Harriet Atkinson is AHRC Leadership Fellow and Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Design at University of Brighton

Her latest book is Showing resistance: Propaganda and Modernist exhibitions in Britain, 1933–53

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In this episode Malika Browne talks to art historian, author and museum director Will Gompertz about Olafur Eliasson’s unforgettable installation in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in 2003. Was it an exhibition in the strictest sense of the word? Or was it an installation, a happening or even an ‘environment’? It was certainly a landmark event in London that decade. Will worked at Tate at the time, and has fascinating insights into the exhibition and how it came about.

This is a Froody Music production. Thanks to Martin Lumsden

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In this episode Malika Browne talks to Melanie Lenz, digital curator at the V&A about the groundbreaking exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity at the ICA in `London in 1968 in a discussion that explores the origins and the military uses of cybernetics, the difference between cybernetics and AI, and the effect this show had on its visitors in the pre-computer age.

DO NOT MISS Electric Dreams at Tate Modern on til 1st June 2025, about art and technology before the internet. It has a whole room about Cybernetic Serendipity!

Further Reading:

"Cybernetic Serendipity": The First Widely-Attended International Exhibition of Computer Art

Seven minute piece of footage from 1968 of curator Jasia Reichardt explaining her fascinating show

This is a Froody Music production. Thanks to Martin Lumsden

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In this episode Malika Browne talks to art historian and author Dr Ben Street about the shocking exhibition Sensation at the Royal Academy in London in 1997, and describes the rise of the YBAs (Young British Artists) and what a pivotal moment it was for British art in the decade when the UK was dubbed Cool Britannia.

Further Reading:

Lucky Kunst by Gregor Muir

This is a Froody Music production. Thanks to Martin Lumsden

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In this episode Malika Browne talks to journalist, novelist and biographer A N Wilson about the Great Exhibition of 1851, which took place in Hyde Park over six months and attracted over 6 million visitors. The profit from the wildly popular international commercial exhibition led to the founding of London’s now famous South Kensington museums, and the area known as Albertopolis. The Royal Commission for the 1851 exhibition goes on to this day, dispensing grants to scientists.

Further Reading:

Prince Albert: The man who saved the monarchy by A N Wilson

The World for a Shilling by Michael Leapman

https://royalcommission1851.org/

This is a Froody Music production. Thanks to Martin Lumsden

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In this episode, art historian and curator David Boyd Haycock describes Roger Fry’’s legendary exhibition, Manet and the Post Impressionists held at the Grafton Galleries in 1910. In her essay Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown, Virginia Woolf wrote that on or about 1910, “human character changed”, a statement generally accepted to be a reference to the Post Impressionists show.

Further Reading:

A Crisis of Brilliance by David Boyd Haycock

Roger Fry, an autobiography by Virginia Woolf

The Sultan of Zanzibar by Martyn Downer about the spectacular hoaxes of Horace de Vere Cole, including the Dreadnought Hoax of 1910.

Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown - an essay by Virginia Woolf

This is an Ictus Media production, edited by Leo Hornak and produced by Howie Shannon

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In this episode, art historian Irene Walsh describes the now legendary Armory Show of 1913 in New York City. Irene wrote her PhD on art collector Lillie P Bliss, and she tells us about the groundbreaking show's shock value, the mockery that surrounded some of the paintings in it, and their unexpected effects on the American public and the art market. She tells us how the show led to the founding of New York's MoMa in 1929.

Further Reading:

The Story of the Armory Show by Milton W Brown, Abbeville Press Inc.,U.S. 1988

The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution by Kushner, Orcutt and Blake, 2013

The chapter on the Armory show in The Shock of the New: Seven Historic Exhibitions of Modern Art by Ian Dunlop, 1972

This is an Ictus Media production, edited by Leo Hornak

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In this episode, guest Dr Xavier Bray, director of the Wallace Collection, describes the surprise hit exhibition in London in 2000: Seeing Salvation, Image of Christ, at the National Gallery. He shares his memories of being an assistant (and very junior) curator of the show and explains why images of Christ still resonate and matter. He talks about the impact of art on us and suggests what sort of exhibition the world perhaps needs at this troubled time.

Further Reading:

The Image of Christ: The Catalogue of the Exhibition "Seeing Salvation" (National Gallery of London) by Gabriele Finaldi (2000-11-10)

Seeing Salvation by Neil MacGregor and Erika Langmuir (2000)

This is an Ictus Media production, edited by Leo Hornak

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In this episode, guest Susanna Brown explains why the Cecil Beaton show of 1968 was groundbreaking, both for photography as an art, as well as for the National Portrait Gallery. Both its content and its design changed the museum, exhibitions, and photograph in Britain forever.

Further Reading:

Cecil Beaton's diaries in 6 parts in particular The Parting Years: 1963-74, Sapere Books, 2018

The Roy Strong Diaries 1967-1987, Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1997

Beaton's Bright Young Things, Robin Muir, National Portrait Gallery, 2020

Beaton by Bailey - watch on Youtube

This is an Ictus Media production, edited by Leo Hornak

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Malika Browne talks to former art critic Ian Dunlop about the landmark art show for Swinging London at the Tate, in 1964 for which the museum's Duveen Galleries were turned into a claustrophobic labyrinth of new art from America and Europe, putting London firmly on the art map.

Further reading:

The Shock of the New: Seven Historic Exhibitions of Modern Art by Ian Dunlop, 1972

This is an Ictus Media production, edited by Leo Hornak

London’s New Scene: Art and Culture in the 1960s by Professor Lisa Tickner, Yale University Press in 2020.

Watching:

Pop Goes the Easel by Ken Russell, 1962

Blow Up by Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966

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