The Art Fund What's On

We organise a range of special events throughout the UK including behind-the-scenes tours, private views and lectures.

Regular events include afternoon talks at the Wallace Collection in London as well as Art Happens, which explores contemporary art and related themes. Art Fund members also receive discounted entry to art fairs and exhibitions across the country.

London Events

Talk: Paris in 1900

L'Exposition de Paris 1900

Thursday 23 October

Patrick Bale, Senior Lecturer at Christie's Education, presents a journey through time to Paris in 1900. With the aid of a wealth of imagery and historic recordings, this lecture explores the city's transition to a new century with a great World Exhibition- an international feast of the visual and the performing arts celebrating the triumph of Art Nouveau and the wonders of electricity.

Amazing early recordings allow the audience to hear the voices of Sarah Bernhardt in L'Aiglon; of Coquelin in Cyrano de Bergerac, of Mary Garden in Louise; and Proust's lover Reynaldo Hahn in his own perfumed songs.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688

Date: Thursday 23 October, 2.30-3.30pm
Address: The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN
Tickets: £10

Talk: Vermeer and Delft

The Milkmaid, Jan Vermeer, c.1658-61

Wednesday 29 October

Jan Vermeer spent his entire life in the city of Delft, capturing the spirit of its daily life in his paintings. He specialised in interior domestic scenes, and his oeuvre presents a fascinating cross-section of 17th-century Dutch society. Other artists of the Dutch Golden Age, such as Pieter de Hooch and Jan Steen, also spent time in Delft, and the significant relationships that developed between their work and Vermeer's is the theme of this lecture by Rebecca Lyons of Christie's Education.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688

Date: Wednesday 29 October, 2.30-3.30pm
Address: The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN
Tickets: £10

View: Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian at the National Gallery

Lombardo, Tullio (about 1460–1532), A Young Couple (Bacchus and Ariadne), 1505–10. © Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (KK 7471)

Wednesday 5 November

Curator Susan Foister gives an introductory talk at our private view of this landmark exhibition featuring works by the great Renaissance masters of Northern and Southern Europe, including Bellini, Botticelli, Van Eyck, Holbein, Lotto, Pontormo, Raphael and Titian. Displaying over 70 paintings, sculptures, drawings and medals, this exhibition provides insights into fundamental issues of likeness, memory and identity, while revealing a remarkable community of princes, envoys, merchants, clergymen, tradesmen and artists.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688

Date: Wednesday 5 November, 9.00-10.00am
Address: Sainsbury Wing, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN
Tickets: £13

Talk: Berlin in the 1920's

Wilhelm Bendow

Wednesday 5 November

Berlin in the 1920’s was a city on the edge of an abyss, and fertile ground for all kinds of political extremism. The raucous-voiced lesbian chanteuse Claire Waldoff boasted in song that every man you met could be a Nazi. The febrile and dangerous political situation provided a backdrop to a decade of dazzling innovation in all the arts- theatre, film, music, painting, architecture and design. From Christopher Isherwood and the young Francis Bacon, to Schoenberg and Kandinsky, talented people flocked to Berlin from all over Europe in order to sample its artistic- and sexual- freedom. Patrick Bade of Christie’s Education is the lecturer.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688

Date: Wednesday 5 November, 2.30-3.30pm
Address: The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN
Tickets: £10

Visit: Harrow School and Photography Exhibition

© James Donovan

Saturday 8 November

Harrow was founded in 1572 under a royal charter granted by Elizabeth I to John Lyon, a local farmer. His new School House was completed in 1615, and so began Harrow's gradual- if not uninterrupted- growth towards fame. This visit features the Exhibition of Harrovian Photographers: Innovation through the Generations. The curator, photographer Rupert Sagar-Musgrove, introduces the show of work, which features images by such luminaries as William Henry Fox Talbot, Cecil Beaton and Lord Lichfield. Afternoon tea is followed by a guided tour of the school.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688

Date: Saturday 8 November, 2.30-5.00pm
Address: Old Speech Room Gallery, Harrow on the Hill HA1 3HP
Tickets: £20 (includes tea)

Talk: Prague During the Reign of 'Monarcha Mundi' Charles IV of Luxembourg

Prague

Thursday 13 November

This lecture, by Professor Paul Crossley of the Courtauld Institute, looks at the medieval heyday of Prague during the reign of the Bohemian King and German Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg. When he arrived in the city from Paris in 1333, he found it a place of desolation. By the time of his death in 1378, he and his architects and cultural advisors had transformed it into Gold Prague- a city half Eastern (Slav) and half Western.
Charles rebuilt its cathedral, and laid out a vast new town around the old medieval one. He re-activated the myths of the city’s Slav history, transforming the capital into a European centre of religious devotion. Through processions, pilgrimages and relic exhibitions, 14th-century Prague came to be seen as a second Rome and a second Jerusalem, acting as a huge theatrical backdrop for the presentation of Charles as King of Bohemia and ‘monarcha mundi’- ruler of the world.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688

Date: Thursday 13 November, 2.30-3.30pm
Address: The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN
Tickets: £10

Talk: St Petersburg and the Walpole Collection

The Holy Family with SS Elizabeth and John the Baptist, Nicolas Poussin, 1645-55

Thursday 20 November

The acquisition in 1779 of Sir Robert Walpole's collection of European paintings by Catherine the Great of Russia has been described as one of the greatest events in the life of the Hermitage State Museum. Walpole's remarkable collection, rated in Britain as second only to that of the king, included works by Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Dyck as well as Poussin, Lorrain and Murillo; it could conceivably have formed the basis for the National Gallery in England.
In 2007, writer and art historian Linda Bolton traveled to St Petersburg to research events around Catherine's phenomenal purchase and to discover to what extent the loss of the Walpole Collection shaped the future of London's National Gallery. In her talk, Linda describes her experiences as a researcher in Russia, unraveling the links between these two remarkable collections.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688

Date: Thursday 20 November, 2.30-3.30pm
Address: The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN
Tickets: £10

View: Christmas Illustrator Show at Chris Beetles Gallery

Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, Serenade

Thursday 20 November

Enjoy the annual exhibition of British illustrators from 1800 to the present day, including cartoons and illustrations by artists such as Mabel Lucie Attwell, Quentin Blake, Kate Greenaway, Arthur Rackham and William Heath Robinson.
Chris Beetles will give a talk, and there will be an opportunity to buy works.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688

Date: Thursday 20 November, 6.30-8.00pm
Address: 8 and 10 Ryder Street, London SW1Y 6QB
Tickets: £14 (includes a glass of wine)

View: Giles at the Cartoon Museum

Image by Carl Giles. Cover of Annual 46th series in 1992. The British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent © Express Newspapers

Tuesday 25 November

Popular with the public and admired by his peers, Carl Giles was one of the leading British cartoonists of the 20th century. This exhibition includes rare wartime drawings and letters that reveal the man as well as the cartoonist. Anita O'Brien, co-curator, introduces the exhibition.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688

Date: Tuesday 25 November, 6.30-8.00pm
Address: 35 Little Russell Street, London WC1A 2HH
Tickets: £16 (includes a glass of wine)

Talk: Goya and Madrid

The Second of May 1808 (detail) Francisco de Goya, 1814

Thursday 27 November

Artists of the past gravitated towards capital cities or major ecclesiastical centres in search of a variety of commissions. Emeritas Professor Nigel Glendinning, Queen Mary, University of London, focuses on Goya, who undertook major contracts for work in five Spanish cities and one in France: Cádiz, Madrid, Seville, Valencia, Zaragoza and Bordeaux. Concentrating on Goya’s time in Madrid, Professor Glendinning shows how the Spanish capital and the country around it facilitated and stimulated Goya’s development as an artist, as he worked for different regimes, in diverse historical circumstances, for court and other patrons, and for himself.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688

Date: Thursday 27 November, 2.30-3.30pm
Address: The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN
Tickets: £10

Visit: Dennis Severs' House

© James Brittain

Tuesday 2 December

A visit to this 18th-century house in Spitalfields is an unforgettable sensory experience, particularly at this time of year when the house is decorated for the festice season. Each room is a time capsule where history has been suspended and the atmosphere of the past is recreated with colours, textures, sounds and smells. A unique wander through the ages, from 1724 to 1914.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688. Please specify time when booking. Also, please note: access to the various floors is by a narrow stairway.

Date: Tuesday 2 December, 5.45, 6.30 and 7.00pm
Address: 18 Folgate Street, London E1 6BX
Tickets: £20

Study Visit: National Gallery

Portrait of Cornelius van der Geest, Anthony Van Dyck, c.1620

Thursday 4 December

To complement her talk on 20 November, Linda Bolton leads a group visit to the National Gallery, where she focuses on the Gallery's formation and early years. Linda discusses paintings in the Angerstein Collection, acquired by the British government in 1824 from Russian-born merchant John Julius Angerstein, which lay the foundations of what is now one of the most important galleries in the world.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688

Date: Thursday 4 December, 2.30-3.30pm
Address: National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN (Meeting point: Sainsbury Wing Information Desk)
Tickets: £15

Talk: David and Florence in the 15th-Century

David (detail), Michelangelo, 1504

Thursday 11 December

Michelangelo’s David stands out as one of the world’s greatest sculptures, not only because of its unrivalled technique and outstanding beauty, but also because it is part of a sculptural tradition which maps the history of Renaissance Florence. In this talk, actor, museums lecturer and television presenter Richard Stemp explores the cultural context of the work alongside sculptures by Donatello and Verrocchio, and reveals how the iconic power of these works was manipulated by the Republic of Florence and by the Medici, the city’s ruling family during the 15th century

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688

Date: Thursday 11 December 2008, 2.30-3.30pm
Address: The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN
Tickets: £10

View: Francis Bacon at Tate Britain

Francis Bacon, detail from Triptych – August 1972, 1972 © Estate of Francis Bacon, all rights reserved, DACS 2007.

Friday 12 December

Francis Bacon (1909-92) is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the 20th century, and this major exhibition celebrates his work and anticipates his centenary in 2009. It is his first UK retrospective since 1985 and offers a re-assessment of his work in the light of research undertaken since the artist's death. With over 70 paintings, this unmissable exhibition brings together important works from each period of Bacon's long and distinguished career.

Booking information: Please call 0870 050 3688.

Date: Friday 12 December, 9.00-10.00am
Address: Manton Entrance, Atterbury Street, London SW1P 4RG
Tickets: £13

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