Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series

The Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series was established in 1989 by the F M Kirby Foundation, in honour of Frank Davis, a critic for Country Life Magazine.

an oversized lightbulb on an armchair sinks into a pool of water, sepia tone photomontage

The Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series is one of two annual distinguished lecture series at The Courtauld. This series was established in 1989, as a result of a bequest from the F.M. Kirby Foundation, in honour of Frank Davis, who was a critic for Country Life magazine. The bequest has allowed The Courtauld to invite internationally renowned scholars to come to the institute to speak about their work in a public forum.

Upcoming Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series

A Century of Surrealism: Resistance and the Image Since the Manifesto of Surrealism

The Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series 2024-25 will harness and contribute to a moment of unparalleled interest in Surrealism on the centenary of the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), timed to begin as major exhibitions and events t...

drawing of a black woman wearing a blue dress

Black British Art: Histories, Presence, Futures

An early member of the BLK Art Group, a trailblazing figure in the Black British art movement and a pioneer of Black feminist art, Claudette Johnson (b. 1959) is one of the most significant figurative artists of her generation. Coinciding with Claude...

Fuseli and the Graphic Body

Coinciding with the major exhibition Fuseli and the Modern Woman: Fashion, Fantasy, Fetishism (The Courtauld Gallery, 14 October 2022 – 8 January 2023), the 2022 Frank Davis lectures offer a platform for new perspectives on one of the most original a...

Photograph of a black woman standing with her hands on her hips against a backdrop of a bookcase.

Exiles and Émigrés

Exiles and Émigrés explores the ways art and art practices relate to issues of homeland, exile, diasporic identity, the ‘post-colonial’, the ‘decolonial’, critical thinking about performance, exhibiting, and museum displays. We are proud to be inviti...

Image showing part of a portrait of a woman on the left side and an X-ray image of this on the right hand side.

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...

Artists reinterpretation of 'The Great Plague' after COVID-19

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....

Photograph of a woman sitting with a gold bowl in front of her

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...

Black and white illustration of a mantlepiece

Art History Decentered/Recentered

The 2018 Frank Davis Memorial Series invited four distinguished speakers to share research that addressed visual and material witnesses to colonialism, migration, and indigeneity. With lectures that ranged between the fifteenth century and the presen...

Frank Davis Memorial Lectures