Forthcoming lectures
Thursday 19th September 2024 10.45am and 2.15pmLecturer: Jane AngeliniThe Glories of Byzantium The importance of the role played by Byzantium as a link in the great chain of world history is an important theme. With its roots firmly in the Ancient World of Greece and Rome the Byzantine period – AD 330 -1453 – spans the medieval centuries.
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Thursday 17th October 2024 10.45am and 2.15pm. Simultaneous transmission a.m. only Lecturer: Emily Chappell‘I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth’ (Rev 21) : The Gothic Cathedral as the Heavenly Jerusalem This lecture will consider the aims and motivations of the master masons who built the great Gothic cathedrals of England and France.
We will study several key buildings: their architecture and stained glass, the influence of liturgical practice and religious symbolism on their layout and the importance of light and colour in their interiors. We will look at the technical challenges and how these were overcome by an extraordinary determination to build Heavenly Jerusalem on earth.
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Thursday 21st November 2024 (post AGM) at 10.30am only. Please note earlier time. Simultaneous transmission.Lecturer: Dr Caroline LevisseThe Invention of Photography and its Impact on Early Modern Painting Invented at the end of the 1830s, photography triggered a visual revolution. At the time, some feared that photography would replace painting altogether. It certainly did not but painting was not left untouched either.
Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1873 - Gustave Le Gray, The Brig, 1856
In this lecture we will consider how photography participated in changing the face of painting in the second half of the 19th century. It introduced a new relationship between reality and its representation that influenced painters such as the Realists and the Impressionists. It also encouraged painters to explore new directions. Freed from having to record the external world, painters could focus on more intangible things (such as emotions) or on formal aspects (such as colour for its own sake).
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Thursday 12th December 2024 10.45am and 2.15pm. Simultaneous transmission a.m. onlyLecturer: Sarah CiacciThe Christmas Story in Art In this talk we will look at works of art that depict episodes from the story of Christmas.
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Thursday 16th January 2025Lecturer: Jo WaltonFigures in the City: Picturing People in Post War London In the years after the Second World War, London was dark, grimy and gap-toothed by bomb damage. |
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20th February 2025Lecturer: Liz WoolleyWilliam Morris - Lord Nuffield and his Great Generosity William Morris, Lord Nuffield, probably did more than any other individual to transform Oxford in the t |
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20th March 2025Lecturer: Mary SharpThe Fall into Knowledge: The Story of Prometheus and how his plight has captivated and influenced writers and artists over the years Prometheus was a Titan who, according to Greek legend, created the human race and then famously incurre |
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17th April 2025Lecturer: James RenshawPersepolis: Art, Architecture and Ideology of the Persian Empire The Persian empire exploded into life during the middle of the 6th century BC and was the largest empir |
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15th May 2025Lecturer: Lydia BaumanBritish Art from Egg to Bacon Survey of a hundred years of Art in Britain from the Victorian Leopold Augustus Egg to Francis Bacon. |
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19th June 2025Lecturer: Sarah Deere-JonesSoft Angelic Whispers: The Hidden History of the Medieval Harp Many people around the world today believe the harp to be an exclusively 'Celtic' instrument and are un |
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Thursday 18th September 2025Lecturer: Rupert DickensHogarth at the Hustings: The Election Entertainment Series and the Birth of Political Satire At the root of the long British tradition of political satire is William Hogarth’s Election Entertainme |
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Thursday 16th October 2025Lecturer: Angela FindlayThe Empty Chair in Contemporary Art from van Gogh to Ai Weiwei Angela Findlay: The Empty Chair in Contemporary Art from van Gogh to Ai Weiwei |
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Thursday 20th November AGMLecturer: Henrietta HammantA History of Inuit Art in the Canadian Arctic From religion to the environment, and colonial encounters to the power of the Western art market, this |
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Thursday 11th December 2025Lecturer: Chris BradleyWho is Santa Claus? Art from St Nicholas to Father Christmas Nicholas was the Greek Bishop of Myra, a 4th century port in Anatolia. |