May 21st, 2024
This online Research Spotlight provides a new resource on the portrait of the politician Richard Cobden by the artist Emma Aloysia Novello. Painted in Paris in 1861, the portrait materialises the alliance between Cobden and the Novello family that contributed to the Paper Duty Repeal Bill; part of the ultimately successful campaign against ‘Taxes on Knowledge’. […]
April 24th, 2024
A workshop taking place in September 2024 and hosted by the Centre for Museum Cultures at Birkbeck and the National Portrait Gallery will facilitate critical engagement with the topic of empire and the art gallery. The workshop will address how to publicly communicate imperial legacies within art galleries, bringing together people working across the sector to […]
November 3rd, 2023
Every edition of the Understanding British Portraits Annual Seminar provides an energising environment for exchanging ideas on the latest research into portraiture, and the 2023 seminar proved to be an especially revitalising occasion. This was the first annual seminar that I had been able to attend since the pandemic and I was deeply impressed by […]
October 2nd, 2023
The National Portrait Gallery has recently launched a project to identify, and find the identities of, sitters from the global majority in historic British portraiture using the Gallery’s Heinz Archive and Library. This relates to all sitters who were racialized as ‘other than White’ by the society they lived in (particularly those of African and […]
May 31st, 2023
We are excited to announce that the Understanding British Portraits network will be producing its very own Podcast! Aimed at the museum/gallery/heritage sector and wider listenership in the UK, the Podcast series is intended to support debate and enquiry around portrait interpretation, display, curation, research and audience engagement, reflecting current museological concerns and adding fresh voices […]
December 19th, 2022
As Curator at The Devil’s Porridge Museum, my research primarily focuses on social history and how people lived and worked during the First World War. I’ve followed the UBP network for some time, and particularly enjoyed 2022’s Annual Seminar which helped me to reflect on some of my own work. But […]
December 19th, 2022
Discovery. Reinterpretation. Re-appraisal. Representation of identities. These are only a few of the themes I noted from the Understanding British Portraits Network Annual Seminar on Tuesday 25 October 2022. I was keen to learn new techniques to study portraits, to set alongside, for example, the concepts of fashioning and self-fashioning of […]
November 25th, 2022
The position of ‘Researcher/Coordinator – Subject Specialist Network: Understanding British Portraiture’ is now open for applications. The candidate will be employed by the National Portrait Gallery and will report to the Head of National Programmes and the Understanding British Portraits Steering Group. The Researcher/Coordinator will provide research and coordination […]
November 25th, 2022
The winners of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize were announced at Cromwell Place on the 25th of October 2022. Clémentine Schneidermann took first place for the series Laundry Day which depict the artist’s neighbour hanging laundry in the garden of her home in South Wales. Taken during another […]
February 15th, 2021
Coronavirus: a noun familiar to everyone today, but perhaps lesser known before the pandemic, unless you work in the field of science or medicine. COVID-19, or its longer name of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has dramatically changed society and will undoubtedly be taught in history lessons in the future. As we look […]
