University of Sussex Department of Art History

27/04/2023

Here's Ben Burbridge's take on the 2023 Turner Prize shortlist. Sussex is educational partner.

https://theconversation.com/why-the-turner-prize-shortlist-is-a-cultural-barometer-of-our-political-times-204589?fbclid=IwAR3_U-1Mhbm-IlQxdLSKQW54g_nZ0Mkzw65BDdM89MxaBCfHuqy5WgrEZ9c

From the shock tactics of 90s artists starved of public funding to a pivot towards an art based in community and activism today.

24/04/2023

We are delighted to announce this year’s Festival of Ideas programme!

For the second year running, the School is collaborating with Brighton Festival on the Festival of Ideas. The series of events, which will sit within the main Brighton Festival programme, looks to harness the transformative power of the arts and humanities to fashion new ways of thinking about the past, present and future.

First up, Acoustic Ecologies: Mapping Habitats! Saturday 6 May at 1pm, Brighton Dome

To mark The Sleeping Tree installation by Invisible Flock at Brighton Dome, we bring together a panel of speakers chaired by Invisible Flock's Creative Director Victoria Pratt, including Rudi Putra, Senior Advisor of the Leuser Conservation Forum, Professor Amanda Korstjens and Dr Helen D. Slater from Bournemouth University and, from our School, Reader in Sonic Systems, Dr Alice Eldridge!

The panel will explore ways in which the field recordings for the installation were made and pick up the theme of loss of habitat that is so crucial to the project.

For more information and to book: https://brightonfestival.org/whats-on/festival-of-ideas-acoustic-ecologies-mapping-habitats-6171/

Image credit: Dr H Slater LEAP Bournemouth University

17/05/2022

Huge congratulations to Sussex Art Histiory alumnus Gilane Tawadros, who has been appointed as the new director of the Whitechapel Gallery.

Giane will be speaking at the Cultural Recovery? event on campus on Thursday 26 June as part of the Festival of Ideas.

https://amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/16/gilane-tawadros-appointed-director-of-whitechapel-gallery?fbclid=IwAR0Dqu3fy_knP9upO85imGc0kM0WPeaXDNy1E9mC_eqt9G9VZ-zPzhA5uHE

Curator and writer will become one of few women of colour to lead big UK arts institution when she takes up post in October

12/05/2022

We are delighted that the quality and importance of Sussex Art History research has been recognised in the 2021 REF.

Here are a few highlights:

* Tied third highest score in the UK for the quality of our Art History research outputs
* 8th out of 86 overall in our Unit of Assessment (Art and design: history, practice and theory)
* Three quarters of our Impact ranked at the highest score.
* 97% of our overall submission ranked as either 'world leading' (61%) or 'internationally significant' (36%)

The result is testimony to the department’s distinctive interdisciplinarity, engagement with marginalised materials and discourses, and its emphasis on sustained and varied collaborations with communities beyond the university.

The University of Oxford came top with Birkbeck also moving up the rankings

09/05/2022

https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/events/decolonial-interventions-in-contemporary-art/

Convened by Susuana Amoah, the Sussex University Stuart Hall Fellow 2022, this panel will explore some of the imaginative de-colonial strategies used by artists, curators and activists in recent years to address cultural inequity in public art institutions: from digital projects calling out racism i...

06/05/2022

Ever wanted to use your imagination to figure out how different groups and resources in a city can co-ordinate to develop social struggle in a revolutionary direction, build community, deal with crises, respond to significant events, and smash capitalism? Then Social Strike is the tabletop game for you!
A very small number of tickets are available for the first of Sussex's contributions to the Brighton Festival this Sunday: https://brightonfestival.org/.../festival-of-ideas-social...
Join Keir Milburn, who works on municipalism and economic democracy for the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung London office for this session. Keir is also the author of 'Generation Left' (Polity 2019).

25/11/2021

How can we build a fairer, more equitable, more democratic cultural sector?
If you are near Brighton next Tuesday evening, please join a stellar panel - including Bayryam Mustafa Bayryamali from BP or not BP? Calum-Louis Adams of QUILT and Gareth Spencer from PCS Culture Group - as they discuss the challenges currently faced by the UK cultural sector and, particularly, the mechanisms via which more equitable futures could be brought into being: from union representation to collective working, co-operative economies to universal basic income.
The event couldn't be more timely - scheduled the evening before three days of UCU strike action.

How can we build a fairer, more equitable, more democratic cultural sector?

03/11/2021

If you happen to be near Brighton on Tuesday then please join us for the opening of Critical Pulse, a newly commisioned work by by Under Exposed and the outcome of a six-month collaboration between the Sussex Festival of Ideas and Photoworks.

Critical Pulse is a newly commissioned work by the collective UnderExposed. We are pleased to announce the exhibition opens 9 November.

19/10/2021

So happy to announce the first in-person Research Seminar of the year! Come and join our first speaker Dr Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth 17th/18thC Curator Ceramics & Glass at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London). All Welcome!

Abstract: In February 1882 the authenticity of two pink-ground eighteenth-century ‘old’ Sèvres porcelain vases hit the press in a cause-célèbre court case between the tradesman and collector William Goode, and the Wertheimer family of art dealers. During the three-day case some of the most notable collectors, dealers, artists, and scholars examined the objects in person, engaging in a performative connoisseurial investigation. In the end, they failed to reach a satisfactory agreement, calling into question the reliability of connoisseurship and damaging the supremacy of the highly profitable market for ‘old’ Sèvres.

By situating the distinct material and cultural significance of ‘old’ eighteenth-century pâte tendre Sèvres within a range of transnational collecting networks, this project considers for the first time the epistemological foundations of ceramics connoisseurship. As figures engaged in an epistemic and haptic engagement with ‘old’ Sèvres, objects and knowledge were exchanged through a range of actors: from collector, to dealer, agent, museum and auction house. Whilst the role played by connoisseurship is embedded implicitly in the study of the decorative arts, and is often one of the main disciplinary critiques directed towards the study of ceramics, its formation and historical roots have never before received critical attention. In its broadest sense, I consider what this research reveals about broader disciplinary boundaries, especially the dichotomy between the study of the fine and the decorative arts, and the role of materiality within art historical discourse.

23/07/2021

https://photoworks.org.uk/news/critical-pulse-the-cultural-sector-after-covid/

Critical Pulse invites you to reflect on your position and needs in the current art landscape. Explore your existence in our immediate creative ecosystem by generating text and image-based responses to the selected questions by University of Sussex alumni as part of the Sussex Festival of Ideas. Wha...

11/06/2021

Another free event as part of Sussex Festival of Ideas, this time a panel of activists, curators, researchers and educators sharing experiences, insights and expertise in a wide-ranging discussion about approaches to decolonialism.
15.00-16.30 on Saturday.
How can universities, schools and museums work together to address colonialism and its legacies? What do these contexts and practices hold in common and what makes them distinct? What are continued implications of the Black Lives Matter movement for organisations and individuals involved with education, culture and heritage?
With Vinita Damodaran, Professor of Environmental History, Sussex; Sarah Naomi Lee, Creative Director, Plenty Productions, and Brighton and Hove Black History Group; Hedley Swain, CEO, Brighton Royal Pavilion and Museums Trust; and Orlene Badu, Education and Learning Consultant and Project Lead, The Diverse Curriculum: The Black Contribution.

A panel of activists, curators, researchers and educators share experiences, insights and expertise in a wide-ranging discussion about approaches to decolonialism.

10/06/2021

Another free event happening today as part of Sussex Festival of Ideas, this time in partnership with Farley Farm and Brighton Photo Fringe.
Round table exploring the life and work of Lee Miller.

The round table will consider how the life and work of the surrealist photographer Lee Miller.