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suryabowyer.com
curator & historian linktr.ee/suryabowyer
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Will be in New York next week for the College Art Association annual conference #CAA2025 — so looking for NYC recommendations

I would bet on this being a verbatim play at the Almeida within 10 years www.theguardian.com/environment/...

To the tune of “we found love in a hopeless place”

Wow, these paintings by Eric Tucker are extraordinary. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign... ‘Secret Lowry’: the ex-gravedigger who painted northern life, from factory to fuggy pub

If you told me this, an image of the Horsehead Nebula captured by telescopes, was a promo image for the film Wicked, I would believe you www.eso.org/public/image...

These are very good

'The feeling of the show, then, is of provisionality, of history in the process of being digested and rewritten.' Wonderful encapsulation of what History is and how it 'works'. (And NB the exhibition itself is also a real treat).

Like just LOOK at this panopticon... Wonder what Foucault would have thought

This is a great, Pynchon-esque story: Secretive underground exploration group assists with missing museum artefacts in Melbourne. Members of clandestine group retrieve objects from drains after burst pipe at Australian museum’s storage facility. www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/01/06/s...

Escape from the terrordome: how Netherlands panopticon prisons are being reborn as stunning arts hubs. They were built to instil fear. Now these giant domed jails, which date back to the 1700s, are being turned into creative centres www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

hi @willpooley.bsky.social just to say I really enjoyed "Sheet Happens" and have found it helpful in my own work. so thank you

El Greco’s portrait of the great renaissance miniaturist Giulio Clovio in 1570, holding one of his masterpieces. Today has been his day.

This handbag would EAT at Paris Fashion Week

Lacan wishes you a happy new year, from the first seminar of Lacan.

"patriarchy puts women in a sceptical scenario, making the distinction between the men you can and can't trust difficult to draw." An excellent, important piece by Sophie Smith in the @londonreview.bsky.social - www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I hate the term "museum professional". It's work. You are a museum worker.

It's my tenth anniversary of moving to Neasden today. To celebrate, here are ten Top Facts about the suburb everybody loves to deride ... #NWology

I don't see many long threads on here, but I'll try one - it's about Holbein's Ambassadors, his 1533 masterpiece in the National Gallery. It's often presented as a great mystery, but I think once we understand the circumstances in which it was made, its meaning becomes clearer. 1/

Versailles: Science and Splendour is the Guardian's exhibition of the week (with a great photo of my colleague Hannah Cenusa cleaning Louis XV's rhino). Very proud to have worked on this exhibition! www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

"What good might be achieved if auction houses and academia were to work more closely together on provenance research?" A blog post on the recent "State of the Field" article by @shreyagupta.bsky.social, @libertypaterson.bsky.social, Niti Acharya, & me. www.history.org.uk/higher-ed/ca...

My first publication! 🥳 Thank you so much to @camillemarys.bsky.social and @ellietheelement.bsky.social for all your work putting together this outstanding special issue! Can't wait to dive in!

This excellent article by @suryabowyer.com, Shreya Gupta, @libertypaterson.bsky.social , and Niti Acharya includes a generous reflection on AHRC funded work in collections, and a challenge for the future @hisjournalha.bsky.social

Neil Postman’s Seven Question are useful here (Neil was on my dissertation committee):

The arrangement of this board makes it look like Rudiger is some omnipotent god looking down upon his subjects from heaven, and the hippo at bottom right is screaming out at him for the unfairness of god’s judgement ⚽️

I would like a return to this style of phone number please. Simple. Chic. Mysterious. (No this was not the number for a museum.) 📜

historians:

Archives hold the keys to history. You can find information on so much, from your local area, your own house or street, to large political movements and social history. There's so much to discover in your local archive!

Slowly thinking thru a BA lecture on “materiality” as an art historical tool/lens. My focus will prob be on Victorian painting & the many “materialities” & “materialisms” of the #c19th. Soliciting recs for a good set text on art history and materiality to accompany it 👀👀 #arthistory #c19th

Man with a Beer Jug, by Frans Hals, 1630, 📸 by @zachosterman.bsky.social

'The animal is an enormous bit of surviving evidence of a period of so-called “rhinomania” that swept Europe at the end of the 18th century, with clocks, decorations and occasionally even wigs all styled to feature the shape of the animal.'

One of the most perfectly executed "letters to the editor" I have ever seen. www.economist.com/letters/2024...

#skystorians New article drop! A 'State of the Field' reflection on The History of Collections and Institutions by Surya Bowyer, Shreya Gupta, Liberty Paterson, and Niti Acharya. OA doi.org/10.1111/1468...

screaming crying throwing up (but not in a good way) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Friday reshare: By analysing the work of a new generation of scholars, this article charts recent research trends and looks forward to future directions in the field of the history of collecting and its institutions. That future is a thrilling one. Read free: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

This was the only logical thing to do actually

It's been really enjoyable to work on this exhibition. It includes so many absolutely exquisite objects, many on loan from European institutions. Also: an enormous taxidermied Indian rhino given to Louis XV by the French governor of Chandernagor. Gonna be a big one. Tickets: tinyurl.com/zyndvz3z

"by paying attention to the history of collecting we can better understand why particular documents, objects, or artworks are permitted to become history's ‘materials’." onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....