Reflecting on 'The Ugly Duchess' exhibition

Thoughtful online lecture from the National Gallery looking at disability in art in reaction to their exhibition on “The Ugly Duchess” by Quinten Massys.

Hannah Wallis, who had written a teaching pack for education department on the exhibition, and discusses how the show and the gallery discuss embodied difference. She talked about the importance of the language that is used starting with the different titles the picture has had over the year. Although it is still popularly known as “The Ugly Duchess” the gallery now gives it the title of “The Old Woman”.

She talked about how the word ugly comes from the Norse for to dread which has led us to lining ugliness to fear and we fear what we don’t understand. Also how the idea of the grotesque has been used to signify moral failure.

I had done a number of talks on this exhibition which placed it in the context of when it was painted so it was interesting to take a step back and look at it again with a contemporary eye. It made me think about how paintings are a historic artefact from when they were made but still exist in our space when they are often seen differently. 

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