All the World’s a Stage: Charlotte Bagwell on curating this year’s MA exhibition at the Barber

‘All the World’s a Stage: Court Patrons and Writers in Shakespeare’s Circle’, the department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies’s annual MA exhibition, is open at the Barber Institute of Fine Art. As part of the country-wide commemmorations of the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, this exhibition brings together paintings, prints and miniatures from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery and the Cadbury Research Library.

Inspired by an extract from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It– ‘All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts’- the exhibition explores how Shakespeare’s circle constructed character through their use of portraiture. It features iconic images of Shakespeare, including the one from his first folio, alongside those of other writers, patrons and members of the court, such as Ben Jonson, Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, and Anne of Denmark, queen for the latter period of Shakespeare’s life.

‘William Shakespeare’, Plaster cast after Gerard Johnson, (c.1620) © National Portrait Gallery

The exhibition was co-curated by the nine students studying the department’s Art History and Curating MA course. The course gives practical, real life experience in planning exhibitions, as students work alongside Barber staff in planning a display for the Lady Barber Gallery over the summer period. In addition, the opportunity to work with the National Portrait Gallery and to be credited as co-curating an exhibition at such a prestigious gallery as the Barber certainly looks good on the CV! The topic for the course and exhibition changes each year, and while not everyone in the group had an existing interest in Elizabethan and Jacobean portraiture, the possibilities of the exhibition meant that, for a while at least, everyone enjoyed researching this era.

Some of the highlights of the course included visits to the National Portrait Gallery, both to view works in the store, as some of the portraits were not currently on display, but also to meet, discuss and have the occasional talk with people in various roles from the NPG. Being able to discuss the exhibition with Tarnya Cooper, the NPG’s Curatorial Director, who not only specializes in sixteenth-century art, but who had also curated a previous Shakespeare exhibition, was a particular highlight. In addition, we attended social media talks and had a visit to the conservation studio.

The course is unique in that the curatorial students are given a topic,  but are then a free to decide on whichever theme and narrative they deem best. This is an excellent way to conduct the course, as I think us nine students would have struggled to come up with and agree on an exhibition entirely from scratch! The freedom to make our decision knowing that the Barber staff were on hand if we needed them meant that it really felt as if we were in control of the exhibition and were therefore learning real life and negotiating skills.

A particular highlight for everyone was to be involved with the installation of the exhibition, especially learning what goes on when high value loans arrive at institutions.

Waiting to be hung up

Installing the exhibit from a mock-up

It also taught us the flexibility needed as a curator, as the floor plan had to be redesignedduring installation to allow room for the audience to full appreciate the striking, full-length portrait of the Earl of Southampton. This shows that even the best laid plans still need a backup and made us fully aware of the amount of planning that goes into an exhibition.

‘Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton’ by unknown artist, (circa 1600), © Private Collection, on long-term loan to The National Portrait Gallery

Overall the entire group really enjoyed the course, even people whose specialties and aesthetic loyalties lay elsewhere. We were lucky to have a topic such as Shakespeare to around which to curate an exhibition and we had some great leadership from Claire Jones our tutor and the Barber staff. Everyone felt that they had learned a huge amount from the course in terms of planning a loan exhibition and negotiating the difficulties that exhibitions can entail.

MA student Charlotte explaining and exhibit

Who are you staring at?

MA students with Dr Claire Jones, Lecturer in Curating

The exhibition is open till the 25^th September. More information can be found on the exhibition’s webpage http://barber.org.uk/all-the-worlds-a-stage/

Writing Workshop- Saturday 17^th September.

The workshop explores Shakespeare’s language and form in contemporary writing

 

 

 

 

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Dr Greg Salter joins the Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies!

We are delighted to announce that Dr Greg Salter, a specialist in British Art after 1945, will be joining the department on 1 September 2016.

Greg completed his PhD at UEA in 2013, with a thesis entitled ‘Domesticity and Masculinity in 1950s British Painting’. Following this, he was post-doctoral researcher at the Geffrye Museum of the Home in East London where he worked on the Documenting Homes Archive, which is a collection of material on homes in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including oral histories, family photographs, diaries, and questionnaires. He ran collecting projects with the local community, designed to expand the collecting methodologies and material in the archive.

Greg has taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Queen Mary (London), and on study abroad programmes for US students at Birkbeck and CAPA. His most recent publication is an essay entitled ‘Memories of Kinship in Keith Vaughan’s Post-War Paintings’ which came out in Art History, 38 (2015). He also has an essay, ‘Francis Bacon and Queer Intimacy in Post-War London’ in a forthcoming special issue of Visual Culture In Britain (ed. Reina Lewis and Andrew Stephenson) which will coincide with the opening of the Tate’s Queer British Art show in April next year.

Greg is also completing a book project entitled Reconstructing Home: Painting and Male Identity in Post-War Britain, which examines representations of home in the post-war period of reconstruction. In addition, he has two new projects on the go: one on migration and exhibitions in Britain after 1945, and another on global encounters in queer art and visual culture in Britain after 1945.

As Lecturer in History of Art, Greg will be contributing to a number of modules across the art history curriculum, including those based on his own particular interests and specialisms. His appointment strengthens our existing teaching provision from the middle ages to the modern period, and complements staff research and teaching interests in British Art, feminism and gender studies, the interwar period, and art and domesticity.