18 Sep 2024 — AGM and Jewel in the Crown: the Sainte Chapelle in Paris
The Sainte Chapelle is a gem of beauty and technical innovation in the heart of Paris, possibly the most perfect surviving mediaeval ensemble. It was designed not only to celebrate France and its kings, but as a life-size reliquary, a worthy shrine for some of the most significant and talismanic of Christian remains, including the Crown of Thorns. Built in a mere five years (1243-1248), this extraordinary survivor captures the best of the arts at a precise moment in time, summoned up by all the resources available to a king. This lecture looks at the architecture, the sculpture but, above all, the exquisite stained glass, setting Louis IX in the company of the blessed and turning the interior into a floating vision of heaven on earth.
Lecturer: Nicole Mezey studied Art History at the Universities of Sussex, York and Paris. She was Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast until 2009, working primarily with adults, managing and teaching on both the part-time degree and extra-mural programmes and conducting annual, international study-tours. She also established and was first Director of the Department of Art History, the first in Northern Ireland. Nicole now lives in central London and is a freelance lecturer, working for organisations including the National Museums, universities, the National Trust and private companies. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Higher Education Academy and her publications focus on adult education and the arts.
2 Oct 2024 — Sumptuous Veronese: the depiction of luxury goods in 16th century Venice
Venice: the Serenissima, but also the Luxurissima. Venice was the port for Europe through which all the glamorous and luxurious products of India, the Middle East and the Far East passed, and she certainly made sure that the best pieces remained in Venice. Indian jewellery, silks and porcelains were given a starring role in the paintings produced by any Venetian artist from the 15th of 16th century – Bellini and Cima through to the trio of great Venetian artists, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. But of all of these, it is Veronese who delighted most in depicting the textures and colour effects of luxury goods.
Lecturer: Chantal Brotherton-Radcliffe has an MA in History of Art from Edinburgh and a PhD from the Warburg Institute, London University. With 40 years’ experience as a lecturer, Chantal has taught at Sotheby’s Institute of Art on the MA in Fine and Decorative Arts since 1989, and as a freelance lecturer for a number of societies and institutions in London, including the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection. Having also trained as a paintings conservator, she brings an understanding of the making and the physical painting to her lectures and study sessions.
13 Nov 2024 — The Shakers of North America: their beliefs, architecture and artefacts
The Shakers were a group of religious dissidents who grew out of Quakerism and had their origins in mid-18th century England, but they are much better known as a successful 19th century North American fundamentalist sect. They established themselves in agrarian communities, initially in American’s northeastern states, as they attempted to build Utopia, their Heaven on earth. By the middle of the 19th century there were some 6000 Shakers living in twenty communities. Today they have all but disappeared but their influence has not.
Lecturer: John Ericson was formerly a lecturer at the University of Bath, where he was Director of Studies in the School of Education with responsibility for the professional development of teachers. He has worked extensively overseas as an educational consultant and this has given him the opportunity to give lectures and presentations at conferences all over the world. Over the last decade he has been a popular speaker on the Arts Society circuit in the UK and Europe as well as a frequent visitor to the societies in Australia and New Zealand. In his professional life he has developed a particular interest in presentation skills, including the role of pictures in learning and the appropriate use of PowerPoint. This coupled with his ability to relate well to people of all ages and backgrounds makes him an impressive and confident public speaker. As well as the talks he has developed from his professional background, he offers presentations on an eclectic range of topics that are derived from his diverse interests and enthusiasms such as Art Inspired by Wine, Visual Illusions in Art and The Shakers of North America. All his talks are entertaining, highly informative, very well illustrated and presented with warmth and humour.
Picture from Wikimedia Commons
11 Dec 2024 — A very British art form: the story of pantomime
Sometimes called Britain’s greatest ‘Art Form’, pantomime has been a popular form of entertainment for over 300 years. In the early 18th century the word was used to describe the performances at Drury Lane Theatre based on the Italian Commedia dell’arte. In the 18th century it was often seen as an opportunity for political satire but it was through the 19th century that the fairy-tale story plots were established and the extrovert Music Hall entertainers created the traditions that we know as the Christmas pantomime today.
Lecturer: Malcolm Jones has lectured on the Victoria & Albert Museum Short Course and Year Course Programmes since 2009, devising and developing a range of courses on Theatre History and Practice. Malcolm was Workshop and Events manager at the V&A Theatre Museum in Covent Garden for 10 years where he was responsible for lectures, Study Days and workshops for adults, and he interviewed many leading British actors and directors including Kenneth Cranham, Zoe Wanamaker, Barry Cryer, June Whitfield and Don Black. He has lectured and led workshops in the past at many drama schools including RADA, The Actors Centre and Rose Bruford College. He has also lectured on theatre for groups visiting the UK from America. He has chaired panels and post-show talks for Ambassadors Theatre Group. While at the V&A Malcolm contributed as a speaker on theatre to many television and radio programmes. He has also worked since 2000 with Age Exchange Community Arts on many creative arts programmes with older people and intergenerational film and theatre projects.
8 Jan 2025 — “Les trois grandes dames d’Impressionisme”: Marie Bracquemond, Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot
The Impressionists were an innovative and radical group of artists whose took Paris by storm in the 1870s. Using new colours and techniques, they created paintings of modern life that shocked and horrified the art establishment. From the start the group included women artists but their contribution to Impressionism has often been overshadowed by their male contemporaries. Marie Bracquemond, Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot all exhibited regularly at the Impressionist exhibitions alongside artists such as Monet, Renoir and Degas. In 1894 they were given the title “Les Trois Grandes Dames d’Impressionisme” by the art critic Gustave Geffroy. This lecture will discuss the lives of each of these artists and their work, revealing their skill and originality as well as their willingness to take risks, despite the additional obstacles they faced as women.
Lecturer: Sarah Burles studied History of Art at Cambridge University before doing a master’s degree at University College London. She went on to have a career in museum and gallery education, establishing new services in three different museums before working at the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge for many years. Sarah is the founder of Cambridge Art Tours, which runs tours and courses in and around East Anglia, as well as online. She is a Tour Director for an award-winning travel company and has led tours to Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and America. Sarah became an Arts Society accredited lecturer in 2021 and, since then, has given lectures and run study days for Arts Societies throughout the UK, as well as in Germany, Holland and New Zealand.
12 Feb 2025 — Trees in art
Throughout the history of European art, the tree has been of great importance as a punctuation mark within a composition, to create perspective, to draw attention to the figures, to offer a framework or to give meaning to the subject of the painting or sculpture. Dead or broken trees can symbolise death, a living tree in contrast can indicate everlasting life or resurrection, and in the Garden of Eden the Tree of Knowledge is crucial to the Fall of Adam and Eve. Trees are such an enhancement of a painting or sculpture. This lecture will explore the myriad of ways in which artists and sculptors, such as Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Jan van Eyck, Bellini, Bernini, Caspar David Friedrich or Constable, among so many others, use trees in their work.
Lecturer: Clare Ford-Willi has an Honours degree in History of Art, Birkbeck College, University of London. 
Her regular commitments include Centre for Lifelong Learning, London University, National Gallery, V&A Museum, WEA, Morley College, the City Literary Institute, the Art Fund and National Trust. Study tours abroad.
Picture from Wikimedia Commons
12 Mar 2025 — Joy and energy in the unique music of Latin-American Baroque
Voltaire, writing in Candide (1759), called the Chiquitos missions in Bolivia ‘a triumph of humanity’. This presentation explores the historical research behind the making of the 1986 film ‘The Mission’, which so powerfully contrasted the peaceful, Utopian lifestyle of the native indian villages with the forced eviction of the Jesuit Order from South America in 1767. Drawing upon his own personal experience – conducting concerts in the three most important Chiquitos missions at the invitation of UNESCO — Graham Griffiths reveals that the historical truth is even more remarkable than the film suggests.
Lecturer: Graham Griffiths is a lecturer, conductor, pianist and composer. He has been an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at City, University of London since June 2015. He is the author of Stravinsky’s Piano: Genesis of a Musical Language and editor of Stravinsky in Context. Since 2014 he has regularly visited Russia to research at the major historical and musical archives in St Petersburg and Moscow. His principal interest has been to recover the compositions and investigate the biographies of Leokadiya and Elizaveta Kashperova, both of whom were renowned pianist-composers in their day. For over a decade Graham directed the contemporary music ensemble Grupo Novo Horizonte de São Paulo, a project he founded in 1988. He was Lecturer in 20th Century Music at São Paulo State University (UNESP, 1988-1990) and guest-lectured at eleven other Brazilian and Danish universities (1990-2000). Prior to his appointment at City in 2010 he delivered courses at the universities of Bath, Bristol, Canterbury Christ Church, and Oxford. He studied musicology as an undergraduate at Edinburgh University (1972-76) and obtained his doctorate at Christ Church, Oxford in 2008.
9 Apr 2025 — Seeking essence: primitivism
In the 16th century people set sail to explore the world and brought back artefacts that they found appealing but did not understand. Early ethnographers, explorers and anthropologists made detailed studies, which helped shed light. What they sometimes referred to as ‘primitive’ was often very sophisticated and subtle. The notion of the ‘noble savage’, the work of Darwin, colonisation and missionary fervour will all be considered. This lecture will question why artists in the early 20th century bought and drew inspiration from so called ‘primitive’ art.
Lecturer: Jacqueline Cockburn is Managing Director of Art and Culture Travel, running residential courses in Andalucía, southern Spain in the art and culture of the region as well as curated tours to Madrid, Tangiers, Barcelona, Paris and Venice. Jacqueline is a course director and lecturer at the V&A and also lectures at The Royal Academy, She has toured New Zealand and Australia for The Arts Society. Her specialist field is Spanish Art, but she also lectures on European Art 1790-1950. She is currently working on a monograph on Goya, to be published in spring 2025 by Prestel.
14 May 2025 — Handel and Rembrandt: two baroque Protestants
Baroque art is usually associated with the Catholic south, but Handel and Rembrandt are wonderful examples of that comparative rarity, the baroque Protestant. Both artists were reared in a religious tradition that encouraged intense involvement with the Bible and were able to translate that involvement into works of art that grabbed their audience by sheer virtuosity and narrative drive. I shall be looking at the Scripture stories the two men share in common and show how astonishingly they seem to bounce off each other.
Lecturer: Sarah Lenton has spent her working life in the theatre: her principal employers are the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Garsington Opera. She writes programme articles, radio and play scripts, gives lectures on the operas and ballets in the rep. and broadcasts regularly for BBC Radios 3 and 4. She is also a cartoonist.
11 June 2025 — The art and craft of John Piper
An abstract painter in the 1930s, John Piper was also a writer, critic and typographer and his love of architecture – especially mediaeval churches and stained glass – made him a highly sensitive observer of his surroundings. During the Second World War he became one of the best-known Official War Artists, creating powerful images of the destruction of Coventry Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament and the city of Bath, as well as recording a wide range of buildings, from derelict Welsh cottages to the grandeur of Windsor Castle. Piper’s friendships with figures from the worlds of literature, ballet and music led him in further creative directions.
Lecturer: Jo Walton is 
a freelance lecturer, specialising in Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture and in British art of the 19th and 20th centuries. She studied art history at Leicester University, then went on to do a post-graduate diploma in Oxford on the art and architecture of 15th century Italy. A job in a bookshop turned into a happy and successful twenty-year career in the book trade, eventually running a specialist art bookshop in London, and working with the auctioneers Christies. As well as teaching adult education classes in art history she was for 12 years a volunteer guide for Tate Modern and Tate Britain. She now lectures for The Arts Society, The National Gallery and The Art Fund as well as on cruise liners – discovering, rather to her surprise, that she loves being at sea on very large ships.
17 Sep 2025 — AGM and The emperor and the prostitute: Justinian and Theodora, and the Byzantium art they inspired
Justinian and Theodora bowed to no one when they ruled the world’s most powerful empire during the 6th century. A former prostitute and exotic dancer, Theodora was a woman with an unsavoury past, while her husband’s roots lay in Balkan peasant stock; and yet together they inspired some of most beautiful art in the Byzantine Empire. From the sublime mosaics of Ravenna and St Catherine’s monastery to the miraculous architecture of Hagia Sophia – who could forget the most outrageous imperial couple in Byzantine history?
Lecturer: Geri Parlby has a career that spans diverse fields. 
She started as a news and investigative reporter via Mirror Group newspapers before becoming Head of Press for United International Pictures, handling major blockbuster publicity campaigns from Paramount, Universal, MGM & UA studios throughout the 1980s. She then set up her own London-based film and video PR agency, which she ran for eight years before retiring to start a family. Driven by her passion for art, she studied for an MA in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute before gaining a theology PhD from the University of Roehampton. Geri’s extensive knowledge and engaging speaking style led her to become an accredited NADFAS/Arts Society lecturer and she has been lecturing both across the UK and internationally for the past 17 years.
