Havana, Cuba, 2012. Photograph: Leon Wainwright
On 21st and 22nd May the Department of Art History and Department of Geography hosted the international meeting ‘Caribbean Urban Aesthetics’, a project initiated by Dr Clare Melhuish and Dr Leon Wainwright, which explores the intersection of aesthetics and urban place at a number of different sites in the Caribbean region, crossing linguistic boundaries. This networking event was a preliminary workshop to bring together around 20 scholars and professionals from various institutions sharing a mutual interest in this field of studies, both within and beyond the Caribbean itself. Visit the project’s website.
We are delighted to announce that Dr Leon Wainwright has been awarded a prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize. These Prizes, with a value of £70,000 each, are awarded to outstanding scholars who have made a substantial and recognised contribution to their particular field of study, recognised at an international level, and where the expectation is that their greatest achievement is yet to come. The Prize will enable Dr Wainwright to further develop his transatlantic work on art of the modern and contemporary Caribbean and its diaspora, with attention to Dutch, Spanish and English-speaking contexts.
At the Kings Place, London on 30 May – 1 June 2013 will be an event to mark the close of Creativity and Innovation in a World of Movement (CIM). This was part of a €1m Collaborative Research Project funded by the European Science Foundation (HERA JRP), that commenced in June 2010. The Lead Project is at Queen’s University, Belfast, with other consortium members at the Free University, Amsterdam and Utrecht University, the Netherlands; the University of Oslo; and here at the Open University. Our key Associate Member is the Museum of Ethnology, Vienna. You can download the final programme in PDF format [8 MB].
The Principal Investigator for Project #04 of the CIM consortium is Dr Leon Wainwright (Department of Art History, OU). This Project’s specific focus is the Anglophone Caribbean. The region has become a seminal context for the study of transnationalism but less is known of how this intersects with the art production and display of the Caribbean and its diaspora. The research compares and contrasts the ways in which artists and curators contribute to the formation of transnational community, or seek alternative ways to understand themselves and their art practices.
Our new department blog is our way of reflecting on art and heritage today, whether it is something in the news, caught on the media or experienced. Sometimes we make our own news, so when we launch a new course you might read about an insider’s view here, or celebrate our colleagues’ research achievements. Visit the blog.
From 21 May 2012 - 10 March 2013, Tate Britain is running a focus display on the curatorial work of the late OU Professor Charles Harrison. See Tate Britain's website for more information. Read our blog post to find out more about Charles's career as an academic at The Open University.
This study day explores issues raised by a major Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at Tate Modern. His extraordinary body of work is the springboard for a critical exploration of ideas around the meaning of pop in the US and UK and its legacy for contemporary art and culture. Curators, academics and artists will contribute to the debates.
Speakers include: Hal Foster, art critic and historian, Iria Candela, Curator, Lichtenstein: A Retrospective, Tate Modern, David Mellor, University of Sussex, Leon Wainwright, The Open University and Lisa Tickner, The Courtauld Institute of Art. Question and answer sessions will be chaired by Gill Perry, The Open University and Marko Daniel, Tate.
This event is related to the exhibition Lichtenstein: A Retrospective.
The study day will be filmed and archived for the Tate and the Open Arts Archive.
We are pleased to announce the details of the conference ‘Sustainable Art Communities: Creativity and Policy in the Transnational Caribbean’, at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, on 5th and 6th February 2013. This is part of a two-year international research project led by Dr Leon Wainwright (The Open University, UK), with Co-Investigator Professor Dr Kitty Zijlmans (Leiden University), and funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, UK). The project explores how the understanding and formation of sustainable community for the Caribbean and its global diaspora may be supported by art practice, curating and museums. It fosters networks of exchange and collaboration among academics, artists, curators and policymakers from the UK and the Netherlands, as well as various countries in the English and Dutch-speaking Caribbean and their diaspora. Further details
Susie West is an invited speaker in this seminar exploring aspects of historic libraries and their collections, held at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge. The research paper, 'The study/library as ubiquitous household resource' proposes innovative solutions to the evidential problems of understanding the architectural space of the early modern private library. This event is part of the AHRC Research Networking and University of Cambridge project led by Dr Abigail Brundin.
In November 2012, As part of a two-year international research project funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area, the European Science Foundation), Dr Leon Wainwright (The Open University, UK) led the conference ‘Disturbing Pasts: Memories, Controversies and Creativity’. This three-day event brought together artists, photographers, curators, policy makers and academics from around the world, with the aim of networking with one another and exploring creative engagements with controversial and traumatic pasts in art practice, curating and museums. Read more about the project.
The Open University has collaborated with Tate Publishing to produce four lavishly illustrated books to support the new course Exploring Art and Visual Culture (A226). The four books - Art & Visual Culture: A Reader; 1100-1600 Medieval to Renaissance; 1600-
1850 Academy to Avant-Garde and 1850-2010 Modernity to Globalisation tell the history of art from 1100 to today. With stunning illustration and accessible
informative texts the books offer students and the general reader ideal introductions to everything
from the great Gothic cathedrals to Roni Horn’s beguiling Vatnasafn/Library of Water, taking in
the whole panoply of art and visual culture on the way.
Roger Thorp, publishing director at Tate Publishing, commented: ‘I’m delighted that we are able to bring together in these books the combined vision of two such dynamic organisations as Tate and the OU and publish them around the world. We hope they will prove of value to anyone who wants to find out more about the art they encounter, whether in the gallery, in the classroom or in their everyday lives.’
Dr Richard Danson Brown, Associate Dean, Curriculum, Faculty of Arts said ‘These books are an exciting venture for both the Tate Gallery and the Arts Faculty at The Open University. They represent the most up-to-date scholarship on the History of Art from the medieval to the contemporary and the increasing globalisation of art in our culture. They offer new perspectives on familiar work alongside pioneering studies of new and less familiar works. Most importantly, they offer an education in art and visual culture to everyone with an interest in these topics.’
You can download the press release for more information about these books [PDF, 990 KB].
See the Exploring Art and Visual Culture website to find out more about A226.
What is art and how has it changed through history? What is visual culture? This 32-week module will explore these and many other issues through case studies focused on artworks, buildings and other visual artefacts. Topics addressed range from Gothic churches to modern design, Renaissance altarpieces to Dutch seventeenth-century painting, eighteenth-century landscape parks to recent installations and videos. In the course of your study you will also gain an understanding of the art-historical debates that have shaped approaches to this exciting subject. A226 is taught using lavishly illustrated course books, alongside extensive audio, video and interactive material. It starts for the first time in October 2012.
Sample material: Audio and video material from this module is now freely available from iTunes U, or if you don't use iTunes, you can find it on the OU Podcasts server. See the A226 tasters page for more information.
Art History wins major Leverhulme International Network GrantThis month sees the start of a three-year Leverhulme Trust International Network project in the Art History department titled Damned in Hell in the Frescoes of Venetian-dominated Crete (13th-17th centuries). The award is the largest ever made by the Trust for this type of project and was granted to Dr Angeliki Lymberopoulou, of the Open University, and Prof. Dr. Vasiliki Tsamakda, of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz, working with a group of academics from Germany, Greece, the UK and USA. Follow this link to find out more.
Former OU MA student, Frank Ferrie, was shortlisted and highly commended in the Association of Art Historians dissertation prize for his dissertation ‘To what extent did Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection of Christ represent a civic symbol of mid-quattrocentro San Sepolcro’. Frank also gave a paper on his research at last year's OU MA students’ conference in London. Given that OU students won the AAH prize for an MA dissertation in the two previous years, and another OU student was highly commended in one of those years, this is a great tribute to the strength of graduate art history at the OU. It is splendid to see the achievements of OU art history MA students being acknowledged by the wider art-historical community.
Follow this link to find out more about AAH student funding and awards.
The OU's MA in Art History is a successful 3-year part-time programme. Follow this link if you would like to find out more about it.
Webcasts: Tate Modern and OU Study Days online
These study days take place at Tate Modern approximately twice a year. There is a fee for attending the live events, but all on-line materials are free. You can view the events as webcasts from the Open Arts Archive. Click on 'Tate Modern' in the 'Archive' panel for talks taken from a range of study days on the following topics: