Giles Waterfield Will Deliver 2007 YCBA Mellon Lecture Series

NEW HAVEN — The biennial Yale Center for British Art Paul Mellon Lecture Series this year will have as its theme “For An Excellent Purpose, Museums and Their Publics in Britain from 1850–1914.” Giles Waterfield, an independent curator and writer, director of Royal Collection Studies organized by the Attingham Trust, associate lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art, a former trustee of the Heritage Lottery Fund, and former director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery will give the lectures on April 3-5 and 9-11. Lectures will start at 5:30.

Lectures will explore the development of museums in Britain from 1850 to 1914, principally in the regions, with a concentration on art museums. Organized thematically, the series examines changing perceptions of the museum, the growth of an exhibition culture, approaches to display and decoration, the academic and popular catalogue, and the interpretation of collections.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, April 3 and 4, Mr Waterfield will present “The Rise of the Regional Museum in Victorian Britain, Parts I and II.” From the 1860s onwards, the cities and towns of Britain gradually created a series of art museums, a process that continued until 1914.

These two lectures will trace the impetus for their foundation, the nature of the collections, and the diverse functions that the museums served.

On Thursday, April 5, “Collecting for People” will study the efforts of regional museums to assemble collections for a popular audience, redefining established notions of the character and aims of an art museum.

On Monday, April 9, Mr Waterfield will deliver “Beyond the Crystal Palace: Museum Exhibitions in Nineteenth Century Britain.” This lecture will give an overview of the development of exhibitions in Victorian museums, whose importance has been overshadowed by The Great Exhibition.

On Tuesday, April 10, “Explaining the Museum” will concentrate on regional art museums, offering a survey of the nature of cataloguing and educational initiatives in the later 19th Century.

The final lecture, on Wednesday, April 11, will be “Galleries of British Art.” In this presentation Mr Waterfield will consider the achievements of the Yale Center for British Art, placed in the context of collections of British art in the United Kingdom and in other countries, from the early 19th Century to the present.

These lectures are the seventh in a series organized by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London. The lectures are given biennially by an invited specialist in British art, first at the National Gallery, London, and, with the support of the Paul Mellon Centre, again at Yale Center for British Art.

The museum is at 1080 Chapel Street at the corner of High Street in New Haven. Call 203-432-2800 or visit www.yale.edu/ycba for additional information.