Display: Winifred Nicholson – Music and Colour

Winifred Nicholson, Cyclamen and Primula, 1923. Photo: c. Kettle’s Yard.

Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, until 21st December 2013

This display at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge  takes a close look at one of the most important artists in the collection. Winifred Nicholson, alongside her husband Ben Nicholson, was a close friend of Jim Ede, and an important influence, particularly when Jim was developing his vision for Kettle’s Yard. Nicholson’s paintings are above all studies of light and colour. Visitors to Kettle’s Yard house have long enjoyed Nicholson’s paintings and this display gives an opportunity to rediscover them. The display will include a number of works not normally shown and archival material. Key themes, such as her theories on colour and her involvement with the European avant-garde will be explored.

Talks Series: Sarah Lucas @ Henry Moore Institute

Sarah Lucas, NUD 2, 2009. Photo c. the artist and Sadie Coles HQ London.

12 September – 3 October 2012

During its exhibition Sarah Lucas: Ordinary Things, the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds will be running an exciting programme of lectures that address the sculptural concerns of Lucas’ artistic practice – encompassing topics as varied as multiculturalism, humour, Lucas’ relationship to Modernism, and Freud. Many exhibitions and discussions of Lucas’ work have focused on her as a central player within British art in the 1990s, whereas this programme of academic talks and the exhibition Ordinary Things aim to offer a counter position of the sculptural rather than the sensational. Accompanying the exhibition, the HMI have also produced a fantastic catalogue, with essays by Lisa Le Feuvre, Gilda Williams, Anne M. Wagner and Deborah Orr.

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.

Conference: Activating Stilled Lives @ UCL

Hall of Biodiversity, American Museum of Natural History

The Aesthetics of Politics of Specimins on Display, 17th – 18th May 2012, UCL

The past twenty years saw an explosion of exhibitions fathoming the relations between art and science as well as numerous refurbishments of natural history or former colonial museums. Many of these displays and gallery transformations mobilised specimens, be it taxidermied animals or preserved human body parts. Objects were put into new contexts opening up their meanings, others disappeared in storage or travelled back to the countries where they were once collected. The conference will address the challenges institutions face when dealing with formerly living entities and consider the aesthetics and politics of their display.

The idea of this conference is to discuss the use of specimens in temporary exhibitions, museums or university collections and the role curators, art and artists have been playing in the transformation of these spaces. We would also like to consider how preserved specimens have changed through the altering contexts in which they have been displayed: One could name the initial transformation of organisms into objects, the more recent re-definition of pathological specimens as human remains, or the dramatic rearrangements that took place when natural history, anthropology or anatomy collections (many dating from the nineteenth century) were updated – coinciding with a shift in audiences, from specialists to a broader public. Historical displays were often significantly altered, or even destroyed and replaced by ‘techy’ but at times also by sentimental, ‘post-modern’ installations still awaiting a critical assessment.

Symposium: Displaying Victorian Sculpture @ University of York

Wednesday 13th June, 2012, 10.30am – 5pm, Kings Manor K/111, University of York

This one-day symposium will showcase the research currently being generated by the University of York’s major collaborative AHRC-funded project Displaying Victorian Sculpture, led by Dr Jason Edwards at the University of York, and Professor Michael Hatt at the University of Warwick. Speakers and topics will include:

The Colour of Sculpture  Chair: Jason Edwards
Michael Hatt (University of Warwick), ‘The Colour White: Sculpture and Polychromy in Mid-Victorian Britain’
Desiree de Chaire (University of Warwick), ‘Chryselephantine: Richard Cockle Lucas’s Mid Victorian Coloured Ivories’
Charlotte Drew (University of York), ‘Revising the Renaissance: Luca della Robbia at the South Kensington Museum’

Commemoration  Chair: Sarah Turner
Eoin Martin (University of Warwick),’ Framing Victoria: Royal Portraiture and Architectural Sculpture in Victorian Britain’
Jason Edwards (University of York), ‘A Monumental Place to Perch: Thomas Woolner’s Captain Cook for Sydney’

The Production and Display of Marble  Chair: Michael White
Gabriel Williams (University of York), ‘Markets for Polished Marble, c. 1850′
Claire Jones (University of York),’Variations in Reproduction and Display: Waldo Story’s Fallen Angel (1887) and (1889)’

To be followed by a roundtable discussion

Coffee and a buffet lunch will be provided.
Spaces are limited; if you would like to attend, please contact Claire Jones

For further information please download a schedule Displaying Victorian Sculpture Symposium (PDF , 217kb)

Location: King’s Manor K/111

Admission: Free

Email: claire.jones@york.ac.uk

Exhibition: The cost of living in Roman and modern Britain

British Museum: Until 15 April 2012

This small display at the British Museum looks at the similarities and differences between the cost of everyday living in Britain about 2,000 years ago and today. These changes are shown through comparing things like wages, property, food, clothing, gambling, entertainment and travel, revealing how much of the average wage was spent on these items both in the past and today. When Britannia was a Roman province around 2,000 years ago, forts and towns were connected by paved roads for the first time, and wider contact with the Roman world brought new produce, goods and ideas to the British household. The Romans may have found it easier than us to own property or see major sporting events and festivals, but food and clothing, which are relatively cheap today, would have consumed a much higher proportion of the daily wage. The display brings together some of the fascinating finds from Roman Britain – bronze and bone figurines, gaming counters and dice, evidence of the use of salt and pepper, and coins – with their modern counterparts.

Conference: Internationality on Display – Revisiting the 1862 International Exhibition

Victoria and Albert Museum, Hochauser Auditorium, Friday 3rd February 2012

This conference at the V&A commemorates the 150th anniversay of the 1862 International Exhibition. The invited speakers will offer a variety of perspectives on the exhibition and its influence, its cultural, geo-political and economic contexts, and legacies, and show how it links to the present-day Cultural Olympiad. Invited speakers include: Antony Burton, Arindham Dutta, Paul Greenhalgh and Louise Purbrick. This conference is held in collaboration with the Royal College of Art and The William Shipley Group – to download the full programme for the day visit the V&A website. The conference co-incides with the exhibition Albertopolis: the Development of South Kensington and the Exhibition Road Cultural Quarter in the Architecture Gallery 128A.

Call for Papers: Three Approaches to Three Dimensions

Ben Long, Stag, 2008

Three Approaches to Three Dimensions: Three Workshops and a Conference on Sculpture and Change, The Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum

Call for Papers Deadlines:

• 1 September 2011 for 14 October 2011 workshop, Reconfigured Spaces
• 14 October 2011 for 2 December 2011 workshop, Relocated Objects
• 2 December 2011 for 10 February 2012 workshop, Rewritten Narratives
• 1 March 2012 for 11/12 May 2012 conference

Over the course of three workshops, this sculpture project at The Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum will seek to explore some of the implications of these issues in a discussion between those who pursue the art-historical investigation of sculpture, those concerned with its curation and display and those responsible for its conservation and technical examination. Each workshop will be thematically focused, without bias to either period or discipline, drawing on a wide range of methodologies and expertise. The resulting dialogue will provide the basis for a conference early in 2012.

Works of sculpture and the places in which they are viewed are more prone to adaptation, transformation, damage and loss than are any other categories of object. Sculpture is frequently intended to be inseparable from the spaces and locations it occupies. In consequence, its removal is often traumatic and recorded in damage to both object and context. The adjustment of buildings, rooms and public spaces to accommodate relocated objects, whether for the purpose of public display or private ownership, results in shifts in the physical status, the implied meaning and the social perception of both the moved object and its altered situation.

However, whilst the removal of sculpture from its intended context changes the thing itself, the space it once occupied and the place into which it is deposited, the ruptures and dislocations associated with such events also provide opportunities for detailed technical examination, the retrieval of previously inaccessible views and the creation of new and unexpected juxtapositions of things and ideas. The new readings that are opened up by such opportunities can relate both to the histories of individual objects and their making and to the wider social, religious and political narratives of which they form a part. In these narratives, the traces of the removal and relocation of sculpture are often the only physical vestiges left of the events they describe.

Stained Glass Masterclass

Stained Glass and the Modern Museum: Conservation, Research, Display

Thursday 10 March 2011, 9.00AM

10-11 March 2011

The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the formation of major museum collections of stained glass all over Europe and North America. New displays of stained glass have recently been unveiled at the V&A, at the Schnütgen Museum in Cologne, and the Yorkshire Museum in York, exemplifying the issues associated with the conservation and display of this challenging medium, while the inventory project at the Burrell Collection highlights the research challenges of these truly international collections.

Royal Academy: Artist of the Month, John Bacon

John Bacon RA (1740-1799) John Bacon, "Sickness," marble, 1778 Diploma Work given by John Bacon, R.A., accepted 1778 © Royal Academy of Arts, London (Photo by Paul Highnam)

From the Royal Academy of Arts in London: Royal Academy of Arts, Artist of the Month — January 2011

Bacon was the son of a cloth-worker, and was originally apprenticed to Nicholas Crispe, the owner of a porcelain factory, in 1755. Here he learnt to create designs for small scale productions in both ceramic and metalwork. In 1759 he was ambitious enough to enter the first of many sculptures into the Society of Arts premium competitions. He was successful in winning 11 premiums as well as being awarded the Society’s gold medal. Bacon went on to work with Josiah Wedgwood, Matthew Boulton and James Tassie. By 1769 the establishment of the Royal Academy Schools provided further opportunities and Bacon enrolled as a student by June of that year. He was again successful in the RA Schools competitions and won a gold medal in his first year there. His rise in the Royal Academy was rapid as he was elected as Associate of the Royal Academy in 1770 and a full Royal Academician in 1778.