E-News Bulletin January 2025
SOCIETY EVENTS
A very happy and prosperous New Year to all our members. We hope you will enjoy some of our wide variety of events planned during the year. The first lecture of the year is online on 7 January at 6pm. Rupert Dickens will be talking about Hogarth at the Hustings: the Election Entertainment Series and the birth of political satire.
Following the successful recording of November’s member lecture on Alphonse Mucha (more details to follow), we will shortly be offering a recording as an added extra to all members who have booked in-person places on the following study days: Mantua: Art and Patronage of the Gonzaga, God Save the King! and possibly Merry Monarch and Art Lover . We will also be offering these events as a “Recording only” option. Please keep an eye on the website for further details.
There are places available for most of the events offered in our spring programme. If you have not had a chance to look through our spring events there is a range of stimulating subjects on offer – do have a browse through our What’s On page. Please remember that in order to go ahead all our events need to at least break even and therefore we do need members to book as early as possible in order to ensure that events do not need to be transferred online or at worst cancelled.
John McNeill
It is with immense sadness that we have to inform you that our dear friend, Vice President and lecturer, John McNeill passed away last Saturday following a short illness. John had been involved with the Society since the 1980s and there cannot be many members who have not in some way benefited from his vast knowledge of medieval art and architecture, with particular focus on the Romanesque. His death was all the more unexpected, given that he had only just delivered a Study Day, Four Medieval English Churches in Context, for the Society on the 20th and 21st November last year. He will be greatly missed by us all.
Details of John’s funeral and other opportunities to celebrate his life are not yet known, but we will include an update in the Society’s January mailing and Chair’s New Year Message.
NOW SHOWING IN LONDON
KEW GARDENS, until 5 January 2025
Botanical Blues
A collection of botanical art celebrating the allure of blue flowers held in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery. This is showing alongside Expressions in Blue an exhibition of modern blue and white ‘Ming’ style ceramics.
TATE MODERN, until 1 June 2025
Electric Dreams: art and technology before the internet
A look back at how artists from the 1950s to 80s imagined the visual language of the future.
VICTORIA MIRO N1, until 18 January 2025
Motion in Stillness: dance and the human body in motion
This exhibition explores the art of dance and movemen NB: the gallery is closed until 7 January.
COMING SOON
THE COURTAULD, Vernon Square, 9 January 2025, 5.30-7pm
The Radical Print: art and politics in late eighteenth-century Britain
This new book by Dr Esther Chadwick argues for printmaking in Britain as the most innovative and critically engaged field of artistic production in the late eighteenth century.
ESTORICK COLLECTION, 22 January-11 May 2025
Breaking Lines
An exhibition investigating Futurism and the origins of experimental Poetry which contextualises the exhibition focusing on the work of Dom Sylvester Houédard
WILLIAM MORRIS GALLERY, 22 January 2025, 2-2.45pm
Curator’s tour of William Morris and Art from the Islamic World
Learn more about the influence of Islamic art on the work of one of the most important British designers and thinkers.
THE WALLACE COLLECTION, 27/28 January 2025, 6-8pm online
The Power of the Paris Salon
A two-session event exploring the nineteenth-century art world in Paris focusing on the most influential display of contemporary French art, the Paris Salon.
EXHIBITIONS STARTING AT MAJOR LONDON GALLERIES IN JANUARY 2025
There are no major new exhibitions starting this month but there are many interesting ones showing currently. You can access and download a listing of current and future exhibitions showing in London from now until June 2025 here.