This is the story, documented using many photographs by Lee Miller, of the friendship and collaboration of two artists who met during the early days of surrealism in Britain, while the world was being threatened by the dark forces of fascism.

Roland and Henry came from backgrounds that were a world apart, but they were united in their commitment to exploring new ideas and pushing the frontiers of modern art. Both veterans of the First World War, they distinguished themselves in the next and went on to blaze a trail that changed the medium of sculpture forever.
At the beginning Henry’s work was often reviled and in 1937 Roland provoked the wrath of his Hampstead neighbours when he positioned Henry’s mystic Mother and Child in front of his house. Twenty years later a seismic cultural shift had occurred and in 1958 both men worked together to realise the installation of Henry’s reclining figure in front of the UNESCO headquarters at the World Heritage Centre in Paris.

Anthony Penrose
For the past 47 years Anthony has conserved and disseminated the work of his parents, Lee Miller and Roland Penrose. With his daughter Ami he is the co-director of the Lee Miller Archives and the Penrose Collection at Farley Farm House in Sussex and has seen his parents work featured in major exhibitions at the V&A, National Portrait Gallery, The Imperial war Museum London, Manchester Art Gallery, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Whitworth. He has lectured at museums and universities around the world and made documentaries for television. Publications include Lee Miller’s War (editor), The Angel and the Fiend, The Home of the Surrealists, Roland Penrose the Friendly Surrealist and The Boy who Bit Picasso.
The movie titled LEE starring Kate Winslet is based on his book The Lives of Lee Miller and for ten years he has been heavily involved with its production and release.

Picture: Roland Penrose (L) with Henry Moore and ’Working Model for UNESCO Reclining Figure’.
Henry Moore Archive

When Anthony Caro took his sculptures off their pedestals and presented them on the gallery floor, it caused almost as big a shock in the Art world as constructing them from welded steel.

Since the Egyptian sphinxes, European and Near Eastern sculpture has been presented on bases – sometimes architectural plinths and at other times highly decorative pedestals. Like the picture frame for paintings, the pedestal marks the boundary between life and Art. And in many 18th Century Monuments, it also signifies the journey between life and death: illustrated with works from Donatello and Michelangelo to Gilbert & George.

This talk will explore the history of the sculptural base. And of course, Trafalgar Square’s famous Fourth Plinth will also feature in the story.

Chris Owen
No Biographical Notes have been provided.

Picture: Bicycle Wheel, a readymade work by Marcel Duchamp.

Why can contemporary art be so intimidating and baffling to art lovers? This talk explains the motives, techniques and ideas that create contemporary art. Since the 1960’s, artists have embraced a very diverse range of media and exhibition spaces to challenge the long history of western art’s conventions. This leaves many people frustrated and often confused. Despite intensive efforts by public galleries such as Tate Modern and other museums to interpret artworks made in the last sixty years, many artists and their artworks remain very challenging and difficult to understand. This talk, will seek explain why the visual culture of our own age is so significant and interesting.

Joshua White
Joshua is an enthusiastic and experienced art historian and lecturer. He has an MPhil in the History of Art from Christie’s and the University of Glasgow and B.A. Hons in Modern History from New College, Oxford.
A teacher at Christie’s Education, the college for Christie’s Auction House in London, for 20 years, he was the director of the London Art Course and many other courses in the field of modern and contemporary art, from Impressionism and Surrealism to photography and modern sculpture. He has lectured all over the world, and this year will be leading tours abroad.
On radio and television, Joshua was a contributor to Channel 5’s “Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr”, BBC Radio 4’s “Behind the Scenes” and BBC Radio 3’s “Turning Picasso”. Joshua has been widely published as a journalist/contributor in catalogues and magazines.

Picture: Burning Desire, Marc Quinn 2024, at Kew Gardens.

In the High Middle Ages, Christmas was celebrated with two months of festivities – involving music, drama, games, costumes and …armoured combat. It might seem strange that jousting and knightly deeds of arms were an enormously popular way of making Yuletide, but in fact the concept of knighthood and Christmas had quite a lot in common.
This lecture explores Medieval Christmas traditions, working down into deeper origins and meanings and encountering some of the great chivalric figures of the age, including Kings Edward III and Henry VIII.
Medieval art-forms like manuscript illumination and embroidery can help bring the mythic and fantastical motifs of Christmas in the Middle Ages back to life, ultimately to show that, after all, medieval people were not so different from us.

Tobias Capwell
Toby Capwell is an independent scholar and leading authority on medieval and Renaissance arms and armour. Over the last thirty years he has worked with many of the world's great collections, including the Imperial Armoury in Vienna, the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, and the Royal Armouries in Leeds; and has served as curator of Glasgow Museums and the Wallace Collection, where he worked for sixteen years, to January 2023. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Armourers in London. He is the author of many books on armour, weapons and tournaments, has curated numerous exhibitions, and frequently appears in film, television and online media. He has a BA History and English Literature, Holds Masters in both Art Gallery and Museum Studies and Medieval Studies, and a PhD in Medieval Studies.

Picture: Dressed for the fight, in the age of chivalry

The science of geology appeared at a time when artists were trying to get close to nature: geologists became artists and artists became geologists. Geological knowledge, and especially Lyells ‘Principles’, changed the way painters saw the world to the point where critic John Ruskin would say that in art the laws of geology ‘are the foundation of all other truths’. A new sense of time and the character of landscape had emerged.

Stephen Taylor
Artist and Art Historian, Stephen studied John Constable as a postgraduate at Essex and Yale, taught at Felsted School and has been Head of Painting at the Open College of the Arts, and Course Director at the Inchbald School of Design in London. In 2000, Stephen turned to landscape painting with early shows at Kings College Cambridge, Meisel’s New York and Vertigo in London. He now has pictures in private collections worldwide and his book Oak: One Tree, Three Years, Fifty Paintings was featured in the Guardian and was an Oprah Winfrey Book of the Week.

Picture: When geologists became artists and artists became geologists

This lecture exposes Art Deco jewellery during the 1920’s and 30’s. decades when jewellery was still widely worn in society; and diamonds predominated. The title quotation – and indeed the term Art Deco – comes from the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale Des Arts Decoratifs, at which a breathtaking selection of jewellery was shown.
This lecture covers work by the finest makers of the period (Cartier, Boucheron, Fouquet, Van Cleef & Arpeles and Chanel) alongside other major houses like Tiffany, in New York. It was a time when Jewellery responded very directly to women’s lives being less constrained, a feature illustrated in the lecture with lots of entertaining contemporary references and a colourful cast of characters – from Hollywood to aristocrats and royalty.

Clare Phillips
Clare has an MA from the Royal College of Art and has been a curator at the V&A since 1989. As a Jewellery historian, she is a key member of the small team dedicated to the V&A’s jewellery collection. She has written extensively on Jewellery, from Jewels & Jewellery, the definitive account of the V& A’s collection, and Thames & Hudson’s Jewellery – from Antiquity to the Present, to definitive works on the jewellery of Tiffiny for Yale University Press and on Chaumet’s tiaras for Thames & Hudson. In 2006 she curated the exhibition Bejewelled by Tiffiny at Somerset House.
In addition to her work with the V&A’s permanent collection, she has been responsible for jewellery content with major V&A exhibitions, including – amongst many others – Art Nouveau: 1890-1914 and Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up.

Picture: The Real Originality of Art Deco Jewellery

This lecture traces the history and enduring allure of Chinese Export Porcelain.

Porcelain, a finely painted translucent material with a lustrous surface comparable to a shell. Its composition remained a tantalising mystery outside China until the Jesuit Priest, Pere d’Entrecolles, revealed the secret in two letters sent from China during the early 18th Century

Around 1000 years earlier, during a golden period for the overland Silk Road, small items of porcelain were carried by camel caravan from China to the Middle East. Larger items came via maritime routes. By the 13th Century, blue and white porcelain from China had made its way to Persia, India and Egypt.
Rare pieces of Chinese porcelain arrived in Europe as diplomatic gifts and also through Venetian trade with countries of the Levant. Christian Pilgrimages to the Holy Land brought further treasures. During the era of the East India Companies, shipments of porcelain were carried direct from Asia and became a precious commodity collected by princes and nobles for their ‘porcelain rooms’.
The Tea Trade of the 18th Century brought in its wake millions of pieces of ‘blue and white’. Ingeniously coloured porcelain wares and exotic figures from China, salvaged from shipwrecks, became treasured items in English country houses.
The lecture includes original and unique photographs taken by Anne at remote and ancient kiln sites around China.

Ann Haworth
Ann has been a lecturer and a guide at the Victoria and Albert Museum for more than 20 years and has given regular Gallery talks at the British Museum. She was a lecturer for the Royal Collection Trust for 14 years, including 10 years guiding private tours of the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace. She is a visiting lecturer for Sotheby’s Institute and the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Since 2008, she has been a member of the London faculty of Eckerd College, Florida, teaching Art History. She lectures extensively for private groups, including The Arts Society, and has lectured on William Morris for the British Council and British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow. After studying modern history at Durham University, she trained and became a senior specialist in ceramics at the head offices in London of Bonhams (1981- 1986) and Christies (1987-1995). From 1995 to 2002, she was resident in Shanghai, China and gave lectures on the history of the China trade and European Chinoiserie to the international community of diplomats and expatriates in Shanghai and Beijing. On returning to London in 2002, she worked on a short project cataloguing Chinese ceramics at Kensington Palace and became Hon Membership Secretary and Treasurer of the French Porcelain Society.

Picture: Chinese porcelain, made for export

Maya culture has existed for well over 3,000 years. Across much of present-day Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras, dozens of great cities have been located, many still buried in dense rainforest. Maya achievements in art and architecture were matched by their knowledge of maths, astrology, calendrics and hieroglyphic writing. British artists, photographers, archaeologists and anthropologists have all played their part in the ongoing story of the Maya, In the 1840’s, English artist Frederick Catherwood was one of the first outsiders to explore ‘lost’ Maya cities. His evocative and highly detailed lithographs would later inspire Alfred Maudslay, Eric Thompson, Ian Graham and other British scholars. Watercolour paintings by intrepid Adela Breton recorded Maya murals and reliefs. In our own day, British specialists are decoding ancient Maya writing and working with the modern Maya on the woven symbolism of their magnificently patterned textiles.

Chloe Sayer
Chloe is an author and curator, specialising in the art and culture of Latin America. She has published numerous books and has made ethnographic collections for the British Museum. She is a Research Associate with the Department for World Cultures at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and regularly leads cultural tours of the Maya area of Mexico. She has worked on a number of BBC documentaries. In 2016, the Mexican Government awarded Chloe the Ohti medal to thank her for her long-standing commitment to Mexican culture.

Picture: The Chichen Itza Ruins - one of the most outstanding Mayan ruins in Yucatan

The exquisite portrait miniatures by Nicolas Hilliard capture the essence of the Elizabethan and early Stuart courts. Brilliant Colour, intricate detail and refined technique capture not just faces but character, from the monarchs, who made him court painter, to much more modest subjects, who, for the first time, give us a sense of the breadth of this world. Images barely 2 or 3 inches high, framed in gold, pearls and enamel, worn as we would wear a locket, enabled the lucky recipient to carry their loved one, (or their beloved monarch), close to their heart, ever young, ever beautiful.

Nicole Mezey
Nicole studied Art History at the Universities of Sussex, York and Paris and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Higher Education Academy. 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 the north of Irland. Nicole now lives in central London and is a freelance lecturer working for such organisations as national museums, universities, the National Trust and private companies. She has been lecturing for The Arts Society since 2011, including two tours of societies in Australia and New Zealand.

Picture: Left. Portrait of a loved one? Right. The Drake Jewel, pendant locket, with portrait of Queen Elizabeth, by Nicholas Hilliard, 1580 – 90
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

In his book of the same title, the archaeologist James Wright, a resident of Nottinghamshire, has used many case studies from the county to articulate some of the tales which are told about ancient or historic architecture. These include stories of secret passages underneath Wollaton, ship timbers in Worksop, strange sculptures at Laxton parish church, stones used by archers to sharpen arrows in Wilford, and yarns about Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem being the oldest Inn in England…..but are any of these stories true?

James Wright
James Wright FSA, is a buildings archaeologist, based in Nottingham. With over 20 years professional experience, he has published a number of books and articles concentrating on mediaeval and early modern architecture.
James is interested in how we can use the evidence of physical structures to understand the realities of everyday existence of ordinary people living in elite buildings. He was part of a team which won Best Project in the British Archaeological Awards for his work at Knole in Kent.
He has spoken to a wide variety of organisations including Historic Royal Palaces, The National Trust, Gresham College, Shakespear400 and the Museum of London. Lecturing is the favourite part of his job as he firmly believes that there is simply no point in carrying out research unless you actually tell folk what you have been doing!

Picture: Knole House near Sevenoaks, Kent