UCL Art Museum

Exhibitions

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Current Exhibition | Pop-Up Displays |Previous Exhibitions | Upcoming Exhibitions | 

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Current Exhibition

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Upcoming Exhibitions

Rousseau 300: Nature, Self and State 

• 9 January - 27 April 2012

This exhibition features rare items from UCL’s art and book collections to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of one of the most controversial authors in the history of philosophy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Among the items on show are first editions of Rousseau’s works, including On the Social Contract (Du contrat social, 1762), frontispieces and translations. The display highlights his unique and interdisciplinary characteristics as a philosopher who not only wrote on politics, economics and education, but also composed music and wrote best-selling novels. A significant part is dedicated to Rousseau’s engagement with the philosophical tradition (from Plato to Locke) and his own posthumous reception by revolutionaries and conservatives alike. Featuring objects from UCL’s collections, the British Museum and the Voltaire Foundation, the show coincides with an international conference marking Rousseau’s tercentenary and a special performance of his rarely produced opera, Le Devin du village (UCL, performances on 20 January and 20 April - booking and venue information available here; Conference dates: 19-21 April). For enquiries about the Conference and the opera please contact the History Department's Events Administrator, Emma Patten.

This set of events, under the auspices of the UCL Centre for Transnational History, is generously supported by UCL Grand Challenges, the UCL European Institute, the Berendel Foundation, the French Embassy in London, the Swiss Embassy in London, the Fidelio Charitable Trust and the Voltaire Foundation.

Image: Jean-Jacques Rousseau ©Trustees of the British Museum

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4th Annual Slade/UCL Art Museum Collaboration

• 8 May - 8 June 2012

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Previous Exhibitions

Word & Image: Early Modern Treasures at UCL

• 15 September - 16 December 2011

This exhibition explores cultural exchange in the period 1450 to 1800. Featuring highlights from UCL’s art and rare book collections, Word and Image delves into themes such as travel, translation and the traffic of objects and ideas. It offers the chance to see an eclectic and unusual combination of items, including a 17th-century volume on the history of Lapland complete with pictures of skis, an illustrated early work of Egyptology, and images of elaborately costumed Jesuits in China. It also provides a rare opportunity to see Albrecht Dürer’s woodcuts from The Apocalypse (1498) next to its precursor The Nuremberg Chronicle (1493). The exhibition accompanies the launch conference for the new UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges.

Image: Anonymous, Adam Johann Schall von Bell, c. 1600 ©UCL Art Museum

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Moreover: The Slade revisits UCL Art Collections

• 11 April - 17 June 2011

This exhibition began with a challenge to all current students at the Slade to develop their own practice using contemporary media and contemporary modes of thinking while taking the time to consider and appreciate what has gone before. Students excavated the collections to discover hidden treasures including an 18th-century print of a Soho drag queen, an annotated drawing by the arts educator and painter William Coldstream, John Flaxman’s neo-classical plaster casts, postcards addressed to Stanley Spencer, charts used by museum staff to map the shifting locations of art work – plus more. Moreover presents the work of 21 finalists – all of whom have appropriated, undermined and/or marked up past masters to create individual, new work in a range of media, including performance, print, sculpture, and video.

Emilie Atkinson, Claire Boyd, Will Davis, Becca Djan, Laura Elias, Nicolas Feldmeyer, Catharina Golebiowska, Thomas Jenkins, Nadine Mahoney, Sam Mould, Haruka Ono, Ninna Pedersen, Harriet Poznansky, Nina Prader, Nina Rodin, Patricia Townsend, Kristan Saloky, Alex Springer, Cyrus Shroff, Mo Wang, Vivien Zhang

Image: Nicolas Feldmeyer, Untitled (Woven Portico) 2011, digital print © Nicolas Feldmeyer

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The Age of Expression: 20th-century Northern European Prints from the Barber Institute

• 8 February - 25 March 2011

This exhibition includes works by Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Käthe Kollwitz, Franz Marc, Emil Nolde, Egon Schiele and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff on loan from the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham. Many of the artists featured in the exhibition were asssociated with German Expressionism. The works respond to the First World War and its aftermath using familiar print techniques such as woodcut and drypoint with an innovative simplicity and directness to evoke powerful emotional states.

To find out more about the Barber Institute and their exhibitions, click here.

Image: Egon Schiele, Crouching Woman, 1914 ©The Barber Institute of Fine Arts

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Life, Action and Sentiment: John Flaxman on the art of modern sculpture

• 21 June - 17 December 2010

This exhibition celebrates the 200th anniversary of John Flaxman's appointment as the first Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy. On display are the many preparatory sketches Flaxman drew to work through his ideas on how to convey life, action and sentiment in three-dimensional form. Kept for reference at his studio, then given to UCL by his family, these informal, linear drawings are shown together for the first time. They reveal Flaxman's almost obsessive dedication to his cause, the creation of a modern school of sculpture.

Further works by Flaxman are currently on show in The Language of Line: John Flaxman’s illustrations to the works of Homer and Aeschylus, Royal Academy of Arts. Read more here.

The Flaxman Gallery, situated in UCL Library, has been host to scenes in Christopher Nolan's latest film, Inception, and is Film London's 'Location of the Month' for July 2010 . Read more here.

Image: John Flaxman, Studies of a Girl Shaking Out a Cloth, c. 1794-1826 ©UCL Art Collections

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'Looking Back at the Life Room'

A project by Naomi Salaman

• 27 January - 11 June 2010

This installation looks back at an academic model of art education that centred on drawing the male model in classical poses. In the tradition of the visual essay, artist Naomi Salaman puts together photographs of spaces where drawing is still taught alongside historic prints and photocopies from her research archive. Revisiting the academic art curriculum, she explores the process of looking at, making and reading images in relation to institutional forms of knowledge and the technologies of image reproduction. Drawing a nude model after the antique was the apex of an hierarchical course which began with copying from copies of old master prints and plaster casts and lessons in anatomy. This curriculum served as the basis of art education in Europe from the 1600s. In the 1960s art schools in this country moved away from mandatory exams in these subjects. Charting the remnants of a pedagogical system now suspended, Salaman identifies a "curved space of observation" that builds up through a montage of historic life rooms and dissection theatres. Her research path begins with the much-cited painting of The Royal Academicians (1772) by Johann Zoffany and its reproductions in feminist art history texts two hundred years later. Zoffany's group portrait in the life room was contentious as it illustrated the exclusion of women artists from the life room, and therefore from professional advancement. Looking back at this painting, through feminist critiques, to the early ambitions of the life room, Salaman reconsiders the academy life room as a theoretical apparatus that marked the distinction between fine art as an intellectual pursuit and the workshop practices of the guild. Naomi Salaman is a London-based artist and a lecturer at the University of Brighton. Her research-based practice is rooted in the politics of representation and combines photography, installation, curated exhibitions and publications. Co-curated by Nina Pearlman and Naomi Salaman, this exhibition is supported by Arts Council England and the University of Brighton. It draws on research supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is accompanied by a limited edition artist's print. In conjunction with the exhibition, UCL Art Collections, the Royal Collection and the University of Brighton have organised a conference entitled Art Schools: Invention, Invective and Radical Possibilities. For more information, please click here. Image: Naomi Salaman, Salle de Dessin, École Nationale Supériure des Beaux-Arts Paris, autumn 2004 © Naomi Salaman

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A Tribute to Bartolomeu dos Santos

• Until 22 December 2009

This exhibition shows a selection of the prints of Bartolomeu dos Santos (1931-2008) to commemorate his long association with the Slade and UCL as a student in the 1950s and as a teacher and Professor of Printmaking from the 1960s until his retirement in 1996. It will include early nudes, still-lifes and cityscapes made as a Slade student in the 1950s, and a series of spectacular imaginary architectural constructions from the 1970s inspired by the work of Piranesi and Jorge Luis Borges. More light-hearted works include menus and invitations to Slade parties from the 1990s.

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'The Paradox of Mezzotint'

• 2 July - 31 October 2009

This exhibition traces mezzotint’s development from the first professionally produced prints in the 1660s to the technique’s zenith in the late Eighteenth Century. It aims to reappraise the art-historical significance of mezzotint as the first tonal method of printmaking, by examining a number of inter-related theoretical issues that taken together constitute “the paradox of the mezzotint”. Drawing on the resources of the University of Kent Print Collection, Canterbury Museums Collection, the Strang Print Room and a private collection, the exhibition will include works by such leading mezzotinters as Wallerant Vaillant, Isaac Beckett, John Smith, Elisha Kirkall, James McArdell, Valentine Green, Richard Earlom and John Raphael Smith.

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'A Drawing Cabinet Unlocked: Old Masters from UCL Art Collections'

• 10 November 2009 - 20 May 2009

This exhibition features a selection of UCL's important holdings of 16th- and 17th-century drawings. Bequeathed by the politician and scholar George Grote in 1872, the collection was probably put together in 17th-century Holland, and contains works by artists such as Leonhard Beck, Hans Burgkmair, Georg Pencz, Wolfgang Huber, Wenceslaus Hollar, Joseph Heintz and the Holbein workshop. The diverse range of subjects include portraits, costume designs, landscapes and architectural studies.