Ashmolean Project Portal
A new series of collaborative opportunities is being fostered by the Ashmolean Museum and the TORCH Knowledge Exchange programme through the Project Portal in order to strengthen existing ties between the Museum and the academic community. We want to encourage both researchers and graduate students to develop project ideas linking their research to the museum’s forthcoming exhibitions. We hope that university members will take advantage of the potential of the museum's exhibition content to enrich their own work, communicate to a wider audience, and to develop new perspectives and questions from which to address familiar issues.
The Ashmolean Museum’s exhibitions are known for the quality of their presentation and for the expertise and scholarship that underpins the programmes. In addition to research and publications connected to the exhibitions, the Museum also provides a lively and engaging series of public and university events connected to exhibition themes, and offers opportunities for further creative expression in the galleries, lecture theatres and seminar rooms, and in its teaching spaces.
Projects have so far been developed around the 2014-2015 exhibition programme on British Artists and the 2015 Eastern Art Painting Gallery exhibitions on early 20th century Asian Artists. Illustrated reports on the projects are now available for the 'William Blake - Apprentice and Master' project and the 'Love Bites - Caricatures by James Gillray' project.
Image of visitors in the gallery: © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford (John Cairns photography)
Blake at Breakfast (January 2015)
The first week kicked off with a performance of Blake's poems curated by Katherine Fender for the Ashmolean project Portal.
Special Tour of William Blake: Apprentice and Master Exhibition (January 2015)
Edward Youansamouth, collaborating with the Ashmolean Museum through its Project Portal, led a special tour of the exhibition exploring the connection between Blake's innovative artistic practice and his personal theology of the Imagination.
- Meera Kumar gave two guided tours of the exhibition to illustrate how painting helped create a nationalist Indian identity that reflected Hindu values and harkened to a romanticized and pure past using the female figure, and especially that of the Santhal (indigenous) woman, as women were seen as the keepers of Hindu tradition and of the country’s purity.
- Saba Halepota walked participants through the art in Bengal in the early 20th century, based around the objects on display.
- Anwesha Sengupta explored various aspects of the exhibits and its creators and talked about the socio-cultural milieu of Bengal in which they were produced.
Photographic Representations of 19th Century Zenana (April 2015)
Beatrice Cooke gave a presentation of her work as part of the portal project between the Ashmolean Museum and TORCH Knowledge Exchange programme for members of Oxford University. She was working on her thesis exploring photographic representations of the 19th Century Indian zenana as depicted by Maharaja Ram Singh II (1835-1880) and Lala Deen Dayal (1844-1910).
Performing Dido: Exploring Early Drama in Oxford (May 2015)
The Ashmolean University Engagement Programme presented two free study days, with a series of cross-disciplinary talks drawing connections between the Ashmolean's collections and academic research in the humanities.
Session 1: Screening of 'Performing Dido', a documentary exploring Early Drama at Oxford's reconstruction of performances of Marlowe's 'Dido Queen of Carthage' and William Gager's 'Dido' (originally performed at Christchurch in 1583) and a Q&A with director Maria Sachiko Cecire.
Session 2: A series of cross-disciplinary short talks by Dr Juliette Vuille (English), Dr Tracey Sowerby (History), William Humphries (English), and Sophie Bocksberger (Classics), using objects from the Ashmolean's collections to bring the cultural context of the 16th century Dido plays to life.
The Primitive Art Imagined: Art and Ethnography in Colonial Bengal (May 2015)
Aniket De gave a talk discussing the depiction of the primitive and the rural in the paintings of the Bengal School. The lecture included the complex relationship of primitivist art to concepts like colonial modernity and nationalism, as well as the non-Western aspects of global primitivism.
Famous and Forgotten: Gillray's World (May 2015)
The Ashmolean University Engagement Programme held two study days, with a series of cross-disciplinary talks drawing connections between the Ashmolean's collections and academic research in the humanities.
Approaches to Femininity and Sexuality in Contemporary Indian Society (May 2015)
Kay Haigh gave a talk on the approaches to femininity and sexuality in contemporary Indian society, and the response and address in 20th century Bengali art to gender bias in Hindu tradition, and decentering global 20th century modernism by exploring its complex relationship between west and east in the 20th century.
Yoshida Hiroshi: A Japanese Artist in India (two talks were held in June 2015)
Eva Schach gave two gallery talks on how the artist Yoshida Hiroshi depicts India, despite coming from Japan, with instilled Western leanings.
Wyndham Lewis, British Drawing, and the Art of the 1940s (two tours were held in June 2015)
Using the writings of Wyndham Lewis – artist, author, and outspoken critic – as a guide, this tour explored how the history of British drawing was viewed in the 1940s and how it shaped the art of this decade.
The Japanese Art of Woodblock Printing (two talks were held in July 2015)
A talk on Ashmolean's Yoshida Hiroshi exhibition on the history and techniques of woodblock printing in Japan. The focus was on the visible changes in technique and style that appeared in Meiji woodblock prints, taking the prints in the Yoshida Hiroshi exhibition as examples.
Ashmolean Dead Friday (October 2015)
The Ashmolean’s late night public engagement events. TORCH collaboration with the Ashmolean on a series of bite-size talks exploring the theme of death.
