Sculpture Studies

Overview

About Sculpture Studies

York is uniquely situated in Britain as a centre of sculptural studies, having a significant number of scholars of international repute, with expertise in all aspects of sculpture in the western tradition, from the Late Antique and early medieval through to the modern, postmodern and contemporary periods.

The Department has had considerable success in attracting AHRC and private funding for all areas of sculpture studies, having received Henry Moore Foundation Lectureships and Post-doctoral Research Fellowships, and its graduates have gone on to hold lectureships and key positions in museums, galleries and publishing in Europe and North America.

Resources and expertise

The School has particular research strengths in a number of fields and is able to draw on a remarkable wealth of resources available nearby.

In addition to its expertise in the area of the European and North American sculpture from 1945 to the present, the modernist sculpture of both Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth is among the region’s most famous resources.

There are also collections of classical and neo-classical works, accumulated during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and housed throughout the region, which form another rich source of research material.

And in the field of medieval sculpture the city of York and its surroundings make the Department a premier location for those seeking to combine the study of medieval sculpture with first-hand acquaintance of the objects themselves.

Sculpture in Yorkshire

While Yorkshire is unique in England for the number of surviving works of Anglo-Saxon Sculpture, the city and its outlying area are equally famous for extant later medieval sculptures (in wood and stone), and the thriving sculptural workshop attached to the Minster.

There are, furthermore, two internationally significant centres for sculptural display and study: the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which has recently acquired the Arts Council Public Sculpture Collection, and the Henry Moore Institute, which has an internationally significant archive and annual lecture symposium and exhibition programme.

The research library at the Institute is excellent, with strong holdings particularly in the modern and contemporary period.

York is also extremely well connected for national and international travel. There is no requirement for doctoral candidates to live in York, and students needing to conduct their research outside York are encouraged to do so.

Areas

Research areas

As a research group active in all areas of theoretical and historical sculpture studies, we welcome scholars interested in pursuing significant and original research from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds, and historiographic and methodological perspectives.

We are particularly keen to promote researchers seeking Henry Moore Foundation post-doctoral research fellowships in the Department, and would welcome collaborations with the Visiting Research Fellowship Programme at the Henry Moore Institute.

Our interests

The Department is keen to develop research at masters, doctoral and post-doctoral level in the following areas:

  • Post-1945 Modern and Contemporary Sculpture, and related art
  • Sculpture in American post-war art
  • Relationships between sculpture and experimental film
  • Twentieth-Century Modernism in Europe and America
  • English Modernist Sculpture
  • The Lady Lever Sculpture Collection
  • The Sculpture of the Gothic Revival
  • Pre-Raphaelite and the New Sculpture
  • Eighteenth-century Sculpture
  • Italian Renaissance Sculpture
  • Italian Baroque Sculpture
  • Late fourteenth to early sixteenth-century sculpture in Germany and the Netherlands
  • Twelfth- to fifteenth-century sculpture and monumental art in Britain and North-west Europe
  • The presentation and display of early medieval sculpture
  • The historiography of early medieval sculpture
  • The iconography of early medieval sculpture in Britain and Ireland

Staff

 

Research staff

 

Students

Research students

Current students

  • Kirsty Breedon
    Sculpture in the Circum-Atlantic World: Herbert Ward’s Congolese Bronzes in Europe and America 1884-present
  • Philippa Turner
    Image and Devotion in Late Medieval English Cathedrals

Recent postgraduates

  • Sarah Burnage
    Life and work of John Bacon
  • Claire Jones
    Between Art and Design: Sculptors and Design Reform in France, 1848-1895
  • Elizabeth McCormick
    Casts, Catalogues, and Curators: Acquisition and Display of Early Medieval Sculpture in National Museums, c. 1850 to 1950
  • Mike Reed
    Scandinavian sculpture of East Anglia
  • Natalie Russell
    Scandinavian rider sculptures of the North of England
  • Magadalena Skoblar
    Eleventh-century figure sculpture in early medieval Croatia

Teaching

Teaching

Undergraduate modules

  • Making Art in the Era of Nixon: Between Minimalism and Postmodernism
  • The Modernist Object
  • Museology
  • British Art since the Second World War
  • New York Modern: From the Armory to the Factory
  • Realism and Surrealism: Art and Politics between the Wars
  • Sculpture in the Twentieth Century
  • Modernism
  • The Cultures of Sculpture, 1815-1918
  • Art and Patronage in fifteenth-century Florence
  • European Art of the High Middle Ages
  • The Art of Anglo-Saxon England, c.600-1066
  • Art and Iconoclasm in 16th Century Northern Europe
  • Art and Visual Exchange in Northern Europe c. 1380-1530
  • Impacts of the Late Antique, c.350-850

Postgraduate modules

  • Encountering Modernism
  • German Art in the Twentieth Century: Die Brücke to Baselitz
  • Bauhaus and Weimar Culture
  • Structures, Sign and System: an Approach to Constructivism
  • Nostalgia, Conservatism and Modernity: Modernism in France and England , 1914-1940
  • Sculpture in Britain 1848-1930
  • Art and Aestheticism in Late Victorian Britain
  • The Domestic Interior in Italy, 1400-1550
  • Glory of Gothic: Art for England c.1400-1547
  • Art as Urban Culture in fifteenth-century Bruges and Florence
  • Art and Imagery in York Minster
  • Monastic Patronage of the Arts, 1080-1280
  • Churches and High Crosses: The Art of Stone in Anglo-Saxon England
  • Scrolls and Serpents: The Arts of the Early Insular World (c.600-900 AD)

Events

For up-to-date listings and details of all History of Art Department events visit the News and Events page

Gordon Baldwin: Objects for a Landscape: Sculptural Ceramics

Friday 11 May 2012, 11.00AM to 16:15

 

The speakers will include:
Dr Jeff Jones - writer and academic at Cardiff School of Art & Design
Rob Kesseler - ceramist and Professor of Ceramics at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design
Martin Smith - designer of the Gordon Baldwin - Objects for a Landscape exhibition, ceramist and Professor of Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art.
Alison Britton OBE -ceramist, curator, writer, Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art.
James Beighton - Curator at MIMA.
Helen Walsh -Assistant Curator of Decorative Art at York Museums Trust.
Janet Barnes -Chief Executive of York Museums Trust.

Attendees will be invited to look round the Gordon Baldwin -Objects for a Landscape and Excitiations at the gallery between 10am and 11am, before attending the seminar at King's Manor next door.

For more information see the York Art Gallery website:http://www.yorkartgallery.org.uk/Page/Events.aspx

Location: King's Manor, K/133

Admission: Tickets cost £20 per person and £5 for students. Telephone 01904 650333 to book a place and for full details and directions.

Email: michael.white@york.ac.uk

Telephone: 01904 323344

Displaying Victorian Sculpture Symposium

Wednesday 13th June 2012, King's Manor K/111 

 

Displaying Victorian Sculpture is a three-year, AHRC-funded collaborative project, led by the universities of Warwick and York, in partnership with the Yale Center for British Art, which seeks to return sculpture to centre stage in discussions of 19th-century British culture, and to re-assert the importance of sculpture to Victorian history. This symposium takes place midway through the project, and presents an opportunity to discuss the research emerging from the project.

Speakers include:

Michael Hatt (University of Warwick), 'The Colour White: Sculpture and Polychromy in Mid-Victorian Britain'
Desiree de Chaire (University of Warwick), 'Chryselephantine: Richard Cockle Lucas's Mid Victorian Coloured Ivories'
Charlotte Drew (University of York), 'Revising the Renaissance: Luca della Robbia at the South Kensington Museum'
Eoin Martin (University of Warwick),' Framing Victoria: Royal Portraiture and Architectural Sculpture in Victorian Britain'
Jason Edwards (University of York), 'A Monumental Place to Perch: Thomas Woolner's Captain Cook for Sydney
Gabriel Williams (University of York), 'Markets for Polished Marble, c. 1850'
Claire Jones (University of York),'Variations in Reproduction and Display: Waldo Story's Fallen Angel (1887) and (1889)'

The symposium is free and coffee and a buffet lunch will be provided.  Spaces are limited; if you would like to attend please email claire.jones@york.ac.uk

Full details for the day are available to download: Displaying Victorian Sculpture Symposium (PDF , 217kb)‌


Sculpture Studies Research School Summer Trip: Newby Hall’s Statue Gallery, Thursday 21 July 2011

Newby Hall are very kindly allowing us privileged access to this important 18th century sculpture gallery. We will then tour the house, and view contemporary sculpture in the gardens, which includes willow sculpture by Emma Stothard and a residency by two leading Zimbabwean artists working in Shona stone.

 

 

  • Schedule: Meet at 9am (tbc) at York Railway Station to board the minibus. 10am-12pm, tour of the Sculpture Gallery; 12pm-1pm, lunch; 1pm tour of the house (1hr). Leave at 4.30.
  • Cost: Free transport; subsidised entrance fee of £3.50 (in cash on the day).
  • Booking: Spaces are limited to 16 so book early; contact Claire Jones. A brief reading list will be provided in advance of the visit.

Newby Hall and Gardens, Ripon, North Yorkshire, www.newbyhallandgardens.com

Poster: Sculpture Studies Research School summer trip (PDF , 95kb)‌