Online exhibitions

Here you will find our latest exhibitions online. They showcase the breadth of Royal Holloway’s own art collections as well as celebrating treasures from other institutions which were temporarily on display in the Davison Building Exhibition Space.

Painting and Copyright in the Nineteenth Century

In this online exhibition, Dr Elena Cooper, the author of Art and Modern Copyright: The Contested Image (CUP 2018), goes back in time to the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century is significant both to art history – as the ‘golden age’ of the living painter – and to copyright history – as the time of the emergence of modern copyright. In bringing these two scholarly perspectives into conversation, this exhibition explores the connections between Victorian painting and copyright history.

Painting and Copyright in the Nineteenth Century

Open Stores: The Things We Keep

The Royal Holloway Art and Archive stores exist to keep things safe, and to support research and teaching, but they also hold countless stories waiting to be rediscovered. For this display, we opened the stores and brought them upstairs – sharing a selection of works that aren’t often on public view.  Working with students, volunteers, and colleagues from across the university, we asked: Why do we keep the things we keep? This learning resource looks at 12 of the objects from the exhibition.

Open Stores: The Things We Keep

Words from the Wild: The Nature of Poetry

Words from the Wild: The Nature of Poetry explores different forms of poetry, all of which respond to the natural world. The exhibition expanded on what we might think of as a poem, to include films, textile banners, sculptures in beeswax, and prints made from 'listening' to trees. This exhibition was curated by Royal Holloway and TECHNE researchers Caroline Harris, Briony Hughes and Gareth Hughes, in collaboration with the Royal Holloway Culture team.

Words from the Wild: The Nature of Poetry

Adventurers All: Bedford Travel Stories

This online exhibition delves into the Archives and Art Collections at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College to shine a light on the various journeys that were undertaken by former Bedford students, staff, associated artists, and the college itself. Adventurers All was curated by doctoral placement students Heathcliff Newman and Gareth Hughes.

Adventurers All - Bedford Travel Stories

Modern Portraits for Modern Women: Principals and Pioneers in the Royal Holloway and Bedford New College Art Collection

Modern Portraits for Modern Women explores this unique collection of paintings created by two of the earliest women’s university colleges. Seen together for the first time these portraits reveal the intersection between the development of modern portraiture and the history of women’s higher education.

Modern Portraits for Modern Women

Impressions of Modern Life: Prints from The Courtauld Gallery exhibition online

Impressions of Modern Life online showcases a selection of 13 prints by world-renowned artists such as Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Berthe Morisot and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, with additional narration by Rachel Sloan, Assistant Curator of Works on Paper at The Courtauld.

Impressions of Modern Life

Spotlight: 20th Century Art in Focus (September - December 2019)

Focusing largely on British artists, the works featured were by the leading practitioners of the day and depict the changes brought by two world wars, new social mobility and greater ease of travel to all corners of the globe.

Spotlight 20th Century Art in Focus