivor of this type of private unpublished diaries and letters, collection from the Age of offering a fresh interpretation of one enlightenment. A detailed catalogue of the most attractive, sympathetic, of the objects and specimens is yet idiosyncratic figures of the 19th accompanied by beautiful, specially century. Far from being a recluse, as commissioned photographs that he often is presented, Palmer was showcase the cabinet’s component actively engaged in Victorian cultural elements. Reproductions of portraits life and sought to exert a moral from the extensive collection of the power through his artwork. Cobbe family bring immediacy to the Beautifully illustrated with Palmer’s narrative by illustrating the visionary and enchanted landscapes, personalities involved in the the book contains rich studies of his collection’s development. Included are work, influences and resources. essays outlining, among other topics, Vaughan also shows how, later, the place of the cabinet of curiosities enthralled by the Pre-Raphaelite in enlightenment society and the movement, Palmer manipulated his history of the Cobbe family. extracts own artistic image to harmonise with from the family archive place the it. Little appreciated in his lifetime, collection in its social context. Palmer is now hailed as a precursor of modernism in the 20th century. Arthur Macgregor retired in 2008 from the Department of Antiquities William Vaughan is professor in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. emeritus of History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London. March 480 pp. 308x249mm. 200 colour + 100 b/w illus. HB with slipcase ISBN 978-0-300-20435-3 £75.00
May 368 pp. 280x245mm. 80 colour + 140 b/w illus. HB ISBN 978-0-300-20985-3 £50.00
THe PAUL MeLLON CeNTRe
Arts & Crafts Stained Glass Peter Cormack Beautifully illustrated and based on over three decades of research, Arts and Crafts Stained Glass is the first study of how the late 19th-century Arts and Crafts Movement transformed the aesthetics and production of stained glass in Britain and America. A progressive school of artists, committed to direct involvement both in making and designing windows, emerged in the 1880s and 1890s, reinventing stained glass as a modern art form. Using innovative materials and techniques, they rejected formulaic Gothic Revivalism while seeking authentic, creative inspiration in medieval traditions. This new approach was pioneered by Christopher Whall (1849–1924), whose charismatic teaching educated a generation of talented pupils – men and women – who produced intensely colourful and inventive stained glass, using dramatic and often powerfully moving design and symbolism. Peter Cormack demonstrates how women made critical contributions to the renewal of stained glass, gaining meaningful equality with their male colleagues, more than in any other applied art. Peter Cormack is a noted scholar of 19th- and 20th-century British and American stained glass, William Morris, and the Arts and Crafts Movement. July 336 pp. 285x245mm. 200 colour + 50 b/w illus. HB ISBN 978-0-300-20970-9. £50.00
ya l e c e n t e r f o r b r i t i s h a r t 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06520 USA
For complete details of the following exhibitions and programs, please visit britishart.yale.edu, phone +1 203 432 2800, or e-mail ycba.info@yale.edu.
EXHIBITION
The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760–1860 6 MARCH—26 JULY, 201 5
Yale University Art Gallery 1111 Chapel Street, New Haven The first major exhibition to be co-organized by the Yale Center for British Art and the Yale University Art Gallery brings together treasures from the collections of both museums. The show comprises works in different media by artists such as David d’Angers, William Blake, John Constable, Honoré Daumier, Eugène Delacroix, Henri Fuseli, Théodore Géricault, Francisco de Goya, and J. M. W. Turner that expand the view of Romanticism as a movement opposed to reason and scientific method. The broad range of works selected challenges the traditional notion of the Romantic artist as a brooding genius given to introversion and fantasy. Augmented with select loans from private collections and Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library, the exhibition celebrates the richness and range of Romantic art at the university, representing it afresh for a new generation of museumgoers. The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760– 1860 has been co-organized by the Yale Center for British Art and the Yale University Art Gallery. The curators are, at the Center, A. Cassandra Albinson, Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, and Nina Amstutz, Postdoctoral Research Associate, and, at the Gallery, Elisabeth (Lisa) Hodermarsky, Sutphin Family Senior Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Paola D’Agostino, Nina and Lee Griggs Assistant Curator of European Art; and Izabel Gass, Graduate Research Assistant, at the Center and Gallery. The exhibition has been made possible by the Art Gallery Exhibition and Publication Fund, and the Robert Lehman, ba 1913, Endowment Fund, as well as by funds from the Yale Center for British Art Program Endowment.
EXHIBITIO N O PENING LECTURE
PAUL MELLON LECTURES
TH U R SDAY, 5 M A RC H , 5 : 30 P M
Sculpture on the Threshold: An Inquiry into the Underlying Forms of Sculpture
Song without Words: The Romanticism Experience
Penelope Curtis, Director, Tate Britain Joseph Leo Koerner, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University Romanticism is perhaps best defined by its refusing definition. Intensifying the subjective nature of human experience, Romantic artists reached toward willfully indeterminate goals. They launched their work as songs without words, that is, as open-ended expressions that each individual viewer creatively completes. Joseph Leo Koerner puts words to some of the pictures in the exhibition The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760–1860. Reception to follow. This program will be held in the Robert L. McNeil Jr. Lecture Hall, Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel Street. It is generously sponsored by the Martin A. Ryerson Lectureship Fund.
The Paul Mellon Lectures are given biennially by an invited specialist in British art, first at the National Gallery, London, with the support of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and again at the Yale Center for British Art. The series of five lectures will be given at the National Gallery in London on 19 and 26 January, and 2, 9, and 16 February; and at Yale University on 16, 21, 23, 28, and 30 April. Curtis’s lectures take a wide-ranging look at the underlying forms of sculpture. Focusing on four key aspects—the vertical, the horizontal, the closed, and the open—the lectures explore sculptural forms across time and suggest fundamental continuities. Taking examples from the early medieval to the present, and looking at utilitarian as well as idealizing formulae, the series suggests that we bring a deep subliminal understanding to our experience of sculpture, and that sculpture occupies a position on the physical and conceptual threshold of our familiar world.
above: J. M. W. Turner, Fluelen: Morning (Looking towards the Lake), 1845, watercolour, gouache, and scratching out on medium, slightly textured, cream wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. below: Photo by Richard Caspole
YCBA BUILDING CONSERVATION PROJECT As of January, the Yale Center for British Art is closed to the public for thirteen months while it implements the second phase of its interior conservation project. Both the public galleries and the Lecture Hall will be refurbished, and the Center’s infrastructure will be significantly upgraded. The project is guided by more than a decade of study that resulted in the
publication, in 2011, of a conservation plan dedicated to preserving and maintaining the Center’s landmark building designed by Louis I. Kahn (1901–1974).
For updates on the project throughout the year, visit britishart.yale.edu/bcp.