Academic Activities
The Paul Mellon Centre’s academic events programme offers an intellectually varied platform showcasing new research in the field of British art and its complex histories. Collaboration with individuals and institutions enables us to shape a dynamic research culture through events that take place in Bedford Square, online and at external venues. In the Autumn term of 2022, the evening Research Seminars presented new work from scholars on a broad range of topics. Speakers included Alexander Marr, Mark Crinson, Greg Smith and Karin Zitzewitz. All evening seminars are now live-streamed and accessible to an in-person audience in London as well as a lively global community of online attendees. The Spring edition took the form of a series of dialogues between two researchers highlighting some of the most pressing questions for our field. Research Lunch Seminars at the Paul Mellon Centre continue to be much loved and well attended. They provide a space for dialogue and for early career and senior scholars to present work in progress and receive feedback from an audience of experts as well as a general audience. Topics in Autumn 2022 included the Anglo-Dutch empire and visual culture in the Atlantic world, the works of Ithell Colquhoun, and architectural science and the history of architecture, to name a few. With Tate Liverpool, the Centre organised the conference Finding Common Ground: Making the Landscape Radical in July 2022. Imagined as an extension of the Radical Landscapes exhibition, the symposium provided a space to dig deeper into the histories and futures of the rural. In December 2022, the Centre held an online international workshop on ‘Mass Data Methodologies’, which asked how artistic populations represent or intersect with the larger political entities – community, class, nation. Also in December, the Centre organised with Stephen Daniels the conference Rereading Constable: Letters, Life and Art. Speakers focused on a single letter that opened up new questions and arguments about John Constable’s life, practice and identity as a painter, and about the wider artistic, literary, religious and political cultures of his era. These are just some details from the busy programme in 2022–23. 6
James Forbes, The Large Mazagon Mango (detail), illustration from A Voyage from England to Bombay with Descriptions in Asia, Africa, and South America, 1765–1800 by James Forbes, Vol. II, plate 127. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, Rare Books and Manuscripts (MSS 66)
