Livre - Artist and empire

Over the past thirty years, our ideas about the cultures of Empire have been transformed. Contemporary reflections by writers and artists are widely published and displayed, and museums have witnessed a growing number of exhibitions devoted to aspects of the rich and varied visual culture that emerged in places under British governance, from the Americas and Africa to India and Australasia. Until now, however, there has been no wide-ranging presentation of the great breadth of objects made across the British Empire. Here, leading scholars focus on how these artworks tell the vivid history of life under British rule in a survey that ranges from sixteenth-century colonialism through to the projection of Britain’s imperial might in the late nineteenth century and its decline in the post-war era. Exploring how artists have represented and critiqued the diverse places, people and events that constituted the Empire, this is a vital book on a subject of broad contemporary interest. David Blayney Brown is Manton Curator of British Art, 1790-1850, Tate Britain. Gus Casely-Hayford is a curator and cultural historian. He is a Cultural Fellow at King’s College and an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for African Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Caroline Corbeau-Parsons is Assistant Curator of British Art 1850-1915, Tate Britain. Annie E. Coombes is Professor of Material and Visual Culture in the Department of History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London. Her publications include Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (1997). Paul Gilroy is Professor of American and English Literature at King’s College London. His books include After Empire (2004). Carol Jacobi is Curator of British Art 1850-1915, Tate Britain. Alison Smith is Lead Curator, Nineteenth Century British Art, Tate Britain. Nicholas Thomas is Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. His books include Islanders: the Pacific in the Age of Empire (2010). Sean Willcock is Teaching Fellow in History of Art at Queen Mary, University of London. He specialises in the visual cultures of British imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.