Event Date: 25 November 2015
Clore Auditorium,
Tate Britain
Millbank,
London SW1P 4RG
Tate Britain and the School of Arts at Birkbeck University of London present:
Artist and Empire: The Long Nineteenth Century
Tate Britain’s major conference, held in collaboration with Birkbeck, University of London and culture at King’s College London, marks the opening of the exhibition Artist and Empire. Scholars, curators and artists from around Britain and the world consider art created under the conditions of the British Empire, its aftermath, and its future in museum and gallery displays.
Scholarship of art associated with the British Empire has expanded over the last two decades, across a huge span of disciplines and locations. This conference takes the historic opportunity of the exhibition, featuring diverse artists from the sixteenth century to the present day, to bring together people to meet and share the latest research being developed around this subject. The papers, roundtables and audience discussions will consider the cosmopolitan character of objects and images, and the way geographical, cultural and chronological dislocations have in many instances obscured, changed or suppressed their history, significance and aesthetics. We will also explore how approaches to contemporary art, archives, curation and collecting can help develop new ways to look at them now.
Convened by Carol Jacobi (Tate Britain), Emily Senior and Sarah Thomas (Birkbeck, University of London)
Programme:
Welcome by Sarah Thomas (Birkbeck, University of London):
Introduction by Carol Jacobi (Tate Britain):
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Panel 1 Displaced Practices: artists and exchanges
Chaired by Felix Driver (Professor of Human Geography at Royal Holloway) – Chair’s brief introduction to the speakers and theme of the panel
Michael Rosenthal (Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Warwick) – Augustus Earle: Seeing Straight
Geoff Quilley (Professor of Art History at the University of Sussex) – Inside empire looking out: the view from Dent’s veranda
Partha Mitter (Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Sussex) – Unintended Consequences: The British Raj and Art Education
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Panel 2 Moving Objects: collecting, archives, display
Chaired by John Mack (Professor of World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia and Chairman of the Sainsbury Institute for Art) – Chair’s brief introduction to the speakers and theme of the panel
Alison Inglis (Associate Professor in Art History at the University of Melbourne) – Collecting and Displaying British Art in the Australian Colony
Zachary Kingdon (Curator of the African Collections at the World Museum in Liverpool) – Unofficial Exchanges: Investigating West Africans’ Gifts to UK Museums in the Early Colonial Period
Nick Thomas (Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge) – Artefacts of Encounter: rethinking objects and collections
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Panel 3 Face to Face: figures, portraits and identities
Chaired by Elizabeth Edwards (Research Professor in Photographic History and Director of Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University) – Chair’s brief introduction to the speakers and theme of the panel
Temi Odumosu (Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Copenhagen University) – This is how you see her? Rachel Pringle of Barbados by Thomas Rowlandson’s hand
Gillian Forrester (Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Yale Center for British Art) – Noel B. Livingston’s Gallery of Illustrious Jamaicans
Ruth Philips (Canada Research Chair in Modern Culture and Professor of Art History at Carleton University) – Sir Henry Acland Mi’kmaq woman from Nova Scotia and a Mi’kmaq dressed doll: the tensions of imperialism and indigenous survivance and resistance
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Plenary Panel: Reflection
Chaired by Annie Coombes (Professor of Material and Visual Culture at Birkbeck, University of London) – Introduction
Zareer Masani (Historian and Writer)
Ruth Phillips (Canada Research Chair in Modern Culture and Professor of Art History at Carleton University)
Paul Gilroy (Professor of American and English Literature, King’s College London)
