Academic Activities

July 2021–June 2022

Autumn Research Lunch Series 2021

1 October Tim Barringer (Paul Mellon Professor, Yale University) and Anna Arabindan-Kesson (Assistant Professor of Black Diaspora Art, Princeton University) in conversation, ‘Working with Art: Labour, Empire and Materiality in British Art’

15 October Maddie Boden (Ashmolean Museum), ‘Victorian Exodus: Visualising the Old Testament in the Dalziels’ Bible Gallery’

26 November Katherine Gazzard (Royal Museums Greenwich), ‘“In Presence of Shadows of Dead Captains”: The National Gallery of Naval Art and Exhibition Culture in London, 1845–1936’

10 December Shijia Yu (Royal Historical Society), ‘A Visual Recreation for Hands: Homemade Paper Peepshows and the Role of the Haptic in Nineteenth-Century British Print Culture’

5–14 October 2021

Cutting Edge: Collage in Britain, 1945 to Now

A programme of events taking place online, presented jointly by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Tate Britain.

5 October, Collage Dreamings and Collage Hauntings

Introduced by Sarah Victoria Turner (Paul Mellon Centre)

David Alan Mellor (Emeritus Professor, University of Sussex) and Thomas Crow (Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art, New York University), ‘Ev’ry Which Way: South Kensington Phantasmagorias and Californian Dreamings’

Chaired by Elena Crippa (Tate Britain)

Elizabeth Price (Professor of Film and Photography, Kingston University), Artist film presentation

Chaired by Anna Reid

6 October, Cuts, Copies, Clips and the Curatorial

Introduced by Sarah Victoria Turner (Paul Mellon Centre)

Panel 1

Ben Cranfield (Senior Tutor, Curatorial Theory and History, Royal College of Art), ‘Fragmenting the Contemporary: The Queer Timeliness of Collage and the Curatorial in Post-War Britain’

Craig Buckley (Associate Professor, Department of the History of Art, Yale University), ‘An Architecture of Clipping: Reyner Banham and the Redefinition of Collage’

Chaired by Lynda Nead (Pevsner Professor of History of Art, Birkbeck, University of London)

Panel 2

Nicola Simpson (Research Impact Fellow, Norwich University of the Arts), ‘Not This and Not That: Cutting A(way) to a Tantric Buddhist Collage in the Work of Dom Sylvester Houédard’

Andrew Hodgson (University of London Institute, Paris), ‘Xeroxing Surrealism: TRANSFORMAcTION and Collage as Aesthetic Continuity’

Chaired by Dawn Ades (Professor of History of Art, Royal Academy)

7 October, Collage as Method, Manuscript and Moving Image

Introduced by Rosie Ram (Royal College of Art)

Claire Zimmerman (Associate Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor), ‘Alison’s Mind: Collage and Architectural Thinking in Postcolonial Britain’

Chaired by Victoria Walsh (Professor of Art History and Curating, Royal College of Art)

Judah Attille (University of the Arts London), Artist film presentation

8 October, Collage Politics and Punk Practices

Introduced by Elena Crippa (Tate Britain)

Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945–1965 (Barbican Art Gallery, 2022), installation view. © Tim Whitby / Getty Images

Panel 3

Amy Tobin (Curator of Exhibitions, Events and Research at Kettle’s Yard and Lecturer in the Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge), ‘“I Can’t Swim I Have Nightmares”: Linder and Photomontage 1976–2019’

Alice Correia (Research Curator, Touchstones, Rochdale), ‘Chila Kumari Burman: Punk Punjabi Protests’

Chaired by Catherine Grant (Senior Lecturer in the Art and Visual Cultures Departments, Goldsmiths, University of London)

Panel 4

Allison Thompson (Division of Fine Arts, Barbados Community College), ‘Come Together: Collage Aesthetics in the Work of Sonia Boyce’

Chandra Frank (Post-Doctoral Fellow, Taft Research Center, University of Cincinnati), ‘Fragmentations and Glimmers: Archival Experimentations with Collage’

Chaired by Elizabeth Robles (Lecturer in the History of Art Department, University of Bristol)

13 October, Cutting Edge Collage Workshop 1

Introduced by Sarah Victoria Turner (Paul Mellon Centre)

Panel 1

Danae Filioti (PhD Candidate, Art History, University College London), ‘Cutting the Cosmos: Liliane Lijn and Collage, 1960/9’

Karen Di Franco (Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London), ‘Breakthrough Fictioneers: Chance and Collage in Artists’ Publishing (1972–79)’

Chaired by Amy Tobin (Curator of Exhibitions, Events and Research at Kettle’s Yard and Lecturer in the Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge)

Panel 2

Daniel Fountain (Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture, University of Exeter), ‘Queering the Library through Collage: The Cut-Ups of Joe Orton & Kenneth Halliwell, 1959–1962’

Tom Day (Postdoctoral Fellow/Lecturer at the Centre for American Art, Courtauld Institute of Art), ‘Jeff Keen’s Pop Cinema Collage: The Saturation of Media and the Politics of Images’

Chaired by Andrew Wilson (Independent Curator and Art Historian)

14 October, Cutting Edge Collage Workshop 2

Introduced by Sarah Victoria Turner (Paul Mellon Centre)

Panel 3

Isabelle Mooney (PhD Candidate, University of St Andrews), ‘The Fragmented Maps by Nigel Henderson and John McHale’

Rachel Stratton (Art Historian and Curator), ‘Theo Crosby and the Graphic Arts’

Chaired by Ben Cranfield (Senior Tutor, Curatorial Theory and History, Royal College of Art)

Panel 4

Leila Nassereldein (Doctoral Researcher, Birkbeck, University of London), ‘Humphrey Jennings, and the Collated Aesthetic as a Historiographic Practice’

Lisa Maddigan Newby (Independent Researcher), ‘Exhibiting “Ethnographic Collage” in London: From the ICA to the British Museum’

Chaired by Samuel Bibby (Managing Editor, Art History journal)

20 October 2021–11 February 2022

The Museum and Gallery Today: Paul Mellon Lectures

20 October 2021 Gabriele Finaldi (Director, National Gallery, London), ‘A Gallery “for the Use of the Public”: The National Gallery at Two Hundred’

3 November 2021 Kaywin Feldman (Director, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC), ‘Building a National Collection in a Changing Nation’

10 November 2021 Thelma Golden (Director and Chief Curator, Studio Museum, Harlem), ‘Creating Space: The Studio Museum, Past and Present’

17 November 2021 Iwona Blazwick (Director, Whitechapel Gallery, London), ‘What Are Collections Good For?’

24 November 2021 Maria Balshaw (Director, Tate), ‘Looking Back to Move Forward: British Art History at Tate’

11 February 2022 Maria Mok (Director, Hong Kong Museum of Art), ‘Remaking the Museum’

2–11 November 2021

Graphic Landscape: The Landscape Print Series in Britain, c.1775–1850

Graphic Landscape was a fourday programme of online webinars, presented jointly by the Paul Mellon Centre and the British Library.

2 November, Print, Politics and Industrialisation

Introduction by Mark Hallett (Paul Mellon Centre) and Felicity Myrone (Lead Curator, Western Prints and Drawings, British Library)

Amy Concannon (Senior Curator, Historic British Art, Tate), ‘“A Captur’d City Blazed”: Printmaking and the Bristol Riots of 1831’

Lizzie Jacklin (Keeper of Art, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums), ‘Mining Landscapes: Thomas Hair’s Views of the Collieries’

Morna O’Neill (Associate Professor of Art History, Art Department, Wake Forest University), ‘John Constable, David Lucas and Steel in English Landscape’

4 November, Print and Property

Introduction by Richard Johns (Senior Lecturer in History of Art, University of York)

John Bonehill (Lecturer, History of Art, University of Glasgow), ‘Picturing Property: The Estate Landscape and the Late Eighteenth-Century Print Market’

Kate Retford (Professor of Art History, Birkbeck, University of London), ‘Views of the Lakes at the Vyne’

James Finch (Assistant Curator, 19th Century British Art, Tate Britain), ‘Amelia Long’s Views from Bromley Hill’

9 November, Revisiting the Canon Introduction by Cora Gilroy-Ware (Associate Professor, History of Art, University of Oxford)

Greg Smith (Independent Art Historian), ‘Engaging with the Voyage Pittoresque de la France: Thomas Girtin’s Picturesque Views in Paris and their Appeal to the “Most Eminent in the Profession”’

Timothy Wilcox (Independent Scholar), ‘John Sell Cotman’s Architectural Antiquities of Normandy; A Catastrophic Miscalculation?’

Gillian Forrester (Independent Art Historian, Curator and Writer), ‘A Glossary for the Anthropocene? Turner’s Liber Studiorum in the Era of Climate Change’

11 November, A Wider View: From Collaboration to Empire

Introduction by Mark Hallett (Paul Mellon Centre) and Felicity Myrone (Lead Curator, Western Prints and Drawings, British Library)

Sarah Moulden (Curator of 19th-Century Collections, National Portrait Gallery), ‘Creative Collaboration: Cotman’s Norfolk Etchings’

Eleanore Neumann (PhD Candidate, University of Virginia), ‘Translating Topography: Women and the Publication of Landscape Illustrations of the Bible (1836)’

Alisa Bunbury (Grimwade Collection Curator, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne), ‘Taken from Nature: Printed Views of Colonial Australia’

Douglas Fordham (Professor of Art History, University of Virginia), ‘Travel Prints or Illustrated Books?’

19 November 2021

Maud Sulter: The Centre of the Frame, A Panel Discussion

Organised to coincide with the exhibition Maud Sulter: The Centre of the Frame at the Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge.

Speakers: Gilane Tawadros, Laura Castagnini, Evan Ifekoya, Marcia Michael and Dionne Sparks

25 November–2 December 2021

Concerning Photography: The Photographers’ Gallery and Photographic Networks in Britain, c.1971 to the Present

A series of online talks, presentations and discussions which showcased new research and practices focusing on the histories of photography in Britain over the past fifty years. This was a collaboration between the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and The Photographers’ Gallery.

25 November, Day 1: Institutions, Infrastructures and Pedagogies

Panel 1: Institutions, Infrastructures

Anne McNeill (Director, Impressions Gallery), ‘Institutions, Infrastructure and Exhibitions: The Case of Impressions Gallery’

David Bate (University of Westminster), ‘1979: A Snapshot of the UK’

Taous R. Dahmani (Paris 1 PanthéonSorbonne), ‘Creating Autograph ABP’

Andrew Dewdney (Co-director and Co-founder, Centre for the Study of the Networked Image), ‘Forget Photography: The Arts Council and the Disappearance of Independent Photography in Neoliberal Britain’

Annebella Pollen (University of Brighton), ‘Exploring our Weaknesses on the International Stage: British Council Photography and Self-Critique in the 1970s and 1980s’

Chaired by Shoair Mavlian (Director, Photoworks)

Panel 2: Pedagogies

Juliet Hacking (Sotheby’s Institute of Art), ‘Talking Pictures: Teaching Photography as Art in Higher Education’

Anne Lyden (National Galleries of Scotland), ‘The Glasgow Degree’

Chaired by Karen Shepherdson (London College of Communication)

Mahtab Hussain, Artist Keynote

Moderated by Luisa Ulyett (The Photographers’ Gallery)

1 December, Day 2: Material, Process and Magazines, Books

Speakers: Maitreyi Maheshwari, Mo White, Katrina Sluis, Rowan Lear, Peter Ride, Diane Smyth, Derek Bishton, John Wyver, David Brittain, Jacqueline EnnisCole, Penny Slinger and Laura Smith

Panel 3: Material, Process

Mo White (Artist, Writer and Lecturer), ‘The Use of Photography in Artists’ SlideTape Works in the UK Since the 1970s’

Katrina Sluis (School of Art & Design, Australian National University), ‘Glimmering Screens, Institutional Dreams: Curating Post-Photography’

Rowan Lear (University of West London), ‘Honey on the Elbow: Sticky Networks, Invisible Workers and Planetary Processing’

Peter Ride (University of Westminster), ‘Stepping into Space: New Media Practice and Independent Photography Galleries’ Chaired by Maitreyi Maheshwari (FACT)

Panel 4: Magazines, Books

Derek Bishton (Journalist, Published Author, Photographer), ‘Ten.8 Photographic Magazine 1978–1992’

John Wyver (Screen Productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company), ‘Screening Photography: BBC Television’s Presentation of Photography, 1969–1988’

David Brittain (Creative Camera), ‘In-House Publications of The Photographers’ Gallery: 1970–80’

Jacqueline Ennis-Cole (University of Sussex), ‘Photobooks 1980 –Black Women Photographers’

Chaired by Diane Smyth (Arts Journalist)

Penny Slinger, Artist Keynote, ‘Photography and Collage in the Art of Performance’

Moderated by Laura Smith (Whitechapel Gallery)

2 December, Day 3: Exhibitions, Touring and Archival Futures

Panel 5: Exhibitions, Touring

Ruby Rees-Sheridan (Four Corners Gallery), ‘On the Move: The Half Moon Photography Workshop’s Exhibitions Comments Book’ (Paper delivered by Carla Mitchell)

Catlin Langford (Victoria and Albert Museum), ‘Occupying Space: Signals, The Festival of Women Photographers, 1994’

Theo Gordon (Smithsonian American Art Museum), ‘Putting Salford in the Picture: Viewpoint Gallery of Photography and the 1980s’

Laura Castagnini (Curator and Writer), ‘Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs Curated by Tessa Boffin and Jean Fraser in 1991’

Chaired by James Boaden (University of York)

Panel 6: Archival Futures

Charlene Heath (Ryerson/York University, Toronto), ‘Archival Work: The Survival of Jo Spence’s Polemic’

Fiona Anderson (Newcastle University), ‘To Eternity: Sunil Gupta and Archival Ambivalence in Queer

British Photography’

Chaired by Rahaab Allana (Alkazi Foundation for the Arts)

Antonio Roberts, Artist Keynote

Moderated by Arieh Frosh

28 January 2022

The Show is On: Laura Knight’s Career and Contexts

A one-day conference on the career and legacy of Laura Knight on the occasion of the exhibition Laura Knight: A Panoramic View, organised in collaboration with MK Gallery, Milton Keynes.

Session 1

Janet Axten (Social Historian), ‘“Fast, Smart and Outrageous”: Art School Fashion in Laura Knight’s Painting’

Linda Bassett (PhD Candidate, University of Bristol), ‘The “Sew” Must Go On: The Dressmaker in the Work of Laura Knight’

Ella Nixon (PhD Candidate, Northumbria University), ‘Laura Knight and the Regional Art Gallery’

Chaired by Sarah Victoria Turner (Paul Mellon Centre)

Session 2

Catherine Wallace (Freelance Art Historian), ‘Technique and Experiment: Drawing as the Foundation of Laura Knight’s Success as an Artist’

Lily Ford (Filmmaker and Historian), ‘Aerial Bodies: Laura Knight’s Barrage Balloon Paintings’

Hannah Starkey (Artist), ‘So, I Ask You Laura Knight – How Did This Great Work Come About?’

Chaired by Fay Blanchard (Head of Exhibitions, MK Gallery)

Session 3

Alice Strickland (Curator, National Trust, London), ‘Creating a Legacy – Dame Laura Knight RA (1877–1970)’

Hester Westley (Artists’ Lives Interviewer, National Life Stories, British Library), ‘“Like a Half-Rolled Map”: Tracing the Borders of Female Self-Narration in the Careers of Laura Knight and Subsequent Women Artists’

Damian Le Bas (Writer and Poet), ‘The Broken Tongue’

Chaired by Annette Wickham (Curator of Works on Paper, Royal Academy of Art)

Spring Research Seminar Series 2022

The Spring 2022 seminar series involved talks by authors of books recently published by the Paul Mellon Centre.

16 February Matthew Craske (Oxford Brookes University) and Martin Postle (Paul Mellon Centre), ‘In Darkness and in Light: Rethinking Joseph Wright of Derby’

2 March Henrietta McBurney (Curator and Art Historian) and Joseph Viscomi (Distinguished Professor of English Literature, University of North Carolina), ‘Illustrations and Illuminations’

9 March Petra ten-Doesschate Chu (Professor Emerita of Art History, Seton Hall University), Max Donnelly (Curator of Furniture and Woodwork 1800–1900, Victoria and Albert Museum) and Andrea Wolk Rager (Case Western Reserve University), ‘Aesthetic Encounters’

16 March Cora Gilroy-Ware (Curator, Writer and Researcher) and Sean Willcock (University of Oxford), ‘War & Peace: Rethinking Aesthetics in the Age of Empire’

23 March Adriano Aymonino (University of Buckingham) and Manolo Guerci (University of Kent), ‘Grand Designs and Great Houses’

Spring Research Lunch Series 2022

25 February Ranald Lawrence (Lecturer in Architecture, University of Liverpool), ‘Clean Air, Bright Light: Mackintosh’s School of Art’

4 March David Curtis (Independent Writer, Researcher and Curator), ‘A Fading Memory and an Excel Spreadsheet – Researching Two Important but Overlooked Alternative Arts Venues from the 1960s’

18 March Anne Dulau Beveridge (The Hunterian Museum), Nigel Leask (Professor of English Language and Literature , University of Glasgow) and John Bonehill (University of Glasgow), ‘The Making of “Old Ways New Roads: Travels in Scotland 1720–1832”’

1 April Timothy Brittain-Catlin (University of Cambridge), ‘Making and Remaking the Edwardian House’

6 May 2022

Carbon Slowly Turning: Movement, Energy, Landscape

A collaborative conference on the occasion of the Ingrid Pollard: Carbon Slowly Turning exhibition between MK Gallery and the Paul Mellon Centre.

Session 1: Deep Time; Art, Writing, History

Evan Ifekoya (Artist and Energy Worker), ‘Spiral Time and Sacred Reverberations’

Richard Hylton (Lecturer in Contemporary Art, SOAS, University of London), ‘Overcoming Hostile Environments’

Chaired by Gilane Tawadros (Chief Executive, DACS)

Session 2: Matter and Materials; Chemicals, Process, Publication

Liz Wells (Emeritus Professor in Photographic Culture, University of Plymouth), ‘Hidden Histories and Storying Place’

Ella S. Mills (Associate Lecturer in History of Art, University of Plymouth), ‘Texture & Tone in the Work of Ingrid Pollard’

Chaired by Cora Gilroy-Ware (Associate Professor, History of Art, University of Oxford)

Sheena Calvert (Book Designer) and Ajamu X (Artist), ‘The Book and the Sensuousness of Process’

Session 3

Jackie Kay (Poet) and Ingrid Pollard (Artist) in conversation, ‘A Life in Protest’

25 May–13 July 2022

Liquid Crystal Concrete: The Arts of Postwar Britain 1945–1965 A Series of Summer Research Seminars

This Paul Mellon Centre research seminar series showcased new perspectives on the arts of post-war Britain as an interdisciplinary and transcultural terrain of research. Talks in the series engaged with the issues of empire and worldmaking, with questions of migration, the environment and with the intersections of art, technology and new media.

25 May, British Cybernetic Art: The Origins of Digital Art

Catherine Mason (Independent Art Historian) in conversation with Ernst Edmonds (Artist), ‘British Cybernetic Art: The Origins of Digital Art’

8 June, Marginalised Spaces and Émigré Artists

Sheridan Palmer (Art Historian, Curator, Biographer), ‘The Abbey Art Centre: An “All-but-Forgotten” Artists’ Colony’

Jane Eckett (University of Melbourne), ‘On Modernism’s Margins: William Ohly’s Abbey Art Centre in Postwar England’

22 June, Environmental Surrounds

Matthew Wells (Lecturer in Architectural History, University of Manchester), ‘The Carpet, the Office, an Environment’

Alistair Cartwright (Independent Researcher), ‘The World Turned OutsideIn: Luxury Squats and Liberty Villas, 1946’

29 June, Experimental Modes of Making

Inga Fraser (Curator and Art Historian), ‘Oswell Blakeston: The “Magic Aftermath”’

Rosie Ram (Royal College of Art), ‘The Negative Logic of Parallel of Life and Art’

Two further seminars in this series took place in July 2022

16 June 2022

Strange Universe: Explorations of the Modern in Postwar Britain 1945–1965

A collaboration between Barbican Art Gallery and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, this one-day symposium used the themes and works included in the exhibition

Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain, 1945–1965 to explore the ‘strange universe’ of British art in this period.

Curator’s Welcome

Jane Alison (Head of Visual Arts, Barbican), Charlotte Flint (Assistant Curator, Barbican Art Gallery) and Hilary Floe (Assistant Curator, Barbican Art Gallery)

Panel 1 speakers

Lynda Nead (Chair) (Pevsner Chair of History of Art, Birkbeck, University of London), Isobel Whitelegg (Director of Postgraduate Research, School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester) and Giulia Smith (Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford)

Panel 2 speakers

Gregory Salter (Chair) (Lecturer, University of Birmingham), Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani (Lecturer in History of Art, University of Edinburgh) and Ming Tiampo (Professor, Carleton University)

Panel 3 speakers

Ben Highmore (Chair) (Professor of Cultural Studies, University of Sussex), Deborah Sugg Ryan (University of Portsmouth) and Claire Zimmerman (University of Michigan)

Panel 4 speakers

Hammad Nasar (Senior Research Fellow, Paul Mellon Centre), Jane Alison (Head of Visual Arts, Barbican) and Abbas Zahedi (Associate Artist, Postwar Modern, Barbican)