The Project

Making Victorian women artists' works visible:

Victorian women artists’ works are often omitted from accounts of nineteenth-century art, leaving an incomplete and damaged picture of artistic developments. Women artists of the period remain largely misunderstood as incidental artists whose work is considered secondary to, and imitative of, their better-known male counterparts. Edward Burne-Jones’s painting The Mill (1870-1882, V&A) - on permanent display in the Ionides Room - depicts three women artists whose work has received next to no consideration. Three Graces makes the paintings, sculptures, textiles and costume designs of the artists depicted in The Mill - Marie Spartali Stillman, Maria Zambaco and Aglaia Coronio - visible to popular and critical audiences. It provides a unique opportunity to engage with these women’s works both together and in relation to works by their male counterparts. It demonstrates that Victorian women artists variously developed, critiqued and enabled that of male artists, and vice versa.‌‌

Knowledge Transfer:

The Three Graces project has developed and deepened the mutually beneficial knowledge exchange partnership that has been in place between the University of York’s History of Art Department and the Victoria & Albert Museum since 2010. Both consolidating and extending the partnership between institutions by building on the existing scholar exchange programme. Dr. Katie J. T. Herrington’s project at the V&A brings into focus an under-studied, but crucial, field of the arts and humanities, fostered through teaching and research at University of York. Through a series of project-related events, her work has opened up possibilities for involvement and enrichment at the V&A for a wider network of the York research community (including those in History of Art, Women’s Studies and Nineteenth-Century Studies) and for the wider public.

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The Grant

Cultural Engagement funding, provided by the AHRC, has made the resources and benefits of institutional collaboration available for this sustained project by an early career researcher

Funding: £40,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Duration: Three months from February 2013

Cultural Engagement Project Fellow: Dr Katie J. T. Herrington

Collaborative Institutions: Humanities Research Centre and Department of History of Art, University of York, and Victoria & Albert Museum, London (Prof. Judith Buchanan at York and Dr. Glenn Adamson at the V&A oversee the project) ‌

Past Events

UK Events

For the Public & Students

• Thu 25 Apr 2013 (13.00 - 13.50) - Gallery Talk (V&A, London) - Victorian Women Artists at the V&A (Free Event)
• Sat 13 Apr 2013 (14.00 - 17.00) - Seminar Afternoon (V&A, London) - Introducing Victorian Women Artists (Ticketed Event)
• Fri 21 Jun 2013 (14.15-16.15) - Alumni Careers Experience Talks (University of York) (PDF , 38kb) - Dr. Katie Tyreman Herrington will answer questions on the Three Graces Project, Curating a Virtual Exhibition and work in both Higher Education and museum institutions (Free Event)

For the University of York and V&A Research Communities

• Tue 12 Mar 2013 - Symposium - Victorian Women: Inter-Disciplinary & Institutional Exchange, An In-Gallery Symposium (By Invite)

For All

• Sat 29th Jun 2013 (All day; with talks at 11.45 and 13.45) - Exhibition - 3Graces: Women artists, visibility and exchange - This virtual exhibtion in the 3Sixty Space will mark the launch of the Three Graces online exhibition -(University of York, Heslington East, Ron Cooke Hub) (Tickets to this Festival of Ideas event are freely available at http://yorkfestivalofideas.com)

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International Events

• 3rd - 4th Jun 2013 -  Conference Paper: The Three Graces Project: Women Artists, Exchange and Visibility - ATINER (Athens Institute for Education and Research), 4th Annual International Conference on Visual and Performing Arts, Athens, Greece (Registration Required)

Resources

• The Three Graces: Victorian women, visual art and exchange Virtual Exhibition, hosted on the Department of History of Art's Research Portal, was launched via a preview exhibition in the 3Sixty Space, Ron Cooke Hub, Heslington East Campus, University of York on Sat 29th Jun 2013.

• The V&A Podcast episode Inside Women Artists and the V&A, an audio interview with Dr. Glenn Adamson (Head of Research, V&A) featuring co-host Dr. Katie Tyreman Herrington and guests Prof. Deborah Cherry (Associate Dean of Research, London College of Communication) and Rebecca Salter (Contemporary British Artist) is now available to stream on the exhibition site.

Project Fellow

Dr Katie J. T. Herrington (University of York and V&A)

Katie Jane Tyreman Herrington was awarded her doctorate in History of Art for her thesis, Between Women: Visualizing Victorian Women Artists’ Identities through Art Movements, Media and Scale, c. 1848-1898, which she completed in the Department of History of Art, University of York (UK), in January 2013. Her art-historical interests lie in nineteenth-century British and European art and she is particularly concerned with the material qualities of Victorian paintings. Herrington's doctoral research focused on artworks produced by a number of women artists who worked beyond predetermined categories and between disciplines and media and explored their formation of specific artistic identities through their art.

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Contact

Contact:

Dr Katie J. T. Herrington

Three Graces: Victorian women, visual art and exchange

Research Department

Victoria & Albert Museum

South Kensington

London

SW7 2RL

Email: katie.tyreman.herrington@york.ac.uk