Thinking about Exhibitions: Interpretation, Restoration, and Curation
Every Thursday
8th March to 12th April (except 29th March)
18.30-20.30
The PMC’s first spring offering of the Public Lecture Course will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the research, writing, borrowing, design and installation processes underpin exhibitions. Led by the Centre’s Director of Studies, Mark Hallett, the course will use exhibitions that he has been involved in curating as relevant case studies, including Hogarth, which took place at Tate Britain in 2007, and two displays that will open next year: The Great Spectacle: 250 Years of the Summer Exhibition, at the Royal Academy, and George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field, which will open at the Yale Center for British Art in the autumn, before travelling to the Holburne Museum in Bath in the spring of 2019.
This term’s course will take a slightly different format from previous years. The first four sessions will follow the traditional Public Lecture Course model, with a lecture followed by a question and answer period. The final session will be a group discussion that will bring together all of the themes discussed in the preceding lectures. Each lecture will be recorded and made available to the public through the Centre’s website.
No prior art historical knowledge is necessary.
8 March 2018
Looking Back: Three Eighteenth Century Exhibitions
Mark Hallett
Reading:
David H. Solkin, ‘This Great Mart of Genius’: The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House, 1780-1836’, in David Solkin (ed.), Art on the Line: The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House 1780-1836, Yale University Press, 2001, pp. 1-8
John Sunderland and David H. Solkin, ‘Staging the Spectacle’, in David Solkin (ed.), Art on the Line: The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House 1780-1836, Yale University Press, 2001, pp. 23-38
Emily Ballew Neff, ‘The History Theatre: Production and Spectatorship in Copley’s The Death of Major Peirson’, in Emily Ballew Neff, John Singleton Copley in England, Merrell Holberton, 1995, pp. 60-90; see also pp. 140-154
15 March 2018
Looking Back: Hogarth, 2006-7, Musée du Louvre, Paris; Tate Britain, London; Caixa Forum, Barcelona
Mark Hallett and Christine Riding
Reading:
Mark Hallett and Christine Riding, Hogarth, Tate Publishing, 2006, esp. pp. 13-54
Lawrence Gowing, Hogarth, Tate Gallery, 1971, especially pp. 28-38
Mark Hallett, Hogarth, Phaidon, 2000, esp. pp. 73-132
22 March 2018
Looking Forward: The Great Spectacle: 250 Years of the Summer Exhibition, 2018, Royal Academy, London
Mark Hallett and Sarah Victoria Turner
Reading:
TBC
5 April 2018
Looking Forward: George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field, 2018-19, Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT; Holburne Museum Bath
Mark Hallett and George Shaw
Reading:
Michael Bracewell, ‘Decades – the Art of George Shaw’, in Laurence Sillars (ed.) George Shaw: The Sly and Unseen Day, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, 2011, pp. 8-14;
Colin Wiggins, ‘ ‘Naked Women and pictures of Jesus’’, in George Shaw, George Shaw, My Back to Nature, National Gallery Publications, 2016, pp. 9-12
Ben Luke, ‘The Visitor: The Paintings of George Shaw’, in Maurani Mercier Gallery, George Shaw: The Lost of England, Maruani Mercier Gallery, 2017, n.p.
12 April 2018
Looking Back: Curating and Scholarship
Mark Hallett
No preparatory reading required: discussion of issues raised during the course.
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