On Art Becoming Public - First Panel

Conference – Claudia Di Tosto, Juliet Jacques, Ben Cranfield, Fiona Anderson, Jennifer Powell, Hana Leaper, Ella Nixon, Lynda Nead, Ese Onojeruo, Lily Ford, Madeleine Kennedy, Dominic Bilton, Jonathan P. Watts, Saim Demircan

6 June 2025
9:30 – 5:30 pm
Paul Mellon Centre and Online
On Art Becoming Public is a research project around exhibition histories hosted by the Paul Mellon Centre (PMC) and convened by Claudia Di Tosto (PhD candidate, University of Warwick). The aim of the project is to provide a space for discussion and reflection about the role of exhibitions, the becoming public of art as described by Dr Lucy Steeds (University of Edinburgh), within the production of British art history.

Following the online reading group that ran from September to March, this hybrid one-day symposium further expanded the discussion around methods and approaches to researching exhibition histories through four conversations between two panellists and a chairperson.

The first panel looked at regional exhibition histories, focusing on the making of exhibitions and curatorial practices beyond the confines of London. The aim was to challenge the centre-periphery approach based on the assumption that the organisation and reception of British art exhibitions converged only in centrally located venues.