Public Engagement

Members of the History of Art Department at UCL regularly share their research outside academic settings. We’re keen to participate in activities that engage with new audiences and regularly collaborate with museums, art galleries and other public spaces.

Below you can find information on some of our recent public engagement activities.

Cadence Kinsey featured on the BBC

Dr Cadence Kinsey has featured on a three-part series on BBC Sounds on the topic of Street Art in 2018. The series looks at what happens when art breaks free from the gallery. She has also appeared on Radio 4’s ‘Remembering Tryweryn’ (2020) and featured on the ‘The Nominees’ episode of BBC Four’s Turner Prize (2016).

Supporting LGBT+ and Queer Histories in Secondary Schools with Bob Mills (UCL History of Art) and Rebecca Jennings (UCL History)

This knowledge exchange project aims to promote the inclusion of LGBTQ+ young people in secondary schools by facilitating teaching of LGBT+ and queer topics as part of the wider history curriculum. Research shows that seeing themselves represented in the curriculum will not only enhance LGBTQ+ students’ self-esteem but will also enable all students to gain a greater understanding of the diversity of human gender and sexuality in the past and present.

Exhibition: ‘Beyond the Binary: Santu Mofokeng and David Goldblatt’

The Walther Collection presents its first dialogic exhibition bringing together works by Santu Mofokeng (1956-2020) and David Goldblatt (1930-2018), two of the most important South African photographers of the 20th century. To mark the closing week of the exhibition, a finissage event will be held on November 12, 2023 at its museum campus in Neu-Ulm, Germany. Professor Tamar Garb curator of the exhibition, will give an informal guided tour, followed by Q&A from 12pm.

A Blockchain Art History Timeline with Furtherfield Gallery

Cadence Kinsey received HEIF Knowledge Exchange Funding in 2020 for this project which created the world’s first timeline to chart the rise and influence of Blockchain Art and Crypto Art and using blockchain’s new decentralised curation tools to do so.

21st-Century Mythologies with Richard Clay

In November 2020, Dr Cadence Kinsey was interviewed for the BBC4 Documentary '21st-Century Mythologies with Richard Clay'. Richard Clay is also a UCL History of Art Alumni!

La plata y el grabador en los andes virreinales

In November 2020, Dr Emily Floyd gave an online talk for the Museo Santa Clara in Bogotá.

British Art and Natural Forces: A State of the Field Research Programme

In October 2020, Dr Nicholas Robbins participated as a panel member in one of the events which made up the series 'British Art and Natural Forces: A State of the Field Research Programme' which ran from 6th October until 2nd November at the Paul Mellon Centre.

Feminist perspectives on war

In May 2020, Professor Mignon Nixon contributed to a BBC World Service radio programme offering a feminist perspective on the American War in Vietnam through the prism of art. This is the main topic of Professor Nixon’s current book project, Sperm Bomb: Art, Feminism, and the American War in Vietnam. The programme explores five decades of protest art, with a particular focus on the American artists who were at the vanguard of opposition to the war.

Walking tours of London’s LGBTQ+ heritage

In 2018 Professor Bob Mills devised Hide & Seek, an innovative walking tour of Bloomsbury that was designed to throw light on the people and places that have contributed to the area’s rich and diverse LGBTQ+ heritage. The project grew out of Professor Mills’s sustained public engagement in the field of LGBTQ+ histories and equalities. In 2019 Professor Mills was awarded a Provost’s Public Engagement Award for his work on the Hide & Seek tour, which you can watch a short film about on YouTube.

Weaving in modern art

In 2018/19, Professor Briony Fer co-curated a major exhibition at Tate Modern on the Bauhaus weaver Anni Albers. As the first full-scale retrospective of the artist in a major international museum, the exhibition transformed knowledge and understanding about Albers and changed perceptions about the place of weaving – and textiles more broadly – within the history of modern art. Professor Fer was also responsible for several public talks associated with the exhibition and appeared in BBC4’s Anni Albers: A Life in Thread and BBC Radio 3’s Haus: Work Women of the Bauhaus, both of which were first broadcast in 2019.

French revolutionary prints

Dr Richard Taws has recently co-curated two exhibitions on French Revolutionary prints in UCL Art Museum. In 2016, he helped curate Revolution Under a King: French Prints 1789–92 focused on prints from the early, highly volatile years of the French Revolution and was accompanied by a series of public events and talks, including a special concert by the UCL Chamber Music Club. This was followed in 2020 by Witnessing Terror: French Revolutionary Prints, 1792–94, which focused on the period of the French Revolution known as the Terror, and included new commissions by artists Sean Curran and Rebecca Loweth and the playwright Nicola Baldwin.