W.A. Ismay, Ladi Kwali, photograph. Image courtesy of York Museums Trust (York Art Gallery).
It is a delight to introduce you to this issue of PMC Notes. The contents will, I hope, give you a good sense of the breadth and historical range of the research on British art being supported, hosted and shared by the Paul Mellon Centre. Tom Nickson, one of the contributors to our series of public lectures this spring, entitled ‘Britain and the World in the Middle Ages: Image and Reality’, has written a vivid account of the astonishing variety of luxury goods that were imported into medieval Britain, from silver-mounted ostrich eggs to carved ivories of the Virgin Mary originating from sub-Saharan West Africa. In their feature, Charlotte Bolland and Edward Town write about an ambitious project, funded in part by the Centre, which uses the rich resource of the Heinz photographic archive at the National Portrait Gallery to help recover the world of Tudor portraiture. Peter Guillery, meanwhile, gives us an insider’s view into the history – stretching back nearly 130 years – of the monumental Survey of London, the publication of which is underwritten by the Centre. Finally, in an interview with my colleague Sria Chatterjee, the curator Jane Alison describes the gestation of her revelatory exhibition, Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945–
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