Entangled Pasts, 1768-now: Art, Colonialism and Change – Curator’s Talk

Useful online lecture from ARTscapades introducing the exhibition of the same title at the Royal Academy.

Dorothy Price, one of the curators of the show, which explores the role of the Royal Academy in the Empire and slavery from its foundation to today, guided us through the themes and some of the key works. As this is quite a complex show it was really useful to have had this introduction when I then visited the show a week or so later.

Price outlined the curatorial principles of the show and the key questions they were based on. She then took us through room by room. As an art historian, I suspect she had been more involved in the earlier rooms as they took up the majority of the talk, but they also addressed some of the more complex issues and laid the foundation for the more reflective later rooms.

The talk was followed by an excellent Q&A session covering how they had worked with contemporary artists in the show, what works they would have liked to have included but couldn’t and the timescale of its planning.

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