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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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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