Rather belatedly, a happy new year to you all! (it’s been a busy start of term .) I hope you all had good Christmas breaks, and have returned to the Spring term feeling nicely refreshed.
I’m pleased to say that I’m able to resume my blog posts with a piece of good news! You’ll remember that, a few months ago, I was contacted by the Art Fund with the offer of FREE national art passes for students on our History of Art programmes. I know that many of you took up this offer, and are already enjoying 50% off major exhibitions and free entry into 230 charging museums and galleries across the UK. The Art Fund have just been in touch with me again to say that there are free still passes available, and that they are reopening the offer, with a new deadline of 30th JANUARY. If you didn’t take up this opportunity first time round, please do so now. I’m delighted to be able to add that I asked the Fund if the offer might now be extended to our research students, on the MPhil/PhD programme, as well as students on our taught programmes, and they happily agreed.
Members of staff in the department have been working hard. New publications are always appearing: one of the most recent was a piece in November by Joanne Anderson in the journal, Der Schlern: ‘St. Magdalena in Rentsch bei Bozen: Ein neuer Vorschlag zur Auftraggeberschaft im 14. Jahrhundert’. For those whose German is as rusty as mine, that translates as ‘Santa Maddalena in Rencio near Bolzano: A New Proposal of Patronage in the 14th-Century’. My colleagues are also regularly organising exhibitions, and a display co-curated by Gabriel Koureas and one of his PhD students, Elena Parpa, has just opened in the Peltz Gallery: Exercises in Orientation. This exciting curatorial project investigates the significance of landscape in the work of contemporary Cypriot artists, asking: How do contemporary Cypriot artists position themselves in a place marked by conflict? What kind of issues do they seek to address and how does their work contribute to our understanding of a divided landscape? The opening event was a couple of nights ago (a great success), and the exhibition will run until 11th February. Do stop in on your way in or out of the building, and take a look.
We’re also routinely involved in organising events, and I’m going selfishly to take the opportunity to give one of mine a plug! It’s a one day conference entitled Animating the Eighteenth-Century Country House, which I’ve co-organised with Dr Susanna Avery-Quash at the National Gallery and our PhD student, Amelia Smith. It will be in the Sainsbury Wing Lecture Theatre at the Gallery on 5th March, and you can find full details here.
