Jenny Alexander appeared this week in the first episode of Phil Spencer's Stately Homes. With Phil she looks at the masons' marks on the Roman Stair and at original documents from the archive. The programme, first shown on 9th August, is available for viewing for a limited time on the Channel 4 website: Episode 1 - Burghley House.

What happens when fine artists engage with architecture and urban space? What forms can such engagements take? What political issues arise at the junctures between these disciplines?

During the modern period, when artists and critics have often complained that fine art is overly remote from everyday life, one common way of overcoming this gap has been to draw on the greater social efficacy that architecture can seem to provide. However, in other instances artists have used their relatively autonomous position to criticise or interrupt the relationship between architecture, urbanisation and power.

This conference will explore these issues as they arise in practices spanning the period from the 1960s to the present, exploring intersections between art, architecture and urbanism both within and outside Europe and North America.

Organised by Bill Roberts, Teaching Fellow, History of Art.

Artists' Critical Interventions into Architecture and Urbanism,

Emeritus Professor Louise Campbell has worked with Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum to research the subject of the forthcoming exhibition, Concealment and Deception: The Art of the Camoufleurs of Leamington Spa 1939-45. The exhibition tells the story of the camouflage establishment based in Royal Leamington Spa during World War 2. The Civil Defence Camouflage Establishment was founded at the start of the war with Nazi Germany to develop camouflage for strategically important installations like factories, power stations and airfields. Later, in 1941, the CDCE was expanded to include a Naval Camouflage Section and renamed the Camouflage Directorate. The exhibition presents the work of the camouflage staff - often known as 'camoufleurs' - against the backdrop of life on the 'Home Front', and will display an important group of paintings, watercolours and drawings by artists such as Mary Adshead, Dorothy Annan, Stephen Bone, Louis Duffy, Evelyn Dunbar, Eric Hall, Cedric Kennedy, Edwin La Dell, Colin Moss and James Yunge-Bateman.

Concealment and Deception: The Art of the Camoufleurs of Leamington Spa 1939 - 1945

Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, 22 July – 16 October 2016

Congratulations to History of Art visiting lecturer Jo Bannister who has had a picture accepted for this year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Her work is a large scale intaglio print entitled I Thought I Saw an Angel. Jo teaches Practical Art and has recently restructured the module following the purchase of the Department's own printing press.

Royal Academy of Arts

Summer Exhibition 2016

13 June — 21 August 2016

The Guardian University Guide 2017 has placed History of Art at Warwick in the UK top 10. The rankings are based on official data collected by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) and on the National Student Survey published by Hefce.

The Department is rated as one of the top ten departments teaching History of Art in this year's Complete University Guide. Moving up one position, the Department is placed 10th in the latest league table, which ranks departments by "measures important to students", including student satisfaction, graduate prospects, and research quality.

History of Art Research Fellow Amanda Sciampacone will be convening an academic session in Edinburgh this Saturday. Air and the Visual seeks to investigate the relationship between air and representation, and to address issues of the visible in the invisible and the material in the immaterial. Find out MORE.

Why did Paul Cézanne describe Delacroix’s palette as ‘the most beautiful in France’? Professor Paul Smith explores Delacroix’s theories on colour and how his approach had a profound influence on the artists associated with the rise of modern art.

Play Delacroix's Colour.

Dr Rosie Dias has worked with staff at Compton Verney to create an exhibition displaying the history of the Shakespeare Gallery which opened in 1789 on Pall Mall. Using Shakespeare as a vehicle for the development of a national form of history painting, the print publisher John Boydell commissioned prominent painters, sculptors and printmakers of the day, including George Romney, Henry Fuseli and James Northcote, to produce works depicting scenes from all of Shakespeare's plays. The exhibition includes examples of this work, as well as a digital reconstruction of The Shakespeare Gallery as it looked in 1796.

Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology: a day seminar in celebration of the work of Dr Richard K. Morris

Richard Morris (1943- 2015) lectured at the University of Warwick in the Department of History of Art for 27 years during which time he taught countless students and demonstrated his breadth of knowledge in architectural analysis. He is best known for his work on the Middle Ages and his creation of the unique 10,000 item strong mouldings archive. This conference will celebrate the work and contribution of Richard Morris through an exploration of topics, themes and places that were of particular relevance to his core interests by his contemporaries, those whom he taught and influenced and new scholars reassessing the architecture of the late Middle Ages. It will present new research with an aim of sparking fresh debate and, in line with Richard’s own greatest passion, to enable a wide range of scholars and students to participate in active and positive exchange.

This conference has been organised by

• The British Archaeological Association
• The Ancient Monuments Society
• The Courtauld Institute of Art

Saturday 20 February 2016 - 9:45 am - 6:00 pm

Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN. 

Professor Michael Hatt has co-organised an event about the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen and Britain, which will take place at the Danish Academy in Rome and the British School at Rome next week. The seminar, convened with Lene Østermark-Johansen from the University of Copenhagen and Margrethe Floryan from Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen, brings together scholars from Denmark, Britain, Italy and the United States.