History of Art

The Department is pleased to announce that it has been awarded one of six Provost’s Research Studentships in the Humanities to begin in the academic year 2012-13. The scheme is designed to create intellectual vitality and renewal throughout arts and humanities departments at UCL by attracting outstanding PhD students and to provide them with teaching experience, a valuable part of their development and preparation for an academic career.

The Aesthetics and Politics of Specimens on Display

17 and 18 May, 2012

Congratulations to UCL History of Art MA student Conor Kissane on winning the 2012 AAH Dissertation Prize

Full details

The department is happy to announce the Frances Stracey Awards for prospective UCL History of Art MA students.

Monday 17 October 6pm
Gustav Tuck Lecture Theatre

Presented by UCL Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art in partnership with Hauser and Wirth

Further details and video

AHRC Collaborative Award for a PhD Studentship has been awarded to UCL and Tate Modern to begin September 2011:

The CSCA in collaboration with the V&A Museum is pleased to announce this symposium organised to coincide with the exhibition Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography

Further Details

"Talk by Mark Dion on My Taxidermy Taxonomy"

We would like to invite you to the opening event of the AHRC research network "The Culture of Preservation" this Thursday, 12 May 2011

UCL Centre for the Study of Contemporary art and the V & A present artists, Jodi Bieber, Pieter Hugo, Sabelo Mlangeni, Santu Mofokeng, Terry Kurgan, Roelof Van Wyk and Graeme Williams in conversation with exhibition curator Tamar Garb.

The Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art at UCL is holding a symposium to examine Ida Applebroog’s work since the 1970s to coincide with the first major exhibition of her work to be held in this country at Hauser and Wirth, Savile Row. Speakers include Jo Applin, Jon Bird, Julia Bryan-Wilson and Elisabeth Leibovici. Ida Applebroog will be in conversation with Tamar Garb. Event chaired by Briony Fer.

This symposium on 1960s Italian art practices will take place on Saturday 12th March 2011 at the Italian Cultural Institute. The event has been organised and supported through the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art at UCL and the Research Department of the London Consortium and will coincide with the exhibition of Pino Pascali held at the Camden Arts Centre throughout Spring 2011

The Granddaughter's Generation: Feminism & Art History Now - A symposium in honour of Linda Nochlin on the occasion of her 80th birthday was held on Saturday 5 February. As well as the chance to listen to ten thought provoking papers and associated discussion, all those attending were invited to a celebration with drinks and birthday cake. Further details of the symposium and a selection of photographs.

Dr Mechthild Fend and Dr Petra Lange-Berndt were awarded an AHRC Networking
Grant for the project The Culture of Preservation. The afterlife of
specimens between art and science since the eighteenth century. The
project runs from October 2010 to September 2012 and will involve a series
of research workshops, public lectures and a conference.

We would like to welcome the following three new members of staff in our department: Dr Stephanie Schwartz, Dr Richard Taws and Dr Sarah James.  Following is a brief description of their accomplishments to date.

T.J. Demos directed Zones of Conflict: Rethinking Contemporary Art During Global Crisis, a series of AHRC-funded research workshops, in partnership with the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva), Tate Modern, Tate Britain, and UCL's Department of History of art, over the course of October 2008 and February 2009.

Dr Natasha Eaton has recently been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize, 2009 - 2011.  This prestigious prize will make possible research for a series of articles and a book provisionally entitled Laboratories of Belonging:  Museums, locality, memory in South Asia, 1840 to the present.  This project examines the contested cultural, political and affective status of museums as jadhu ghur - (wonder house), educational sites, as virtual assemblages and as spaces for insurgency during states of emergency (Indian Uprising 1858, nationalist movement, 1905 -1947; Partition, 1947 - 1948; Indira Gandhi's declaration of emergency early 1970s; communalism 1990s to the present).  Critical issues to be addressed include the mimetic rivalry between India and Pakistan surrounding processes of memorialization, forgetting and becoming in relation to their struggle over select artifacts; colonial and Indian nationalist 'museums without walls' initiatives in West Bengal and the Andaman islands; the transference of governmental concepts of the museum to the cultural agenda of NGOs in contemporary Kiolkata and Mumbai.

Dr Maria Loh has been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize (2007-9).