Showcasing Art History
On campus and online
Our evening lecture series Showcasing Art History builds on The Courtauld’s excellence in research and teaching to share the latest art-historical thinking with the public. The engaging lectures are given by members of the Courtauld faculty, associate lecturers, and by external eminent scholars and curators.
Each new season of Showcasing Art History offers three free-standing terms, so you can book for one or two terms, or for the whole year. You can choose whether to join us on campus at Vernon Square, or if you opt for online, you will receive pre-recorded lectures followed by live Zoom discussion sessions. There will be extensive course materials on the VLE for both in-person and online learners.
Lectures are given live on campus at 19:00 on Tuesdays and Zoom discussions for our online audience members take place on Wednesdays at 20:00 [London time]. Terms may be booked in isolation or in combination, and discounts apply if more than one term is booked.
Anatomy of an Art World – The American Scene c. 1850-1950
Spring term
Tuesday 7 January – Tuesday 11 March 2025, 19:00
On campus
OR
Wednesday 15 January – Wednesday 19 March 2025, 20:00 [London time]
Online
£195
This lecture series will examine the institutions, processes and individuals that led to the centre of the art market gravitating from Europe to the United States, along with the societal shifts – cultural, political, demographic – that transformed the United States over the course of a century.
Book nowArt, Experience, and the Psychology of Perception: Milestones of Curating European Modernism
Summer term
Tuesday 29 April – Tuesday 27 May 2025, 19:00
On campus
OR
Wednesday 7 May – Wednesday 4 June 2025, 20:00 [London time]
Online
Focusing on the display of European modernism in exhibitions dating from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries, this pioneering series of lectures will explore the link between curating and the psychology of perception.
Book nowArchive: Showcasing Art History 2021-2024 series
Click on the titles below to read the archived course descriptions
Autumn 2021: Liberator, Despot, (fallen) Hero: Napoleon Bonaparte and the Visual Arts
Spring 2022: Portraying van Gogh: Biography, Mythology and New Research
Summer 2022: Between Power and Conflict: Case Studies of Art in Times of War and Revolution from 1868 to Today
Autumn 2022: Agents of Change: Women Artists in German and Austrian Modernism
Spring 2023: Flesh, Spirit, Power: The Body in Spanish Art 1400s-1700s
Summer 2023: Photography and the French Avant-Garde from Delacroix to Cézanne
Autumn 2023: Ordinary People: Paintings and Prints of Everyday Life from Bruegel to Hopper
Spring 2024: Antiquity, Taste, and the Self: Revisiting the Discoveries of the Grand Tour
Summer 2024: Re-Framing: Modern and Contemporary Art by Women 1870s to Today
Autumn 2024: Monet’s Thames Series: Painting Modernity at The Turn of the Twentieth Century