The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2015-16 :: Christine Riding :: The Queen’s House, Greenwich: Past, Present and Future?

  • Thursday 15th October 2015, 6.30pm
  • Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

151015_ChristineRiding_poster

In 2016, the Royal Museum’s Greenwich will be celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Queen’s House with a programme of refurbishment and redisplays. Designed by Inigo Jones in 1616 for James I’s wife, Anne of Denmark, the House is the first classical building in the country and an acknowledged masterpiece of seventeenth-century architecture. The Queen’s House is the art gallery to the Museum’s outstanding fine art collection and since 1997 has been at the heart of a designated World Heritage Site. And yet the House is very little known outside architectural and art-history circles and attracts only 7% of the 2 million visitors that come to Greenwich annually. This talk will describe the on-going discussions and planning for the Queen’s House 2016 project. Given the dramatic changes to Greenwich over the centuries, it will also present the challenges – past and present – in interpreting the House as a royal villa, and will ultimately pose questions and make suggestions for its future.

Christine Riding has been the Head of Arts and Curator of the Queen’s House at the National Maritime Museum since 2011. She was the Lead Curator of the Museum’s Turner & the Sea exhibition (2013), as well as author and editor of two publications, Turner & the Sea (2013, Thames & Hudson) and Art & the War at Sea, 1914-45 (2015, Lund Humphries). Prior to Greenwich she was Curator of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century British Art at Tate Britain, co-curating major exhibitions including William Blake (2000, Tate Britain), William Hogarth (2007, Tate Britain) and Gauguin (2010, Tate Modern), and has held curatorial positions at the Museum of London, Palace of Westminster and Wallace Collection. From 2007-2012, she was Deputy Editor of Art History (Journal of the Association of Art Historians) and is the current Chair of the Association of Art Historians. She is the Lead Curator of the Queen’s House 2016 project.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *