Academic Activities 2016–2017

30 June – 2 July 2016

Showing, Telling, Seeing: Exhibiting South Asia in Britain

1900–Now

Curatorial Panel: Deepak Ananth, Iwona Blazwick, David Elliott, Geeta Kapur and Sharmini Pereira – moderated by Hammad Nasar

Susan Bean Diverging Paths: Two Sculptors and Their Reception at the Turn of the 20th Century

Sria Chatterjee The Politics of Knowing, Making and Showing: The Festival of India in Britain and Some Afterlives

Response (Sabih Ahmed)

Holly Shaffer Museum Bhavan

Lotte Hoek and Sanjukta Sunderason Journeying Through Modernism: Travels and Transits of East Pakistani Artists in Early-1950s London

Response (Nima Poovaya-Smith)

Discussion panel: Writing About Exhibitions: Emilia Terracciano, Zehra Jumabhoy and Shezad Dawood –moderated by Lucy Steeds

Brinda Kumar The Other Burlington Exhibition

Hilary Floe Myth and Reality: Oxford and India, 1982

Response (Daniel Rycroft)

Naiza Khan and Karin Zitzewitz Nodal Connections: Triangle Network, Gasworks, and South Asian Artists in the UK

Eva Bentcheva Priceless Encounters, Costly Legacies: Motiroti’s Priceless (2007) as Contemporary Inquiry into Colonial Displays

Response (Alnoor Mitha)

Discussion panel: Researching the Exhibition: Experience and event Saloni Mathur, Carmen Juliá and Sarah Turner –moderated by Claire Wintle

Alice Correia South Asian Women Artists in Britain and the Politics of Articulation

Shanay Jhaveri Lionel Wendt

Plenary panel: Discussion with Devika Singh, Hammad Nasar, Sonal Khullar, Sarah Turner and Nada Raza

7 July 2016

Pictorial Effect: Photography and Art in Britain 1835-1910

Study Day

Painting with Light: Exhibition introduction and walkthrough with curators Carol Jacobi and Hope Kingsley

Patrizia di Bello Finished and Unfinished in Pictorial Photography

Margaret MacDonald Whistler and Photography

Anne Wagner Trees, Talbot, and the Anti-pictorial

Sophie Gordon Roger Fenton’s Orientalist Suite

Marta Weiss Cameron and Watts

Sean Willcock The “Picturesque”, the Site of Violence and Colonial Photography

8 July 2016

The Hereford Screen: Invention, Memory, and the Gothic Revival

Paul Mellon Centre and V&A Study Day

Hereford Screen: Materials, Meanings, Techniques

V&A, Hereford Screen

Metalwork Archive and the Hereford Screen: Highlights and Lines of Enquiry

V&A, Metalwork Archive

Presentations from:

Tessa Murdoch (V&A), Alicia Robinson (V&A), Justin Underhill (Berkeley), and Matthew Reeve (Queen’s)

Diana Heath (V&A), Angus Patterson (V&A), and Jackie Jung (Yale)

Visit to St Cyprian’s, Clarence Gate (Ninian Comper, 1903)

Visit led by Ayla Lepine, to view Gothic Revival rood screen in situ and compare Scott and Comper approaches to Anglican architecture and liturgy

The Other Story, Hayward Gallery, London (1989). Interior view. (c) Rasheed Araeen. Courtesy Rasheed Araeen and Asia Art Archive. Image used to promote the Showing, Telling, Seeing: Exhibiting South Asia in Britain conference.

8 September 2016

Early Career Research Network Seminar

Copyright Briefing for Researchers by Bernard Horrocks, the Tate Galley’s Intellectual Property (“IP”) Manager

29–30 September 2016

A Year’s Art: The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1769-2016

Thursday 29 September

Catherine Roach The Ecosystem of Exhibitions, 1821

Thomas Ardill The Great Room and School of Painting at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1828

Max Bryant The Architecture Room: John Soane and Charles Cockerell (1829)

Paul Spencer-Longhurst Taking A View: Richard Wilson and the Place of Landscape at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1771

Anne Puetz A Copy after Domenichino at the Exhibition of 1811: Mr Bone's “Enviable Talents” and the Place of Enamel Miniatures at the Academy

M.J. Wells The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1847: J. B. Bunning and the New Coal Exchange Model

Gillian Forrester “Drawing in its Broadest Sense”: the Incursion of the Nonprofessional Draftsperson at the 2004 Summer Exhibition

Mark Pomeroy Sources and Documents: Researching the Summer Exhibitions

Craig Hanson 1823 and Scottish Identity

Madeline Boden 1875: Babylonians in Burlington House

Dorothy Nott “Excellence Executed by a Woman” – a Gendered Approach in the Nineteenth-century Royal Academy, 1874

Kate Nichols God, Kittens, and Empire: The Evangelical Press at the 1881 Exhibition

Paris Spies-Gans Female Exhibitors at the RA, 1800

Jacqueline Riding Shot Out of the Water?: Constable vs Turner at the Royal Academy, 1832

Barbara Bryant RA 1858: Who Was F. W. George?

Friday 30 September

Pamela Fletcher 1859: The Sequel: Memory, Time, and Attachment in Victorian Narrative Painting

Ann Poulson Representations of Queenship at the Royal Academy of Arts: 1853

Caroline Dakers Alfred Morrison and the 1872 Summer Exhibition

Richard Davey Looking for the Narrative in 2015

Cora Gilroy-Ware Exhibiting Sculpture, 1837

Claire Jones 1882 Display at the RA

Nicholas Tromans George Frederic Watts's “Physical Energy”, 1904

Melanie Veasey Siegfried Charoux –The Pedestrian (1951)

Vassil Yordanov Academic Art and Formalism: The Summer Exhibition of 1911

Stacey Clapperton “No More Modern than Twenty Years Ago”: The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1917

Timothy Wilcox 1936: The Year of Dame Laura Knight

Annette Wickham Deadly Conservatism: The Royal Academy Selection and Hanging Committee, 1938

Alex Massouras Dark Sunlight in Summer (1963)

Martin Myrone 1832: The Image of Reform?

Annie Lyles John Constable and the Cenotaph

Andrew Stephenson “All the isms are gone”: Examining the Critical Reception of the Royal Academy Shows in 1924 and 1925

6 October 2016

George Shaw Scholars’ Morning

7 October 2016

Art in the British Country House: Collecting and Display Symposium

Emily Burns (University of Nottingham) The Grand Designs of Sir Justinian Isham: Investigating the Patronage, Collecting and Display at Lamport Hall During the Interregnum

Amelia Smith (Birkbeck College, University of London) “The Most Capital Masters Dispers’d All Over the House”: Displays of Art at Longford Castle in the Late Eighteenth Century

Susan Gordon (University of Leicester)

“Bronzo Mad”: The Choice, Order and Location of General James Dormer’s Sculpture, Collection at Rousham, Oxfordshire

Joan Coutu (University of Waterloo) The Future of the Past: Copies of Antique Statues at Wentworth Woodhouse

Peter Björn Kerber (J. Paul Getty Museum) The Audio-visual Charles Jennens

Andrew Loukes (Petworth House, National Trust) “Solid, Liberal, Rich and English”: Patronage and Patriotism at Petworth in the Early 19th Century

Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth (University of Leeds) Forming Hierarchies and Creating Dialogues: Ferdinand de Rothschild’s Display of Sèvres Porcelain at Waddesdon Manor

Nicola Pickering (University of Reading)

Mayer Amschel de Rothschild and Mentmore Towers: Displaying Le Goût Rothschild

Keynote Speaker – Adriano Aymonino (University of Buckingham) Country House Studies: Past, Present and Future

12 October 2016

Doddington and the Delavals: collecting and display in the 18th century

A Workshop at Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire

A one-day workshop organised by the Paul Mellon Centre, as part of the research project, Art in the British Country House: Collecting and Display

Session 1 Doddington Before the Delavals [Great Hall & Brown Parlour]

Session 2 Arthur Pond and the Early Patronage of the Delavals [Drawing Room]

Session 3 Displaying the Delavals in the 1760s [Long Gallery]

Session 4 The Delavals and the Doddington Tapestries [Holly Room]

15 November 2016

Benjamin West Workshop

Spencer House and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Group discussion in front of the Benjamin West paintings currently on display in Spencer House:

The Death of Wolfe 1771; The Death of Chevalier Bayard 1772; The Death of Epaminondas 1773; The Family of the King of Armenia before Cyrus 1773; The Wife of Arminius brought captive to Germanicus 1773; Milkmaids in St James's Park, Westminster Abbey beyond c. 1801

Discussion led by: Mark Hallett, Lars Kokkonen, Martin Myrone and Greg Sullivan

Cicely Robinson Benjamin West’s Battle of La Hogue: British Naval History Painting and the National Gallery of Naval Art

Cora Gilroy-Ware Benjamin West's “Radical Redirection”, 1802–1809

Tom Ardill Benjamin West's Later Scriptural Paintings: Religious Art as Public Spectacle

18 November 2016

PMC Student Event

This event was for students who were interested in finding out more about the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. We also offered an introduction to our library and archive collections

Autumn Research Seminar Series 2016

Research Seminars

5 October David Mellor Paul Nash's Hauntings

19 October Lloyd de Beer The Digital Pilgrim Project: Medieval Badges, Digital Tools, New Questions

16 November Panel Discussion with Bruno Wollemi, Professor Christopher Green (Art historian, Courtauld Institute of Art), Matthew Collings (Art critic and writer) and Emma Biggs (Artist and author)

Screening and discussion: John Golding: A Path to the Absolute

30 November Jennifer Tucker Collecting the Future, Imaging the Past: Humphrey Jennings and Pandaemonium (1938–50)

7 December Anthony Geraghty The Empress Eugénie in Exile: Collecting and Display at Farnborough Hill, Hampshire, in the 1880s

Research Lunches Seminars 2016

14 October Sophie Morris D rawn, Quartered, Stoned and Framed: Anatomical Bodies “Curiously Engraven from the Life” in Late Seventeenthcentury London

21 October Amy Tobin Breaking Down the South London Art Group's A Woman's Place (1974)

11 November Lisa Tickner Private View: A Particularly Soft English Hardback

25 November Amy Concannon ‘‘Did Babel E’er Rise Faster?”: The Changing Image of Brighton, 1820–50

9 December Freya Spoor Promoting Pastel: Exhibitions of the Pastel Medium in Late Nineteenth-century Britain

9 January–6 February 2017 (Every Monday) at The National Gallery –Mellon Lectures by Tom Crow

Modernist Faces: Hard Bop and Clean Design

Jazz Painting? Modernist Hockney?

Painting Sensations: Pauline Boty/ Bridget Riley

Hippy Shake: Sculpture Through the Counterculture

The Great Lost Look c. 1969: Beyond Cultural Studies

27 January 2017

Artists’ Lives: Speaking of the Kasmin Gallery

Private view & Gallery Discussion at Tate Britain

25 January 2017

The Work of Artists

Speakers:

Thomas Crow (Rosalie Solow Professor, New York University)

Helena Bonett (PhD researcher, Tate/Royal College of Art)

Vid Simoniti (Research Fellow, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, Cambridge University)

Alexander Massouras (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Ruskin School of Art)

Elena Crippa (Curator, Modern and Contemporary British Art, Tate Britain)

31 January 2017

Processing the 60s – Roundtable Workshop (connected to Tom Crow’s Mellon Lectures)

Lynda Nead; Kate Apsinall; Alex Seago; Éric de Chassey; Elena Crippa; Lisa Tickner; Anne Massey; Alex Massouras; David Mellor

9–10 February 2017

Making Women’s Art Matter: New Approaches to the Careers and Legacies of Women Artists

9 February

Emma Fitts (Artist)

To Pressure from Vibration: Talking Through textiles

Tess Denman Cleaver (Tender Buttons & Newcastle University) Time Passes: Performing Virginia Woolf's Landscapes

Elke Krasny (Professor, The Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna) Feminist Assembly: Live Art History

Jeanine Richards (Associate Professor, Kingston University) & Fiona Fisher (Researcher, Kingston University) Dora

Eliza Gluckman (Curator, New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards College,

University of Cambridge & Co-Founder of A Woman’s Place (Day+Gluckman)) New Hall Art Collection: Feminist Strategies Versus Collection Building

Helena Bonett (PhD researcher, Tate/ Royal College of Art) Modelling a Method: Contesting Patrimonial Legacy Structures in the Art Museum

Laura Smith (Curator, Tate St Ives.) Thinking Through Our Mothers: Making an Exhibition after Virginia Woolf

Roundtable Session

Timothy Wilcox (Independent scholar)

Madeline Kennedy (Independent researcher)

Katherine Meynell (Independent Scholar) Evening visit to Guerilla Girls: Is it Even Worse in Europe? at Whitechapel Gallery

10 February 2017

Rowena Morgan-Cox (Associate Director, The Fine Art Society) Modern British Women: Legacies of Women Artists at The Fine Art Society

Carol Jacobi (Curator 1850–1915 British Art, Tate Britain) Missing Links and Legacy

Sarah Milroy (Independent curator and writer, co-curator of Vanessa Bell at Dulwich Picture Gallery) Cracking the Mould: Vanessa Bell at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Gill Park (Director, Pavilion and PhD student, University of Leeds) Embarrassing Bodies: The “Feministing” Of Photography in the Work of Jo Spence

Amy Tobin (Associate Lecturer Goldsmiths College/City and Guilds Art School) Record, Recover, Repeat: Feminist Approaches to the Histories of Feministinfluenced Art

Catherine Spencer (Lecturer, School of Art History, University of St Andrews) Thinking Through the Matter: Women Artists, Entropy and Reuse

Kim Dhillon (Doctoral Candidate, Royal College of Art, London) A Matter of Words: How 1970s Feminist Critiques of Conceptual Art Embraced Language

Nicola McCartney (Lecturer, Cultural Studies, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts/Associate Research Fellow, Birkbeck, University of London) The Guerrilla Girls: A Case-study in How Anonymity and Collectivism, as a Methodology, Might Promote Women Artists' Visibility

Cleo Roberts (UKIERI PhD researcher, University of Liverpool and University of Cambridge) The Ties of Wives: The Problematics of British Female Artists Working in India

Mora Beauchamp-Byrd (Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History and Curatorial Studies, Department of Art & Art History, Spelman College, Atlanta) Lubaina Himid's Fashionable Marriage of 1986, William Hogarth and the Uses of the Canon: A Case Study

Performance

Katie Schwab (Artist) Dear. For. To.

1 March 2017

Dissertation Workshop

Sarah Victoria Turner; Charlotte Brunskill; Frankie Drummond; Stephen O’Toole

1 March 2017

Castle Howard Study Day

3 March 2017

Paul Nash Study Day

Emma Chambers; Sarah Fill; Emma Chambers; Clare Woods David Mellor –Imperial Magic; Sam Smiles – archaeology/ landscape; Inga Fraser – design (video presentation); Simon Grant –photography; Michel Remy – surrealism; Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer

28 March 2017

Art History & the Middlebow Workshop

Keynote – Faye Hammill (Professor of English, University of Strathclyde)

Middlebrow, Media, Genre Lecture Theatre (Public Event)

Martin Myrone (Tate) Ordinary Artists

Emma West (Cardiff University) Interwar Travel Posters: A Middlebrow Art?

John Fagg (Birmingham University)

Will May (Southampton University)

Why Did Stevie Smith Play Twister in the Long Gallery with the Slade Professor of Fine Art?

Sally Faulkner (Exeter University) Introducing the Middlebrow in Film Studies

Sally Beazley-Long (Birkbeck, University of London) Marketing the Middlebrow: Laura Knight and the Artist as Brand

Jessica Feather (Paul Mellon Centre) –The Middlebrow Art Collector

Alison Light (University College London) Is There a Politics of the Middlebrow?

Research Lunch Seminars Spring 207

17 February Rodolpho Rodriguez The Great British Gatehouse: Ready, Get Set, Build!

10 March Chloe Johnson Concealment & Deception: The Art of the Camoufleurs of Leamington Spa, 1939–1945

17 March Arnika Schmidt Italy Revisited –Nino Costa (1826–1903) and the Etruscan School of Art

31 March Isabelle Baudino Samuel Wale's Book Illustrations: Designing Historical Panoramas in Georgian London

Research Seminars Spring 2017

22 February Ben Highmore The Art of Brutalism in 1950s London

8 March Simon Bradley Pevsner and the Oxford Colleges

22 March Sigrid de Jong Dialogues Across the Channel: British and French Architects on Architectural Experience (1750–1815)

5 April John Goodall The Regency Castle

Fellows’ Talks

2 May Alice Correia Articulating British Asian Art Histories

30 May Rebecca Wade Domenico Brucciani and the wandering Italians of nineteenth-century Britain

13 June John Chu “Newly Invented Original Paintings”: Philip Mercier and the Origins of the British Fancy Picture

27 June Louise Hardiman Russia and the South Kensington Museum: A case study in collecting and cultural diplomacy

Research Seminars Summer 2017

3 May Glyn Davies Opus Anglicanum: Masterpieces of English Medieval Embroidery at the V&A: Respondent: Paul Binski

17 May Joanna Marschner Enlightened

Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte and the Shaping of the Modern World. The Value of the Exhibition to the Research Network

31 May Anya Matthew & Richard Johns The Exhibition as Research: “A Great and Noble Design” – Sir James Thornhill's Preparatory Sketches for the Painted Hall at Greenwich

7 June Clare Barlow and Eleanor Jones Queer British Art 1861–1967

21 June Simon Martin The Mythic Method: Classicism in British Art 1920–1950

Research Lunches Summer 2017

12 May Laura Slater Don’t Look Back in Anger: Art at Court in the Aftermath of the Barons’ War, 1258–1266

26 May Meg Boulton Iconography on the Edge/s: Constructing Space and the Sacred in Anglo-Saxon England

2 June Thomas Hughes “An Intense Consciousness of the Present”: Ruskin, Pater and the Drawing of Modern Life

16 June Carly Hegenbarth Catholic Emancipation, Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847) and the Catholic Association in Print: Satirical Printmaking in Dublin in the Late 1820s

23 June Sophie Hatchwell Grotesque Bodies: Second World War Figuration in the Work of Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde

23 June Greg Salter Francis Newton Souza, Masculinity, and Migration in the Late 1950s

4–5 May 2017

A Bigger Picture: New Approaches to David Hockney Conference

Natalia Naish (University of Kent) Three Kings and a Queen (1961): The Institutional Framework Behind the Success of David Hockney's Early Etchings

Greg Salter (University of Birmingham) David Hockney and Egypt in the 1960s

Sandra Bowern (University of Kent)

Hockney Meets Hogarth: Artistic Exchange in the Opera Designs of David Hockey

Martin Hammer (University of Kent) Photographic Sources and Affinities in David Hockey's Art of the 1960s

David Mellor (University of Sussex)

Hyperbolic Hockney: After the Hotel Romano Angeles and his Ecstatic Spaces of the 80s and 90s

Rebecca Hellen, Bronwyn Ormsby and Rachel Scott (Tate) Hockney from a Conservation Perspective: “It is Very Good Advice to Believe Only What an Artist Does…”

David Rayson (Royal College of Art) Finding David Hockney in a Book

Edith Devaney (Curator, Royal Academy) “In-Conversation” with Alessandro Raho (Artist)

16 May 2017

The Currency of Likeness: Perspectives on the Portrait Print Workshop

Lucy Peltz (National Portrait Gallery) Granger and extra illustration

Hermione Lee (University of Oxford) Written biography and “visual” biography

Richard Taws (UCL) Politics of ephemerality and paper identities

Allie Stielau (UCL) The printed portrait's relation to ornamental frames and other framing devices

Tessa Kilgarriff (NPG/University of Bristol)

24 May 2017

The Photographers’ Gallery Workshop

Sunil Gupta on his work with the Gallery as artist and curator Exiles; An Economy of Signs

David Brittain on Five Years with the Face (1985) and what it says about trends in photography

Kay Watson on touring exhibitions

Ben Burbridge on the exchange in What is 21st Century Photography? (Dewdney & Rubenstein) on the gallery’s blog

Paul Hill on his Reportage from Wolverhampton exhibition (1972)

Deborah Schultz on two exhibitions working with archives: Rosângela Rennó: Rio-Montevideo and Clarisse D’Arcimoles: Forgotten Tale

Eugenie Shinkle on Image & Exploration: Some Directions in British Photography 1980–85

Jem Southam on long-term legacy planning for contemporary photographers, with the Roger Mayne exhibition (2017) as a touchstone

Ian Walker on two exhibitions at the Gallery of work by Keith Arnatt (1989 & 2007)

Val Williams on the exhibitions: Mysterious Co-incidences, Paul Reas, and Presences: Portraits

Lucy Soutter on “expanded photography” using The Photographic Object (2009)

16–17 June 2017

Becoming Henry Moore

Paul Mellon Centre & Henry Moore Foundation

Keynote address by Tony Cragg Henry Moore: His Influence in the 20th Century and Beyond

Robert Sutton: Educating Henry: Context, Circumstance, Educational Opportunity

Rachel Smith: “I Looked Over and Over Again”: Connecting Barbara Hepworth’s Early Life and Work

Alexander Massouras: The Old and the New Old: Challenges to the Antique Room 1914–1930

Inga Fraser: Stilled Rhythms or Vitalised Matter: Frank Dobson and Henry Moore in London 1919–1930

Cathy Corbett: Henry Moore, Edward Wadsworth and Ossip Zadkine’s Figures in the Garden

19 June

John Constable: Man of Letters Workshop

22 June 2017

Still/Moving Body: Art Working, Encounters, Conversations with Sonia Khurana

Griselda Pollock; Eva Bentcheva; Leon Wainwright; “IF I DON’T DANCE…”, a talk by the artist Sonia Khurana

Collections

The work of Collections staff this year was focused on two main areas: securing and managing a series of important new acquisitions and continuing to ensure that the environmental conditions in the new stores were stable and compliant with best practice in the field.

The most significant acquisition of the year was that of the Brian Sewell Archive and Library. Sewell (1931–2015) was a British art historian, author, and media personality. After graduating from the Courtauld Institute of Art, he worked at Christie’s (1957–1967); as an independent dealer (1967–1980); and as a journalist, most notably for the Evening Standard (1984–2015). At the time of his death he was widely known as the UK’s most controversial art critic. The Sewell Archive consists of seventy boxes of material relating to every aspect of his life from childhood to death. It includes passports, diaries, press-cuttings, postcards, photographs, programmes, research, scripts, voice-over texts, memorabilia, and correspondence. The part of Sewell’s extensive Library that was acquired by the Centre comprises seventy-five boxes of books on British art, collecting, artists and sculptors and is particularly strong on twentieth and twenty-first century art. Another important addition to the Centre’s holdings made during the year was the Giles Waterfield Archive and Library. This material was generously donated by Horatia Harrod in May 2017. Waterfield (1949–2016) was a museum director, curator, teacher, advisor and novelist. His Archive consists of sixteen boxes of material relating to almost every aspect of his life. It also includes a small amount of material related to his uncle, Humphrey Waterfield, and the garden at Hill House. It includes research notes, diaries, correspondence, draft manuscripts, and photographs. The Library material acquired by the Centre consists of books on British art and architectural history, including a small group of books on servants and the below-stairs life of the country house, and a substantial collection of guidebooks on country houses, particularly those in Scotland and Ireland.

The Paul Joyce Archive and Library was generously donated by Michael Hall. Joyce (1934–2014) was an architectural historian and the acknowledged authority on George Edmund Street for over forty years. The archive comprises sixteen boxes of material and eighteen portfolio cases, the majority concerning Joyce’s extensive work on Street. There are files on most of the architect’s works which include research notes, correspondence, and photographs. Most notably, it also includes some of Street’s original nineteenth-century hand-coloured plans and drawings. In addition, there is material relating to research Joyce carried out in the 1970s for an unpublished dictionary of Victorian architects. The Library of about a hundred books, some of which have been extracted from the Archive, consists of Street’s principal publications, together with a group of books and guides on churches that he designed or restored.

Information about acquisitions that consisted solely of archive material, or solely of library material, have been detailed in the relevant sections below.

Work on stabilising the environment in the archive stores continued throughout the year, and, as yet, the appropriate conditions have not been met. However, following exhaustive investigations involving external experts, it has been determined that the best course of action will be to install air conditioning units that will mechanically manage the temperature and humidity. It is anticipated that this work will take place in 2018.

In preparation for the building work, and in order to make room for the new acquisitions, some of the least-consulted archive collections were re-packed and sent to off-site storage where they can be recalled on request for interested researchers. Parts of the Library collection that had remained off-site since the expansion project took place were returned to the Centre in September 2016. This comprises the journals, auction catalogues, theses, and rare books, and means that all catalogued stock is back in the Centre and accessible to readers.

The fact that a significant volume of Collections material remained off-site did not affect in-person visits to the Public Study Room. 1,066 visits were made during the year, an increase of nearly one third from the previous year. The total number of new readers registered was 184. In addition, the number of remote enquiries received rose significantly. Statistics were kept for those requiring up to twenty minutes of research, which show that 170 enquiries in this category were addressed during the year.

There were three Collections displays in 2016–2017: two organised by Collections staff, the other by Jessica Feather, the Centre’s Allen Fellow. Bryony Botwright-Rance provided assistance with all of these displays. Each display focused on a different subject, often relating to a key activity or event taking place at the Centre. All featured material from the Research Collections:

The Inspection of the Curious: The Country-House Guidebook, c. 1750–1990, 5 September 2016–6 January 2017

The Price of War: Recording, Publishing & Preserving Art 1939–1945, 16 January–28th April 2017

The Brian Sewell Archive: An Introduction, 8 May–23 September 2017

All the displays have been well received and have attracted new audiences to the Centre, some visiting solely for the purpose of viewing them.

In September 2016, the Librarian went on sick leave for an extended period. Natasha Held was engaged from the end of the year for three days a week on a freelance basis to support work in the library area. Natasha is a qualified librarian already known to the Centre, having covered the Librarian’s maternity leave in both 2001 and 2004. She had recently been working as the Librarian & Learning Resources Manager at Christie’s Education. Frankie Drummond Charig, The Archives & Library Assistant, continued the distance learning postgraduate diploma for Archives and Records Management, offered by Dundee University. In December 2016, Mary Peskett-Smith was engaged on a freelance basis one day a week in order to list the arts-related articles written by Sewell in the Brian Sewell Archive. Stephen O’Toole was also given supervised responsibility for listing the non-arts-related articles in this collection. Throughout the year, Collections staff received training in preservation, oral history, and emergency recovery. They also continued to provide a series of talks on, and tours of, the Research Collections. These included a general event open to students from across the country. In addition, sessions were held for Master’s students from the University of Buckingham (Adrian Tinniswood’s English Country House 1485–1945) and the Courtauld (Sarah Turner’s Making the Modern: Art and Visual Culture in Britain, c. 1890–1970). Collections staff also took part in two new initiatives: London History Day (organised by Historic England) and the Bedford Square Festival (organised by the Centre in collaboration with other institutions on Bedford Square).

Library

A total of 1,274, books, pamphlets and exhibition catalogues were accessioned during the year.

As well as the newly-published books, exhibition catalogues, journals, and auction catalogues acquired by purchase and the many individual donations received in the Library, a larger-than-usual number of donated collections were received during the year.

Alongside the Joyce, Sewell and Waterfield Libraries mentioned above, the following donations were also received:

In January, a small collection of country house guidebooks was donated by the architectural historians Neil Burton and Caroline Dakers. This kind donation adds to the already substantial collection of HMSO, National Trust, and other guidebooks held by the Centre.

Hope Kingsley, a curator of photography at the Wilson Centre for Photography, personally donated and facilitated a donation from the Wilson Centre of substantial runs of the photographic journals History of Photography, Image, Photoresearcher and Photohistorica. These generous donations have greatly augmented the Centre’s holdings in the history of photography and will form the basis of an expansion of collecting in this area.

Throughout the year, work was undertaken sorting these donations, checking them against existing stock, and logging and cataloguing them on the Library catalogue. The Librarian began working on the Waterfield and the Joyce Libraries and Natasha Held worked on the Burton & Dakers and Sewell Libraries and catalogued books on the John Moores Painting Prize earlier donated by Timothy Stevens.

After retirement from her post of Fellowships & Grants Manager in September 2016, Mary Peskett-Smith returned to the Centre in the role of Cataloguer – Auction Catalogues, working one day a week. Throughout the year, she worked on cataloguing the auction catalogue collection formerly owned by Arthur Tooth & Sons with the aim of completing this sequence in June 2018.

Gina Baber worked in a freelance capacity at the beginning of the year to assist with library accessioning.

Archive

Some outstanding archive collections were acquired during the year and, as such, the Archivist & Records Manager and the Assistant Archivist & Records Manager spent much time liaising with donors, lawyers, copyright experts, and conservators; reviewing, assessing, and packing material; arranging transportation; compiling preliminary boxlists; considering access provision; and publicising the collections.

Alongside the Sewell, Waterfield, and Joyce Archives detailed above, the following collections were also acquired:

The Ben Nicolson Archive was generously donated by his daughter, Vanessa Nicolson. Nicolson (1914–1978) was a British art historian, author, and editor of the Burlington Magazine (from 1947 to 1978). The archive comprises seventeen personal diaries, thirteen of which date from 1933–1939 and cover Nicolson’s formative years. It also comprises correspondence from a wide range of friends and acquaintances dating from the same period including, for example, Isaiah Berlin, Kenneth Clark, Lawrence Gowing, and Lucien Pissarro.

The Nigel Surry Archive was generously donated by Surry himself, a recognised expert on the little-known portrait artist, George Beare (d. 1749). The collection includes research notes, photographs and correspondence as well as material related to the Beare exhibition at Pallant House in 1989. It will enhance the Centre’s existing holdings on the artist.

During the year, cataloguing of the Ellis Waterhouse Archive was completed and the resulting catalogue – containing information on over a thousand well-known and obscure artists – was launched online. In addition, a project cataloguer was engaged to work on the Oliver Millar Archive. Georgina Lever, a qualified Archivist who previously worked for Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, spent six months reviewing and cataloguing the collection. The resulting descriptions, launched online in July 2017, were incredibly detailed and include information, for example, on the 328 artist research files maintained by Millar throughout his fifty-year career.

To complement this work, digital facsimiles of two of the most significant items in the Millar Archive were created and placed online. The indexes to the Journal of Visits to Collections and the index to the Journals of Artists are a key tool in identifying what material is held in the collection.

Frankie Drummond Charig’s work on the William Roberts Archive was temporarily suspended in order to allow her to focus on a project more suitable to the requirements of her MA course. With this in mind, she was given supervised responsibility for cataloguing the Daphne Haldin Archive. Work on this collection is due to be completed in 2018.

Descriptions of the Centre’s newly-acquired archive collections were again submitted to external union catalogues including Discovery, The National Archives Catalogues, and Archives Hub. They were also submitted to a new initiative: Archives Portal Europe. All of this work supports the overall aim to make the Archive Collections at the Centre visible and accessible to the widest possible audience.

Institutional Archives

The programme of recording the oral histories of former members of staff and others connected with the Centre was temporarily suspended whilst Liz Bruchet, the freelance expert traditionally engaged to conduct the interviews, was on maternity leave.

The ongoing issues with the archive storage areas – and the resulting lack of storage space – continued to halt most of the traditional records management activities undertaken by Collections staff. New initiatives – such as the increased number of digital projects and the recording of events – prompted Collections staff to raise, again, the issue of Digital Preservation. The Centre has not yet made provision for the long-term preservation and accessibility of electronic records created in the course of its day-to-day work but is beginning to look at relevant software and money has been allocated for Preservica.

Collections staff also continued to meet with new staff to give advice on good record-keeping practice.