Understanding British Portraits Annual Seminar, 14-15 May 2026
Mohini Chandra and Hannah Hooks in conversation at the Understanding British Portraits Annual Seminar. Photo: Rhys Morgan
This year’s Understanding British Portraits Annual Seminar took place at the University of Plymouth on 14 and 15 May and was organised in partnership with The Box, Plymouth. It was wonderful to be able to bring together network members from across the UK, hear about the latest research and practice in the field of portraiture and take part in lively discussions inspired by a diverse range of papers.
The seminar examined recent curatorial and engagement work which has incorporated contemporary responses to historic portrait collections to foster more meaningful and inclusive connections with audiences. Several sessions brought together curators and artists to discuss how their collaborations have reinterpreted portrait collections, challenged institutional structures and provided a direct link between communities and cultural heritage. Lara Goodband, Contemporary Art Curator and Programmer at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery (RAMM), Exeter, discussed RAMM’s approach to working with contemporary artists to support new research into a museum collection formulated within the context of British colonial rule. Commissions by Michelle Williams Gamaker, Joy Gregory and Charmaine Watkiss produced as part of this project can be explored in greater depth on the RAMM website. This session also included a discussion between Grace Davies, Experiences and Partnerships Curator for the National Trust, and multi‑disciplinary artist Daniel Trivedy, who collaborated on A Tiger in the Castle at Powis Castle: a project responding to the Clive Collection which was largely assembled from India and shaped by complex colonial histories. Daniel Trivedy explained how his own relationship to this material, as an artist of Indian descent, informed the work, as well as the legacy of this kind of intervention for a historic site and collection.
On the second day, Hannah Hooks, Contemporary Art Curator at The Box, spoke to artist Mohini Chandra, about how Chandra’s commission Expedition into a Volcano opened up new connections with marginalised voices and people missing from institutional records, while also addressing best practice in relation to commissioning and what is needed to make a successful connection between commissions and collections.
The event was made possible thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, celebrating the culmination of the epic Journeys with Mai national tour, in which a British portrait masterpiece by Joshua Reynolds was radically redefined by new research approaches and contemporary art responses across the successive venues. As part of the seminar, Curator Zoë Shearman shared reflections on a recent research project at Saltram which reframes Reynolds’ earliest known depiction of a sitter of global majority heritage and refocuses the narrative of the portrait from the perspective of the sitter, Jersey. The resulting exhibition, ‘Jersey’s’ Story, is on display at Saltram until 1 November.
Our Keynote speaker, Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, UAL Decolonising Arts Institute, cast a longer view over the possibilities, and limits, of contemporary artist interventions in museums, considering how artist-led, research-driven interventions can open new forms of dialogue and new ways of making sense of contested historical artworks, while at the same time questioning to what extent this kind of work can resolve the power structures from which these artworks emerge. This paper advocated for a shift in emphasis towards more direct forms of confrontation with difficult histories and a recognition of the barriers to inclusion that the traditional structures of the museum dictate.
This event represented our first foray into the world of live streaming; with a dedicated team of technicians we were able to present the event simultaneously to an in-person audience (with the attendance of several delegates being supported by a UBP travel bursary) as well as a national and international contingent tuning in from across the UK as well as from United States, Canada, Spain, Australia, Barbados and Argentina. This approach also enabled us to record the content of the seminar for future reference and research and recordings of the individual papers will be made available on the UBP website shortly.
Feedback on the event was overwhelmingly positive; attendees particularly valued the regional focus of the event, which presented a national and international platform to celebrate portrait work taking place in the South West, and making attendance to the event more locally accessible. Other respondents highlighted the advantage of the networking opportunities the event provided, as well as the additional curator tours and talks which complemented the seminar programme.
As we heard last week, The Box was named the 2026 Art Fund Museum of the Year. We are so pleased to have had the privilege to collaborate with them during such an exciting time and to share with the network some of the inspiring work taking place at this exceptional organisation. Thank you to everyone who participated, and we look forward to seeing UBP members at our next event.
