The Courtauld Centre for the Art of the Americas – Past Events

The Courtauld Centre for the Art of the Americas organises a variety of conferences, lectures and workshops throughout the year. Here you will find an archive of past events.

2023/24 Academic Year

2022/23 Academic Year

Painting depicting the biblical story of Adam and Eve leaving the garden of Eden
Watch now

Textures of a New Eden

5:30pm, 5 Dec 2022 | Free, booking essential

Join Linda Freedman for this online talk about New Eden, mythology and redemption in nineteenth century America, and the reflection of these themes in art and literature. ...

Photograph of lots of small pieces of paper with writing on them in a pile

Centre for American Art, Research

Howardena Pindell: New Perspectives

10:00am, 30 Sep 2022 | Free, booking essential

Join for a one day symposium at Kettle’s Yard. This day-long series of talks will explore the work of Howardena Pindell and her current exhibition A New Language. Speakers at the symposium will include Joan Kee, Helena Vilalta, Sarah Cowan, Naomi Bec...

Photograph of a woman suspended on a rope, swinging across a white room covered with black writing
Watch now

Centre for American Art, Research

Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics

9:45am, 9 Sep 2022 | Free, booking essential

Exploring her interdisciplinary approach, her engagement with and assessment of urgent political questions, her relationship to feminism, and her connections with wider artistic communities, this day-long symposium will consider Schneemann’s work and...

2021/22 Academic Year

Photograph showing an installation view of an exhibition

Centre for American Art, Research

Reconsidering ‘Riffs and Relations’

5:00pm, 25 Apr 2022 | Free, booking essential

This presentation will chronicle the conception and planning of Riffs and Relations, taking a hard look at the triumphs and missteps.  ...

Oil painting depicting part of the Statue of Liberty, by Norman Rockwell
Watch now

Centre for American Art, Research

American Art and the Political Imagination

Friday 18th March, 2.00pm - 5.00pm GMT and Saturday 19th March, 1.45pm GMT - 6.15pm GMT | Free, booking essential

This conference originated from a single question: In what ways have art and visual culture contributed to the formulation of the American political imagination?...

Photograph of a folder label which reads 'Abstract Impressionism'
Watch now

Centre for American Art, Research

American Art Archives in Britain

3:00pm, 6 May 2022 | Free, booking essential

This two-day symposium will feature papers presenting case studies, roundtable discussion of the questions about archives the project raised, and a keynote talk by Professor Michael Leja. ...

Woven artwork

Centre for American Art, Research

Louise Bourgeois: Woven Yarns

6:00pm, 10 Feb 2022 | Free, booking essential

This talk will explore the role of weaving as material and metaphor in Bourgeois’s practice, and her psychic identifications with woven textiles....

Photograph of a piece of yellowed paper with writing on

Centre for American Art, Research

Workshop :“How close can I get to someone? Will we become each other”: Epistolary Subjects, Objects, and Methods in Feminist Art, Art Writing, and Art History

10:00am, 9 Dec 2021 | Free, very limited space, booking essential

In this participatory workshop involving writing experiments and collective discussions, we will revisit, handle again, the letters we have discovered in the archives of the artists and subjects we study, considering our roles as interlocutors across...

Cover of a book showing a photograph of Harold Rosenberg
Watch now

Centre for American Art, Research

Harold Rosenberg and “The American Action Painters”

5:00pm, 22 Nov 2021 | Free, booking essential

Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978) is still primarily known by a single essay, “The American Action Painters,” which was published in ARTnews in 1952.  When the piece appeared in the December issue, the response was phenomenal.  Not only did it galvanize a...

Geometric image made up of rectangles of white, black and green

Centre for American Art, Research

Not / Making / Marks: On Lygia Clark’s Organic Line

6:00pm, 18 Nov 2021 | Free, booking essential

This talk concerns the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s concept of the “organic” line: an interval of space that appears between a painting and its frame, a door and its lintel, or tiles on the floor....

Oil painting depicting a man on a damaged boat in the middle of shark infested waters

Centre for American Art, Research

Forgetting and Remembering the Sea with Winslow Homer

5:00pm, 25 Oct 2021 | Free, booking essential

This lecture interrogates Homer’s marines anew by focusing on the unique epistemology and materiality of the ocean. The late photographer and theorist Allan Sekula has called the oceans a “forgotten space.” Indeed, art historians tend to look out to ...

Painting showing a central figure with bagpipes and two figures in Scottish clothing dancing
Watch now

Centre for American Art, Research

Gatecrashers and the Promise of American Art

5:00pm, 18 Oct 2021 | Free, booking essential

Nearly one hundred years ago, artists without formal training “crashed the gates” of the elite art world, as their paintings of American life and fantastical scenes derived from their imaginations began appearing in major museums. This talk draws upo...

2020/21 Academic Year

2019/20 Academic Year

2018/19 Academic Year

2017/18 Academic Year

2016/17 Academic Year

Citations