The Slade Lectures in Fine Art Lent Term 2022: The Department is delighted to welcome Maria Balshaw CBE as our new Slade Professor

The Future of Museums:

A series of lectures by Maria Balshaw CBE, Director of Tate and Slade Professor of Fine Art, University of Cambridge, Spring 2022.

As the world continues to endure the multiple economic and cultural consequences of living through and with a global pandemic that has disrupted social life as we have known it, museums in the UK and across the world have weathered unprecedented disruption and challenge.  The sector has seen a 24-month period where we remained closed to our public for 75% of that period.  Many also discovered new audiences and new purpose, through global digital connection, through renewed community purpose and through the revitalised interest from a public hungry for social and connection after the isolation of multiple lockdowns.  At the same time there has been fundamental debate and dissent over what museums are for, who they speak to and the histories, objects and ideas they are tasked with holding – all taking place within a public sphere that is more disputatious than ever before.

Taking a wide-ranging look across UK and international museum practice this series of lectures will explore some of the critical challenges and opportunities for museums at this point in the 21^st century.  It will examine what is already in motion and look at what still needs to change.  It will look forward to the modes of thinking and practice we will need if we are to think ourselves forward a 100 years hence, as institutions committed to the long term.  It will touch on new business models and changing artistic practices, the contrary pushes and pulls of public charitable purposes and commercial imperatives.  The series will end with some thoughts about the choices museums may need to make in the next decades and the museums we might want for a better collective future.

• 1 February: Museums Past and Future (View the lecture here: http://upload.sms.csx.cam.ac.uk/media/3793087)
• 8 February: Whose Museum is This?  The question of relevance (View the lecture here: http://upload.sms.csx.cam.ac.uk/media/3800889)
• 15 February: The Museum in the World: Reputation, ethics and activism (View the lecture here: http://sms.csx.cam.ac.uk/media/3804221)
• 22 February: Living with the Past: Uncomfortable Histories & Embarrassing Objects (View the lecture here: http://upload.sms.csx.cam.ac.uk/media/3817082)
• 1 March: The (de)Growth Model for Museums: the challenge to business models (View the lecture here: http://upload.sms.csx.cam.ac.uk/media/3830775)
• 8 March: The 100 Year Future: Museums and the Climate and Nature Crisis
• 14 March: Collecting in the Here and Now (View the lecture here: https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/3871329)

All lectures will take place in person on Tuesdays from 1^st February, apart from the last lecture which will take place on Monday14^th March, from 5-6pm at the Paula Browne House Lecture Theatre at Murray Edwards College, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0SH. For Directions to the venue click here.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/maria-balshaw-the-future-of-museums-tickets-256181635167

The lecture will be live streamed here: - https://youtu.be/LjpMjs1P5LU

Biography:

Maria Balshaw is Director of Tate, a role she has held since June 2017. She has overall responsibility for Tate’s strategic direction and day-to-day operations. She has worked to reframe the context and perspective of this long-established institution to engage with sensitive times, furthering the mission of inclusiveness and equality to connect with a wider audience. As Director, Maria is also the Accounting Officer appointed by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

Previously, Maria was Director of the Whitworth, University of Manchester; Director of Manchester City Galleries; and Director of Culture for Manchester City Council.

Maria holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Liverpool and a Master of Arts degree in Critical Theory and a DPhil in African American Visual and Literary Culture from the University of Sussex. Maria is Chair of the National Museum Directors’ Council and is a Trustee of the Clore Leadership Programme and Manchester International Festival’s Boards. In 2015, she was awarded a CBE for services to the arts.

Image credit: Hugo Glendinning, 2017