In 2016 a portrait, identified as Elizabeth Fanshawe (1609-1668), née Cockayne, came up for sale at a well-known auction house (left). This portrait bore an uncanny resemblance to the female sitter in a small double portrait of Sir Thomas Fanshawe and his second wife Elizabeth, née Fanshawe at Valence House (below). A visit to Melbourne […]
When I saw the title of the SSN Joint Conference was to be Why Exhibitions? I was immediately intrigued and my first thought was ‘Why not exhibitions?’ I was keen to hear what other museum professionals were experiencing that made them consider not having a temporary exhibition programme. The Mining Art Gallery is the first […]
‘Exhibition’ seems to be a rather slippery term these days. In the context of national museums and galleries it might conjure thoughts of huge blockbuster shows, often bringing together an impressive array of loans from across the globe. If I told you I was going to an ‘exhibition’ in London, this is probably the kind […]
My co-curator, Rachel Dickson, and I were delighted when, in the summer of 2015, just as we were preparing to celebrate Ben Uri’s centenary with a major collection exhibition, Out of Chaos, at Somerset House, this early oil by Clare Winsten (1892–1984) came to light. A portrait of one European Jewish émigré to London by […]
As a portraitist, Sir William Rothenstein (1872-1945) is probably best-known for his chalk drawings and lithographs of famous figures, over two hundred of which are held at the National Portrait Gallery. Rothenstein launched himself on the British art scene as a portraitist in the early 1890s, and continued the practice until his death (one of […]
The two day seminar, Audiences, Authority and Collaboration in Museum Research, began at Tate on a Thursday lunchtime and I went directly from a workshop at the Tower of London on ‘Inclusivity’ that morning. It was great to find the very issues that we had been addressing at Historic Royal Palaces taking centre stage in […]
