Impact highlights

Exhibitions

Our research has been shared with large public audiences:

  • Clare Willsdon’s Jardines Impresionistas in Madrid, attracted the biggest audience (332,000) for a British-originated show world-wide in 2011
  • John Bonehill’s Paul Sandby: Picturing Britain (10,000 visitors across three venues in 2009-10)
  • David Hopkins’s Childish Things, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (c 20,000 visitors, 2010-11)
  • Exhibitions at The Hunterian include: Edvard Munch: Prints (20,712 visitors, 2009) and Rembrandt and the Passion (9,350 visitors, 2012).

Disseminating our expertise

We share our research with large audiences, both specialist and non-specialist, via a range of outlets. These include widely-circulated textbooks – David Hopkins’s After Modern Art (OUP, 2000), which has sold over 75,000 copies, and Nichols’ Renaissance Art (Oneworld, 2010) – and major contributions to specialist public events, such as Erma Hermens’s education programme for the exhibition Art Detectives: Investigating Bosch and Bruegel at Kelvingrove, Glasgow (2012).

An extensive portfolio of media activity includes: Debra Strickland on In Our Time (Radio 4, 2012); and Nick Pearce on The Man Who Collected the World: William Burrell (BBC2, 2013).

Policy advice

Our expertise has direct applications for museum, art and design collections throughout the world.

Researchers in the Kelvin Centre for Conservation and Cultural Heritage Research have influenced conservation priorities and resource allocation in organisations such as English Heritage and Historic Royal Palaces.

Frances Lennard, Anita Quye and Mark Richter advise extensively on pigment analysis, dyes, synthetic fibres, etc, directly influencing conservators and conservation and curatorial policy. Richter is currently developing advisory links with the Prado, Madrid on its early modern paintings.

Heritage and cultural databases

The Institute leads the way in developing databases to disseminate its research: eg, Margaret MacDonald’s creation of the online catalogue raisonné of Whistler etchings, or Nick Pearce’s work on the Catalogue of the Chinese Collection of Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool.

One of our recent PhD graduates, Perla Innocenti is a partner in international collaborative research networks – including MeLA and ECLAP  – which develop digital methodologies and tools to address digital decay, including arts and humanities resources.

The National Inventory Research Project, led by Andrew Greg, has been part of the Institute since 2003, and is funded by the Kress Foundation, V&A and University of Glasgow. Outputs include the web-based NICE Paintings: the National Inventory of Continental European Paintings that receives up to 30,000 visitors/month.

All databases are listed in Projects and Networks.

 

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