Exhibition: Views in the Himalayas – James Baille Fraser @ Victoria Gallery

On display at the Victoria Gallery, University of Liverpool

In March 1813 the adventurous artist James Baillie Fraser left Liverpool aboard HMS Daedalus bound for India. Two years later James was reunited with his eccentric younger brother William in the footsteps of the Punjab Hills.  This exhibition at the University of Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery and Museum  invites you to follow in the footsteps of James Baillie Fraser as he makes his grand tour through the Himalayas during the Nepal War of 1814-15. Throughout the tour James kept a bundle of fine paper in which he sketched everything he encountered. Seventeen of these drawings, which were the first visual depictions of the upper Himalayas to reach the British public, are now on display.

Exhibition: Migrations @ Tate Britain

Frank Bowling, Mirror, 1966

Tate Britain, Millbank, London, until 12 August 2012

This exhibition at Tate Britain explores British art through the theme of migration from 1500 to the present day, reflecting the remit of Tate Britain Collection displays. From the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Flemish and Dutch landscape and still-life painters who came to Britain in search of new patrons, through moments of political and religious unrest, to Britain’s current position within the global landscape, the exhibition reveals how British art has been fundamentally shaped by successive waves of migration. Cutting a swathe through 500 years of history, and tracing not only the movement of artists but also the circulation of visual languages and ideas, this exhibition includes works by artists from Lely, Kneller, Kauffman to Sargent, Epstein, Mondrian, Bomberg, Bowling and the Black Audio Film Collective as well as recent work by contemporary artists.

Website: Colonial Film Database – Moving Images of the British Empire

Colonial Film Database Launches

The Colonial Film Database is a vast resource that will be of especial interest to British art researches concerned with the histories and continuing legacies of colonialism and postcolonialiasm. The website, which has resulted from a joint project between the universities of Birkbeck and University College London, together with the archives at the British Film Institute, the Imperial War Museum and the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum,  holds detailed information on over 6,000 films, and has 150 films available for viewing online. You can search or browse for films by country, date, topic, or keyword. Over 350 of the most important films in the catalogue are presented with extensive critical notes written by our academic research team. The project aims to create a new catalogue of films relating to the British Empire – the ambition of this website is to allow both colonizers and colonized to understand better the truths of Empire.

 

British Art: Global Contexts

Call for Book Proposals by  31 December 2012

William Simpson, 'The Caves of Ajanta'

Book proposals are welcomed for Ashgate’s British Art: Global Contexts series, edited by Jason Edwards, University of York; Sarah Monks, University of East Anglia; and Sarah Victoria Turner, University of York. The series provides a forum for the study of British art, design, and visual culture in the global context from 1700 to the present. Books to be published will include monographs, thematic studies, and edited collections of essays, specializing in studies of British Art within comparative and interdisciplinary frameworks. For more information, please visit the series webpage at www.ashgate.com/Default.aspx?page=3503.

British Art: Global Contexts provides a forum for the study of British art, design and visual culture in the global context from 1700 to the present day. Focusing upon the transport, location and reception of British art across the world; the British reception and exhibition of art from around the globe; and transnational and cosmopolitan art containing significant British components; the series seeks to problematize, historicise and specify the idea of ‘British’ art across the period, as it intersects with local, regional, international and global issues, communities, materials, and environments. Books to be published will include monographs and thematic studies, single authored works and edited volumes of essays, specialising in studies of British art within comparative and interdisciplinary frameworks.

National Maritime Museum: Art for the Nation

‘Art for the Nation’ offers a major reassessment of the National Maritime Museum’s oil paintings collections. It brings together some of the finest of over 4000 paintings in the Museum’s care, under the roof of the Queen’s House – the Museum’s showcase for art. The sea and all it entails with respect to world commerce, exploration and empire, is fundamental to British history and identity. It continues to be so, in shaping the profile of British multiculturalism and our shared imperial heritage. The 200 paintings in the exhibition both represent and are part of that heritage. As such, they provide a unique light on our history as a maritime nation and on the place of art within