Our 2023 Understanding British Portraits Annual Seminar took place in the National Portrait Gallery’s new Mildred & Simon Palley Learning Centre on Tuesday 24 October 2023, chaired by Oli McCall, Senior Curator at Compton Verney Art Gallery & Park. We were delighted to welcome network members back to the Gallery following its reopening and to meet in person once again to share new work and ideas about all aspects of portraiture.

The Annual Seminar is our open platform for UBP members and the wider museum/heritage/arts/academic sectors to share papers on a range of new work: portrait-focused research, conservation, audience engagement, co-production and interpretation. We seek to showcase new findings, best practice case studies, and innovative working models. Programmes and recordings from past Annual Seminars can be found on our Events page.

Speakers at this year’s event included:

  • Bruce Baker, Professor of American History and African American Studies, Newcastle University
  • Kate Bethune, Cultural Heritage Curator, National Trust
  • Lauren Cochrane, PhD candidate, Department of History, University of Exeter
  • Alison Cooper, Cultural Heritage Curator for the National Trust in the South West
  • Elena Greer, Property Curator, Kingston Lacy, National Trust
  • Sarah Maisey, Senior Remedial Paintings Conservator at the National Trust’s Royal Oak Foundation Conservation Studio at Knole
  • David McAlmont, Singer, Songwriter, and Art Historian
  • Lucy Peltz, Head of Collections Displays (Tudor-Regency) and Senior Curator, 18th-Century Collections, National Portrait Gallery
  • Emma Rutherford, Director at The Limner Company
  • Jane Simpkiss, Curator, Compton Verney Art Gallery & Park
  • Ellie Smith, Exhibition Coordinator and Researcher at Philip Mould & Company
  • Matthew Storey, Collections Curator, Historic Royal Palaces
  • Robert Taylor, Portrait Photographer

A blog post exploring some highlights of the event, by network member Dr Tessa Kilgarriff, can be found on our Blog page.

 

 

Images, clockwise from top left:
George Romney (1734-1802), Frances Woodley, Mrs Henry Bankes the younger. Image courtesy of Kingston Lacy Estate, Dorset © National Trust Images © National Trust Collections; Installation shot from Permissible Beauty at Hampton Court Palace; Attributed to Sarah Biffin (Beffin) (1784-1850), Sarah Biffin (Beffin), c. 1825 © National Portrait Gallery. Full catalogue entry here; New displays at the National Portrait Gallery, London, including Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Portrait of Mai (Omai), c. 1776. © National Portrait Gallery and J. Paul Getty Trust.