Our Projects

The Courtauld x Asymmetry Chinese and Sinophone Contemporary Art Research Programme

The Cultural History of Asian Art Project

Buddhist Heritage and Conservation in Sri Lanka Lecture Series 

Mongol Connections

Arts of the Mongol World

Trans-Asias: Early Modern Stories from the Courtauld

Voicing the Archive

X-Sheds: An Interactive Art History of Experience

The Bahari Foundation Lectures on Art and Culture

From the Land of Snows: The Art and Material Culture of Tibet and the Himalayas

Arts of the Buddhist World: Heritage and Conservation Lecture Series

Art History Futures: At the Junction of the Digital and Material Turns

This lecture series presented work from leading researchers who use digital methods in art history and technical art history/conservation to think in new ways about our disciplines. It explores how the digital and computational can be used to advance...

Conversations in Contemporary Asian Art

Asian Art after Quarantine

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, there has been a surge in racist attacks against Asian and Asian diasporic people across the globe; from everyday microaggressions to the recent mass shootings in Atlanta, USA, in March 2021....

The Arts of Pre-Colonial Africa

The 2019 Frank Davis Memorial Series invites four distinguished speakers to share new research in African art before the continent-wide colonialisation of the nineteenth century. Looking at the African material on its own terms rather than in light o...

The Art and Architecture of Mapping: Visual and Material Approaches to Cartographic Objects

Tuesday 20th June, 9:00am - 18:00pm BST and Wednesday 21st June 2023, 9:30am - 12:15pm BST

This two-day symposium addresses this interdisciplinary challenge from a diverse range of perspectives that foreground such questions as: how do maps operate as representations, and how do culturally situated understandings of space shape how they ar...

Research

Collecting and Curating Southeast Asian Art: In Conversation with Alexandra Green and Rosanna Nicolson

5:30pm, 28 Nov 2023

This conversation between the two curators, Alexandra Green and Rosanna Nicolson, celebrates two exhibitions focusing on Southeast Asian art–“Burma to Myanmar” and “Theravada Buddhism”–concurrently showing at The British Museum and at National Museum...

Research

Front and (Off-)Centre: Fashion and Southeast Asia

9:00am, 5 May 2023

The conference seeks to highlight the diversity and sophistication of fashion practices within or relating to Southeast Asia, and contributes to efforts to decentralise fashion studies.

Imprints of the protective goddess Mahāpratisarā across Asia and her role in Java

6:00pm, 26 Apr 2018

Entry Points: Charting Bangladeshi Art History via Asia

12:00am, 6 Oct 2017

An Interwoven World: Sensory Experiences of Textiles in the Sumtsek at Alchi, Ladakh

Jordan Quill

Weaving as resistance: crossing thresholds, crafting identity, and lines of conflict

6:30pm, 27 Apr 2018

Research

The Mood of a Place: A Sensible History of India’s Eighteenth-Century Locals and Locales

5:00pm, 18 Feb 2021

Research

Art in Peril: The Case of the Negarestan Museum and its Collection of 18th and 19th century Iranian Art

6:00pm, 5 Mar 2020

Krishna’s Life-Story in Bengali Scrolls: Exploring The Invitation to Unroll

Pika Ghosh

Research

Another History of the World

5:30pm, 29 Jan 2024

The talk by Professor Pierre Singaravélou will take the exhibition ‘Another History of the World’ currently on view at the Mucem in Marseille as a starting point.

Research

susan pui san lok: seven x seven - Courtauld x GSA x GI2021

5:00pm, 17 Jun 2021

Vulnerability and Real Time in the Two Koreas

6:15pm, 9 Mar 2018

Research

Redisplaying the Buddhist Collection at Chiddingstone Castle

5:30pm, 12 Mar 2024

In this talk, Naomi Collick and Dr. Nick Swann will discuss the processes of research, consultation, and collaboration undertaken by museums like Chiddingstone Castle to redisplay, reframe, and decolonise their Buddhist collections

The Buddhist sculpture hoard from Qingzhou – 20 years on

6:00pm, 6 Dec 2017

Artists in Conversation: Rasheed Araeen and Rana Begum

Monday 5th June, 18:00pm-19:00pm BST

The inaugural event of a new seminar series in curating will bring in conversation two leading contemporary artists based in London. It is organised on the occasion of the release of Rasheed Araeen’s book Islam and Modernism in which the artist takes...

Present Elsewhere: Rashid Rana

6:00pm, 3 Oct 2016

Manuela Ciotti on For a Politics of Presence

6:00pm, 24 May 2016

Sunil Janah and the development of a modern ocular aesthetic 1943-56

6:00pm, 22 Nov 2017

Research

Modernism in Ukraine - Panel Discussion and Book Launch for ‘In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s’

6:00pm, 1 Feb 2023

Join Dr Klara Kemp-Welch, Dr Maria Mileeva, and Katia Denysova for this panel and launch for the book 'In the Eye of the Storm:

Research

A Nod of a Hat: Rooftops of Old Tehran

5:00pm, 5 Jun 2023

In this talk, Ahmadreza Schricker, the principal of Architecture North (ASA North), discusses his newest project, the transformation of the abandoned Argo beer factory in downtown Tehran into a new museum, artist residency and cultural centre.

Research

We Are One #Iran
Short Film Festival

6:00pm, 29 Nov 2023

Persia Educational Foundation, Film Buzz Festival and the Courtauld Institute will host the launch of 'We Are One #Iran'. This event will include a screening and in-person panel of experts.

Performance and De-synchronization: Opening the Past in Contemporary Indian Photography

5:30pm, 8 Dec 2015

Research

Reza Aramesh in Conversation with Sussan Babaie

6:00pm, 22 May 2019

Research

Buddhist Heritage of Sri Lanka: Moving away from the Notion of ‘Pious Vandals’ in Conserving the Sacred

6:00pm, 14 Mar 2023

Speaker Gamini Wijesuriya will explore the impact of conservation and its development in Sri Lanka around Buddhist heritage.

Research

Exploring the provenance and digitisation of the British Library’s Hugh Nevill Sri Lankan Palm Leaf Manuscripts

6:00pm, 28 Mar 2023

Join Arani Ilankuberan as she presents on the British Library’s holdings of the Hugh Nevill collection of over 2,000 Sinhalese palm leaf manuscripts from Sri Lanka, with a focus on what is currently known about Hugh Nevill and his collecting practice...

Research

Conserving Buddhist stupas and religious nationalism in Sri Lanka

6:00pm, 27 Feb 2023

Jagath Weerasinghe explores the notion of 'authenticity' around the excavation and exploration of Buddhist stupas in Sri Lanka

Research

Radical Alternatives: Temporal and Spatial Mediations in Contemporary Iranian Art

5:00pm, 10 Nov 2020

Research

Safeguarding the Past: Conservation and Research of Mural Paintings at the Mogao Grottoes, Dunhuang

6:00pm, 6 Oct 2023

Join Dr Bomin Su for an insight into the work undertaken by the Dunhuang

Research

Inarticulate Depths: Victoria Sin in conversation with Kostas Stasinopoulos

6:00pm, 27 Feb 2020

Research

Aman Nath: Cultural Heritage Preservation and Restoration in India

5:00pm, 11 Jun 2022

Join us for a talk by Aman Nath about his work on restoring and preserving ancient Indian forts and other historic buildings.

Research

Book event: Reflections: contemporary art of the Middle East and North Africa

5:30pm, 20 Nov 2020

Research

The Shah and the ‘Ulama: A Tale of Two Mosques in Safavid Isfahan

6:00pm, 9 May 2019

Rasheed Araeen in conversation: Art and Activism in Post-War Britain

6:30pm, 17 Nov 2017

Research

International Departures: Art in India after Independence

5:30pm, 11 Dec 2023

Join us to celebrate the publication of 'International Departures: Art in India After Independence', with author Dr Devika Singh and a panel of contributors.

Gandhara and Beyond: The Influence of Andhra on the Art of Gandhara

6:00pm, 13 Nov 2015

'Changing Perceptions': A Talk by Aga Khan Museum Director and CEO, Henry Kim

6:30pm, 4 May 2018

Bhupen Khakhar & The Politics of (Re)Presentation

6:00pm, 8 Nov 2016

Research

Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World

6:00pm, 8 Nov 2018

Research

Shen Xin and Alvin Li in conversation

5:00pm, 21 Oct 2021

Artist Shen Xin joins curator and writer Alvin Li for an intimate conversation in this online event. In lieu of a conventional studio visit, the two interlocutors will proceed by posing each other a series of questions informed by their ongoing resea...

State of the Arts in Singapore: Where is the Periphery?

5:30pm, 20 Apr 2017

Amrita Jhaveri on Anwar Jalal Shemza

6:00pm, 3 Mar 2016