Many of you will know that there is a University and Colleges Union strike going on nationally. You may have seen pickets yesterday and today at UCL and elsewhere. Birkbeck lecturers are also going on strike from Monday. The full strike dates are:

Monday 24, Tuesday 25 and Wednesday 26 February

Monday 2, Tuesday 3, Wednesday 4 and Thursday 5 March

Monday 9, Tuesday 10, Wednesday 11, Thursday 12 and Friday 13 March

Thursday 19 and Friday 20 March.

If you’re a current student and have classes on any of those days, please look out on your email to see whether your classes are cancelled. If you were planning on attending research or information events in the department or elsewhere in Birkbeck on these days, also keep your eyes open for cancellations. There is a useful list of FAQs issued by Birkbeck here. If you were planning on attending the Open Day on Saturday 22 February, it is still going ahead.

During the strike, there’ll be pickets outside of the School of Arts and the Main Building, and you can come and speak to members of academic staff there and learn more about the strike. There’ll also be ‘teach out’ events happening outside SOAS and Birkbeck main building, to which all are welcome – you can get more info here: Bloomsbury Teach Outs WEEK 1 (2).

Meanwhile do check out the Centre for Museum Cultures website for some exciting upcoming events:

Sarah Ferrari (whom some of you will know as one of the leaders of the department trip to Venice last year) is giving a Murray seminar with a Museums theme: ‘Provenance matters: acquisitions of Venetian Renaissance art in Northern Europe between the First and the Second World War‘. Monday 16 March 5pm, Keynes Library

Susanna Avery-Quash is Honorary Research Fellow in the department, and Senior Research Curator in the History of Collecting at the National Gallery. She is part of two events coming up next term. She’ll be speaking about ‘A History of Hanging! 200 Years of Display at the National Gallery’ on Friday 1 May, 6-7.30pm, Keynes Library (booking link on CMC website).

Frederick Mackenzie, The National Gallery when at Mr Angerstein’s House, Pall Mall (exhibited 1834). Victoria and Albert Museum.

And there’s a very rare and exciting opportunity to go behind the scenes at the National Gallery to see the Conservation Studio, Library and Archive, with Dr Avery-Quash and Head of Conservation Larry Keith on Friday 5 May, 5-7pm. Book soon, because places are limited and are bound to go quickly.

Anna Jamieson, who is doing a PhD in the department on imagery of women and madness in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, has recorded a podcast on ‘reflecting madness in art’ for the excellent series ‘Art Matters’ hosted by Art UK. Have a listen!

Millais, John Everett; Ophelia; Tate; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/ophelia-117686

And remember to have a look at and listen to a new programme on Michelangelo and how the artist has been presented over the years by the BBC. Michelangelo: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, features interviews with both our own Dorigen Caldwell, and Birkbeck BA and MA alum Leslie Primo. Available on the iPlayer for 25 more days!

Finally, the call for applications for our annual research fund for MA and PhD students is out. The London Art History Society (check out their website for all their many art historical activities) generously donates an amount to Birkbeck every year which allows us to support student research.

You can apply for a bursary of up to £300 if you are an MPhil/PhD student, and £150 if you are an MA student. This money must be used to support your research, and can include travel to archives, accommodation, photography, etc. You apply with an e-mail or an e-mail with a word document attached – there’s no application form. Please set out the rationale for undertaking the research clearly, and explain what it will be contributing towards (e.g., a chapter of a PhD thesis, or an MA Research Project, etc), be precise about what you will be spending the money on, and provide proper costings of the expenses to be incurred. The deadline for applications is Monday 16 March 2020; 23:59. Please send your applications to Jack Redden (j.redden@bbk.ac.uk).

It’s that survey time of year again: your chance as Birkbeck students to give your feedback on your experience here. If you’re in your final year of a BA programme, you’ll have received (several) emails from the National Student Survey, which is the big one, the results of which are publicly available, and paid close attention to by the government’s Office for Students. Please do take the time to fill it out (and don’t forget to collect your reward: a £15 Ethical Shop or Waterstones voucher!) There are also internal Birkbeck surveys for all other students, undergrad, postgrad, and PhD, and we are very eager to have as many people as possible fill those out. You can find links to all the surveys here, along with info about how we’ve changed things in the past in response to your feedback. I’m also always very happy to have feedback on any aspect of your programmes and Birkbeck experience – you can email me directly at l.topp@bbk.ac.uk.

A tip for your weekend viewing: One of our own will be on the small screen this Sunday 16 Feb at 9pm on BBC Four (and streamable on the iPlayer after that). Dorigen Caldwell, Senior Lecturer in Italian Renaissance Art in the department, has contributed to ‘Michelangelo: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly‘ and she offers us here her insider’s view of the process of doing art history for the telly:

‘Michelangelo’ is part of a series of programmes looking at ‘Art on the BBC’ – which sets out to investigate how art – and particularly ‘great artists’ – have been discussed in BBC arts programming over the years. The pilot episode focused on Leonardo da Vinci, and the other episodes in the first series are looking at Michelangelo, Picasso and ‘The Nude’. In discussions I had with the director, there was a clear desire to take a critical look at how these big artists and themes had been treated in programming that was more often than not fronted by white men, and tended to perpetuate a fairly traditional narrative. Whether or not the final programmes will really deconstruct that narrative is hard to tell, as I wasn’t involved in the conceptual process, and I’m guessing that my contribution will amount to little more than a few minutes. I was interviewed for the programme over a year ago, and haven’t seen it yet myself, but it was quite fun to do, and the director seemed genuinely interested and enthusiastic about Michelangelo. Apparently there’s another series planned, so you might see some more familiar faces take part in that…

Annie Coombes, Professor of Material and Visual Culture in the department, gave a lecture last week in the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at the University of Stockholm. Her lecture, ‘Decolonizing the Monument/Rethinking the Memorial,’ looked at how the increased demand on many university campuses for institutions to address colonial amnesia and to actively decolonize the curriculum has focused on municipal statuary – with the call for iconoclastic removal ironically transforming them from neglected and banalized remnants of former colonial glory into hyper-visible symbols of colonial power. Using examples from Kenya, Spain and South Africa, her lecture considered the ways in which various visual and cultural strategies might be said to perform the requirements of either a monument or a memorial – a living symbolic commemorative structure – in the contexts of particularly violent pasts targeting civilian populations.

The Keiskamma Guernica, 2010, Mixed media, Hamburg, South Africa. Photo: Robert Hofmeyr

A reminder of the upcoming lecture by the School of Arts’ Professor Dame Marina Warner next Wednesday 19 February 6pm in Clore, as part of the lecture series marking 100 years since the College officially became part of the University of London. Marina’s lecture is entitled ‘The Map is not the Territory: Re-imagining Place, Reweaving Story’. More information and a link for booking here. A plug for the department: our own Kate Retford is leading on the School of Arts’ contributions to both this anniversary (100 years in the University of London) and the upcoming 200th anniversary of the foundation of Birkbeck in 1823.

Next Friday 21 February two of our PhD students, Jo Cottrell and Alistair Cartwright, have organised a brilliant-sounding day of talks on the theme of Liminal London: Real and Unreal Spaces of the 20^th-century Metropolis, sponsored by the Architecture, Space and Society Centre. Academics and writers will explore the existence of heterotopic sites and other spaces straddling the real and the unreal throughout London in the twentieth century. Papers will examine spaces that exist between the public and the private, and the heteroclite communities that have gathered there, considering how such spaces have fostered modes of cosmopolitan life, and helped overcome – or alternatively reinforced – inequalities of race, class, gender and sexuality. 9.30-6 in Keynes Library, followed by a drinks reception, music and poetry. Spaces are limited, so don’t forget to book using the link above.

Birkbeck has just announced an exciting new opportunity: the Diversity100 PhD Studentships. Five generous PhD studentships (fees and stipend) are available across all areas of research represented at Birkbeck for BAME students. We are concerned at Birkbeck with the lack of representation by Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students at doctoral level. Compared with other institutions, our BAME students form a relatively high percentage of overall student numbers, but the proportion of BAME students at PhD level is significantly lower. In this context, Birkbeck is offering five studentships for PhD students starting their studies in Autumn 2020. These scholarships actively address under-representation at the highest level of research, and encourage BAME students to consider academic research in all disciplines. Successful candidates will have a strong academic background and/or exceptional research potential. More information at the link above. The closing date for applications is 11 May 2020.

There are still a few places available on the Study Trip to Budapest (11-15 May) with Kasia Murawska-Muthesius and Stefan Muthesius. Really worth looking into this, I mean it!

The British Council Venice Fellows have been announced for 2020: George Townsend, a PhD student in English (co-supervised with History of Art) and Foteini (Claire) Saramanti, a student on the MA Text and Performance. The Venice Fellowships, which are awarded every year, fund two students from the School of Arts to travel to Venice and work as part of the team at the British Pavilion of the Venice Biennale or the Venice Architecture Biennale. Many congratulations to both of them!

And warm congratulations too to Patricia Yaker Ekall, who is a student on the BA History of Art, and one of the 2019 Venice Fellows. She’ll be heading back to Venice in summer 2020 to take up one of the very competitive internships at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, following in the footsteps of Danilo Reis, an recent graduate of the BA History of Art. The Birkbeck invasion continues…