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From 2004 to the present, Gemma Blackshaw (Reader in Art History at Plymouth, 2002-present) has worked on the relationship between mental illness, psychiatry, and the visual arts in Vienna 1900. Through exhibition, a non-specialist book, film, and associated social media platforms, this work has reached and responded to audiences outside academia, including mental health communities. It has generated new knowledge, interpretations and approaches to the history and study of mental illness. It has encouraged international public discourse on how society used to engage with the mentally ill, and how we continue to engage with this community 100 years on.
The Leon Golub retrospective at Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum introduced Golub's politically engaged work to a city with a radical political history. Curated by Jon Bird, leading authority on Golub, it examined how Golub's depictions of political and military power impact upon individual and collective social bodies. It also related Golub's work to paintings by Goya and Picasso. Extensive public/media response, particularly as it spread through the Spanish-speaking world, confirmed the achievement and topicality of Golub's practice and the significance of the retrospective. Consideration of the role of painting as a mode of political commentary in itself, and as a catalyst for broader discussion of the visual representation of dictatorships and state violence, was found amongst curators, critics, and the general public. Bird's curatorial approach was informed by Middlesex University (MU)'s critical legacy of visual cultural studies, emphasizing works of art as social, material and expressive cultural objects.
There are two ways in which Erle's research on William Blake, Physiognomy and text-image relationships have achieved public impact. First, a display and a Scholar's Morning on "Blake and Physiognomy" at Tate Britain (2010-11) and there were also invitations to give public lectures for "Haus der Romantik", a Literature Museum specialising on Romanticism in Marburg (Germany) and for the Blake Society, a London-based but international organisation of Blake scholars and enthusiasts. Second, an online-exhibition on Lord Alfred Tennyson's copy of Blake's Job for the Tennyson Research Centre (2012-13) and a display on Blake, Tennyson and Anne Gilchrist in Lincoln Public Library.
Ysanne Holt was Academic Advisor and Commissioning Editor for Tate's Camden Town Group in Context project, funded through the Getty Foundation's Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative which aims to transform how museums disseminate information about their collections. Holt undertook and commissioned new research into the Group's artworks and their broader contexts. Impacts derived from the project's online catalogue include increased awareness for national and international public and specialists; and improved access to the art and its contexts via a multi-platform open access facility. In addition, the project has influenced the Tate's Digital Strategy and led to the creation of the new post of Digital Editor within Tate's Research Department.
Work undertaken by the Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) at the University of the Arts London (UAL) focuses on the role of identity and nation in the production and consumption of artwork and artefacts. This has resulted in an increased awareness and critical understanding of transnational art and design, to the benefit of the Museums and Galleries sector, arts organisations, and the artistic community.
The first major international touring exhibition on the region, Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley, attracted up to a third of a million visitors between opening at UCLA's Fowler Museum in February 2011 and closing at the Musée du quai Branly, Paris, in January 2013, with intervening shows at Stanford University's Cantor Center and the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art. The exhibition, its 600-page catalogue, and extensive education and outreach programmes, substantially based on Professor Richard Fardon's research insights, were widely reviewed as a revelatory experience providing the public with a first comprehensive overview of the hitherto poorly understood arts of central Nigeria.
Since 1993, the Visual Culture Research Centre has established an international reputation for interdisciplinary research. Historical, theoretical and practice-based research is applied in collaborations and partnerships with outside public-facing organisations, events, markets and professionals in the creative arts. This case study articulates significant social and cultural impacts epitomised by the exhibitions Weapons of Mass Communication 2007-8 and Archiving Place and Time 2009-10 and accompanying publications. The case study demonstrates how the researchers from within the unit have effectively engaged with the public, participants, practitioners, interpreters, writers, and critics to promote understanding of how images of conflict work: that they are neither natural nor real, but sites of contestation.
The two-year ROTOЯ programme of exhibitions and events has been a cornerstone of the University of Huddersfield's efforts to introduce new audiences to contemporary art and design, as encouraged by successive Arts Council policies for enhancing public engagement. As well as raising awareness, inspiring curiosity and providing cultural enrichment, it has initiated changes to local authority policies on providing cost-effective, high-quality cultural services and has functioned as a vehicle for research into how the impact of such programmes can be captured. As such, it has served as a model partnership for local authority and university sectors in offering cultural leadership, generating and measuring engagement and delivering public services.
Professor Andrew Gerstle's research and conceptualisation of the first exhibition of Osaka Kabuki prints since 1975 has proved a catalyst in radically reinvigorating interest in Osaka visual culture of the late 18th and 19th centuries, which had hitherto been eclipsed by that of Tokyo. Kabuki Heroes (2005), both as exhibition and detailed catalogue, has prompted further exhibitions on the subject, significantly enhanced the international market for Osaka prints, constitutes a primary source for museum curators and others and has had a significant influence on the British Museum and its curation and planning of its autumn 2013 exhibition Shunga, to which Gerstle has also substantially contributed.
Research into the artist Dora Gordine established her importance in twentieth-century art and design, and her significance in the wider cultural and political arena. This research led to the establishment of an ambitious large-scale exhibition on Gordine at Kingston Museum.
This exhibition had a lasting beneficial impact on the practices and capabilities of the museum, enabling it to use the skills and experience gained in the Gordine exhibition to launch a new exhibition on Eadweard Muybridge and to build new partnerships with the British Film Institute and the Tate. This has significantly changed the culture and approach of Kingston Museum, enhancing its local, national and international standing.