Learning Programme

Graduate Summer School

In July 2019, the Centre launched a new programme, the Graduate Summer School, in partnership with the Yale School of Art, Yale Department of the History of Art and the Yale Center for British Art. Each year the Graduate Summer School aims to partner with a London-based organisation, and in 2019 this was the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). The aim of the twelve-day programme is to bridge the gap between graduate students studying fine arts and the history of art in the US and the UK. By bringing these two groups together, we hope to create an opportunity for students to engage in dialogue with one another and to explore key issues affecting both fields.

In 2019, the theme of the Graduate Summer School was ‘Artist Collectives’. The convenors were Ayham Ghraowi from the Yale School of Art, Richard Birkett from the ICA and Mark Hallett from the Paul Mellon Centre. Together with Academic Coordinator Rosie Ram (Royal College of Art) they created a syllabus that included workshops by Collective Creativity, Artist Placement Group, Incidental Unit, and the Otolith Group; visits to the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths, Oxford University, and Flat Time House; and contributions by artists, academics and staff at the Paul Mellon Centre. As part of the programme students were grouped together in order to work towards a final creative output of their choosing that reflected the theme of the Summer School and the discussions generated over the two weeks.

Public Lecture Course

In autumn 2019, the Centre ran a five-week series titled Art and War. Convened by Mark Hallett and Jacqueline Riding, the lectures examined depictions of war in art from the late-sixteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries. In the spring, the Centre was due to run a series titled Ceramics in Britain, 1750 to Now. However, after the first lecture the series was postponed to autumn 2020 due to the national lockdown. In lieu of a spring series, the Centre took the unprecedented step of offering a summer Public Lecture Course entirely online. In six 30-minute pre-recorded lectures, Mark Hallett and Martin Postle introduced audiences to seminal works of eighteenth-century British art, in a series titled Georgian Provocations

The online offering of the lecture course proved to be very successful, in large part due to the public’s increased appetite for cultural offerings over the summer and a sustained advertising campaign to promote the lectures.

Networks

The Doctoral Researchers Network (DRN) and Early Career Researchers Network (ECRN) ran a combined total of eleven events over the year that looked to support members in their research and skills development. As with all other programming across the Centre, the networks’ events were successfully moved online in May. The convenors for the 2019–20 academic year were Judith Stapleton and Sean Ketteringham for the DRN and Emily Burns and Thomas Hughes for the ECRN. In spring 2020, the Centre’s Bryony Botwright-Rance took over responsibility as the staff liaison for the DRN and the ECRN. Her duties include supervising the networks, supporting the convenors and providing guidance with event programming.