Lectures Plus

NBAS ZOOM LECTURE:  2pm, 14 JANUARY 2025 - ANNA MOSZYNSKA -  VIRTUAL TOUR OF MOMA new york - a trip around this iconic gallery

An opportunity to ‘travel’ to New York and experience the excitement of visiting this famous Museum of Modern Art.  Established in 1929 and newly extended in 2019, MoMA offers a superb range of artworks from Impressionism to the present day, as well as collections of photography and design.  On this virtual trip, Anna introduces the fascinating history and architecture of the museum and then tours the art collection over different floors, looking closely at specific pieces and seeing how they resonate with other works close by.  The talk offers a lively view of modern and contemporary artists ranging from Vincent Van Gogh to Cindy Sherman. This talk should be of interest whether you have already visited the actual museum, or not!

Anna Moszynskais an internationally renowned lecturer and writer specialising in contemporary art. During the 1990s, she oversaw the development of the first British Master’s Degree in the subject at Sotheby’s Institute, London. She has lectured at institutions including the Royal Academy of Arts and Tate, as well as in cities across the world. She has curated exhibitions in London and Rome. Her books include Abstract Art (1990/2020) and Sculpture Now (2013), and two books on the drawings of Antony Gormley. [She enjoys introducing art to audiences in a lively and approachable way that makes modern and contemporary art both accessible and interesting.]

NBAS 26 november LECTURE:  Sarah Ciacci - The holiday season:  food and feasting in art

an artistic mid-season celebration that helps spur people on towards spring

The Holiday Season: Food and Feasting in Art: Christmas is historically a time for feasting and celebrations, in large part because it occurs in the middle of the dark and cold days of winter, so a mid-season celebration with lots of food and drink helped spur people on towards the spring. In this talk we will look at how food and feasting is depicted in paintings, and it will hopefully help us through the dark

Image credit note: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, from the New Years 1890 series (N227) issued by Kinney Bros.1889-90, Issued by Kinney Brothers Company, Trade Card (The Met, New York).

NBAS 29 OCTOBER LECTURE:  Peter Medhurst – Handle in Georgian England 1711-1759

Peter Medhurst tells the story of Handel's musical adventures in London

From the moment the 25 year old Handel arrived in London, in 1710, he was welcomed onto the English musical scene with open arms, and for the next 30 years composed Italian operas which in the main were premiered at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket.  When operatic taste waned in the 1730s, the ever-resourceful Handel turned his skills to a completely new form of entertainment: oratorio, and works such as Messiah, Theodore and Solomon instantly appealed to a national sense of religious piety.  Add to these works a handful of Royal commissions, concertos, sonatas - and even tunes for musical clocks - and you glimpse a composer whose musical variety was reflected in an equally diverse and colourful life.  (Image provided with the kind permission of Peter Medhurst)

nbas 24 sEPTEMBER lecture:  Julia musgrave - Cézanne and Van Gogh: Death as a career move.                The journey from unsold to blockbuster and the importance of the art dealers

To celebrate the National Gallery's autumn blockbuster exhibition, Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers (14 September 2024 – 19 January 2025), this lecture explores how Van Gogh and his contemporary, Paul Cézanne made little impact on the public mind during their lifetimes, but became far more famous relatively soon after their deaths. Both were rebels with art as their cause – Van Gogh painted quickly, exploiting the power of vibrant colour to express his emotions. Cézanne’s analytical approach led him to ponder each and every brushstroke. Neither sold much in their lifetime – only their artist friends appreciated the changes they brought into being. In this lecture I look at how the work of Van Gogh and Cézanne went from unsold to blockbuster in the early years of the 20th century because a few brave, but important art dealers and critics decided to sponsor them posthumously.        

Julia Musgrave got her first degree in Chemical Engineering and went on to become a Chartered Information Systems Engineer and IT project manager. In 2008 she decided that life was too short for just one career and decided to become an art historian. She now has a Graduate Diploma in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MLitt in ‘Art, Style and Design: Renaissance to Modernism, c.1450 – c.1930’ from the University of Glasgow. She gained her Ph.D. at the University of York for her research into the involvement of Roger Fry, the Bloomsbury Group, and the development of the Contemporary Art Society from 1910 to 1939. She teaches Art History at the City Literary Institute (City Lit) and is Co-Director of The London Art Salon. She is also an accredited Arts Society lecturer.                                        I

Top Image:  Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley, 1882–85,  Oil on canvas, 65.4 x 81.6 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.  (public domain)                    Middle Image:  Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889.  Oil on canvas, 73.2 × 93.4 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (public domain) 

NBAS 25 June 2024 Lecture – The Jurassic World of Mary Anning - The 19^th century palaeontologist and her discovery of fossils on the South coast

Dr Aaron Hunter is a professional scientist and researcher with the University of Cambridge and a prize-winning London Blue Badge Guide, a Green Badge Guide for the City of London and Oxford, and a City of Bath Mayor's Guide. As a palaeontologist, he is an expert on fossils and prehistoric life. 

He will talk about the 19th century palaeontologist Mary Anning and discover how she searched the Jurassic rocks of England's south coast to unearth what were believed to be sea dragons and we now call marine reptiles. We will look at the social history and influences on Mary and the 19th century scientists that she would have worked with. We will not only look at these spectacular fossil remains, but also see how palaeontologists have revealed how these ancient extinct animals lived.

NBAS Lecture 28.5.24:  James Renshaw - Two Hellenistic Cities: Alexandria and Pergamon - HOW THESE CITIES CHANGED THE ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPE, THEIR LEGACY EXAMINED

By 323 BC Alexander the Great had conquered the Persian empire and launched a new era of Mediterranean history, known today as the Hellenistic Age. The world had changed, and soon two cities emerged as centres of extraordinary culture and learning. In Egypt, Alexander conceived a vision of a new city to take his name: Alexandria. It soon became the intellectual hub of the ancient world, which saw extraordinary discoveries in science and mathematics, philosophy, and medicine. Its library was the greatest of the ancient world; moreover, its lighthouse was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. 

NBAS LECTURE:  30 APRIL 2024 BY ANNA MOSZYNSKA FRESH ENCOUNTERS:  CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE AND THE PUBLIC SPACE

The role of outdoor sculpture has changed substantially in recent times. Here I consider how the concept of elevated monument and memorial, familiar since classical antiquity, shifts now to a desire to engage the spectator in often surprising ways. In this talk, I look at different approaches to sculpture in the city; the emergence of the Sculpture Park across the globe; how artists make new works involving water; and how recent sculpture often involves exciting and unusual encounters with the public. Among the international figures discussed are Louise Bourgeois, Antony Gormley, Simone Leigh, Maya Lin, Richard Serra and Do Ho Suh - artists who also feature in my book, 'Sculpture Now'.

NBAS Lecture:  26 March 2024 by Vivienne Lawes - Clarice Cliff:  the doyenne of Art Deco.  A great innovator, how the bar was set for ceramics as a commercial art form

This lecture explores an artist whose work, inventiveness, and ability to catch the zeitgeist is still admired a century after her bold 'Bizarre' wares were launched in 1927. These Art Deco masterpieces are the products that most vividly signify Clarice Cliff's legacy. She spent a lifetime innovating. Born in 1899, she was a working professional whose lifespan covered the period in which women broke through the barriers of the art world. While the Royal Academy barred women from accessing the full training and privileges of their male counterparts, the pottery industry was one that had traditionally offered female artists the opportunities to excel. Cliff's talents were recognised when she was still a teenager, and she went on to produce designs that keyed into the cutting-edge trends of the period, setting the bar for ceramics as a commercial art form.  

DETACHMENT: GOYA’S BLACK PAINTINGS

When Goya moved to the so-called house of the deaf man, he began painting the walls with some of the most extraordinary art ever seen and subsequently dubbed The Black Paintings not just for their dark colour but for their often dark and disturbing subject matter. This lecture considers the laborious yet not always careful process of taking Goya’s Black paintings off the walls of his home and eventually transferring them to the Prado in Madrid. It charts the extraordinary difficulties of removing them, considers why he painted such black visions and whether he wanted them ever to be seen. It considers his state of mind at the time; removed from the court, deaf and isolated.

Jacqueline Cockburn, our lecturer, is an art historian and linguist. After a career in academic teaching at Birkbeck college, University of London and Westminster School, she is now a freelance lecturer. She is course director and lecturer at the V & A and also lectures at The Royal Academy, The Art Fund, Artscapades, The London Art History Society, The Arts Society and a number of private institutions. Her focus is European Art 1850- 1950. Jacqueline is Managing Director of Art and Culture Andalucía running residential courses in Andalucía, Southern Spain in the art and culture of the region. She has recently published ‘A Taste of Art, London’ (Unicorn Press 2019).

How CalcuttA (Kolkata) played a major role in shaping the arts and culture of modern India. 

Our lecturer, Dr John Stevens, gained his PhD in History from UCL, before going on to teach British Imperial History, Indian History and Bengali Language at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London). His biography of the Indian guru Keshab Chandra Sen – Keshab: Bengal’s Forgotten Prophet - was published by Hurst and Oxford University Press in 2018. He is a regular visitor to India and Bangladesh and has lectured at numerous Indian universities. He also works as a consultant on Indian affairs and teaches the Bengali language to private students. He has appeared many times in the Indian media, and was a guest on BBC Radio Four’s In Our Time, discussing the poet and artist Rabindranath Tagore.  John lived and worked in Kolkata for fifteen years so is in a wonderful position to illuminate our understanding of this great and important city.

Resurgam:  The music of st paul's cathedral - patrick craig - 31 October 2023

The last time St Paul’s Cathedral was deprived of music for a long period was after the devastating Fire of London in 1666. But in 1697 Christopher Wren was able to triumphantly declare RESURGAM as the phoenix rose from the ashes. Our lecturer, Patrick Craig, Vicar Choral at St Paul’s Cathedral, conductor and singer with the Tallis Scholars, looked at music from either side of this momentous event. He guided us through the finest repertoire from across the Cathedral’s liturgical year. Escorted by a selection of his favourite photographs, music and videos he set out to convey the glories of twenty-five years of singing in this extraordinary building. 

STANLEY SPENCER'S COOKHAM - DR AMY LIM

The lecture looked at Cookham's place in Spencer's art, and how it was central to his unique vision of English domestic and spiritual life. Dr Amy Lim is an art historian and curator, specialising in British fine and decorative arts from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. She is curator of the Farringdon Collection at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, and of the  Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham. She is also an exhibition researcher at Tate, contributing to British Baroque: Power and Illusion (2020) and the forthcoming Women Artists in Britain. Amy has degrees in History and Literature & Arts from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. She runs an online art dealership, and has published articles and essays on a variety of art-related topics from gothic garden monuments to female patronage.  Click here for more information about Dr Amy Lim. 

WEAVING CULTURES OF THE AMERICAS: THE CONTINUOUS THREAD – CHLOË SAYER

A common thread links the Incas of Peru, the Maya of Central America, the Aztecs of Mexico and the Navajo of the American Southeast. Artists in cloth, they have created some of the finest textiles in the history of the world. Our lecturer, Chloë Sayer is a freelance specialist in Latin American art and culture. She is a Research Associate with the Department for World Cultures at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, and curated their recent exhibition¡Viva México! Clothing & Culture (2015-2016). She is the author of the accompanying book, published in 2015. Her other books include MEXICAN TEXTILES (British Museum Press, 1990), THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF MEXICO (Thames & Hudson, 1990), THE INCAS - THE ANCIENT WORLD (Wayland Publishers, 1998), TEXTILES FROM MEXICO  (British Museum Press, 2002) and FIESTA: DAYS OF THE DEAD AND OTHER MEXICAN FESTIVALS (British Museum Press, 2009).