Academic Activities

The Paul Mellon Centre’s academic events programme offers a platform for communicating new research on British art. Each event, whether a large conference or smaller seminar, aims to create a space for dialogue, debate and, crucially, for coming together to share knowledge and interests. During the winter of 2021–2, the global pandemic continued to prevent large-scale in-person gatherings, but drawing upon our experience of producing online events, the Centre continued to provide a busy events programme to an increasingly international audience. Throughout October, we offered talks, panel discussions and artist presentations as part of the multi-part event Cutting Edge: Collage in Britain, 1945 to Now, co-organised with Elena Crippa (Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Tate Britain) and Rosie Ram (Visiting Lecturer in Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art). Cumulatively, the speakers mapped the crucial role that collage has played in some of the most daring developments in post-war and contemporary British art.

A highlight of this year’s activities were the Mellon Lectures. Again offered as live online events and co-organised with the Yale Center for British Art, these were given by five museum and gallery directors: Gabriele Finaldi (National Gallery, London), Kaywin Feldman (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC), Thelma Goldman (Studio Museum, Harlem), Iwona Blazwick (Whitechapel Gallery, London), Maria Balshaw (Tate) and Maria Mok (Hong Kong Museum of Art). All spoke engagingly to the topic of ‘The Museum and Gallery Today’, offering insight into the challenges and possibilities of caring for collections and creating exhibitions today. These events attracted large online audiences and created a palpable sense of occasion.

Collaboration is at the heart of the Centre’s academic activities programme. In 2021–22, a good number of events were co-organised with external partners, bringing new forms of knowledge and expertise as well as new audiences to our work. Collaborative events included Graphic Landscape: The Landscape Print Series in Britain, c.1775–1850 (in partnership with the British Library); Maud Sulter: The Centre of the Frame (organised with the Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge); Concerning Photography (a co-produced online conference and workshop

Strange Universe: Explorations of the Modern in Postwar Britain 1945–1965, a symposium organised in collaboration with the Barbican Art Gallery in June 2022 with the Photographers’ Gallery); and The Show is On: Laura Knight’s Career and Contexts (the first of a two-part collaboration with the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes). This was followed by an event to coincide with the exhibition of Ingrid Pollard’s work at MK Gallery. The Centre also partnered with British Art Show 9 to produce events in each of the four host cities – Aberdeen, Wolverhampton, Manchester and Plymouth. The Barbican’s Postwar Modern exhibition was another springboard for a series of seminars and an international conference. These are just some details from the busy programme in 2021–22, which also included many other talks, lectures and discussions, capturing the richness and breadth of new research on both historic and contemporary British art.