The Slade Lectures in Fine Art

The Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Cambridge was founded in 1869 as the result of a bequest from the art collector Felix Slade (1788-1868). At the same time, similar chairs were founded in the Universities of Oxford and London. Originally Slade Professors were elected, and sometimes re-elected, for three-year terms. In 1961 the practice changed and since then visiting Slade Professors have been elected on an annual basis. Holders of the Chair usually deliver eight public lectures and four classes for students in the department during either the Michaelmas or the Lent Term of their year in office. The Slade Professorship of Fine Art has been held by many of the most distinguished historians of art and architecture from around the world.

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The 2025-2026 Professor of Fine Art is Professor Terry Smith. 

TERRY SMITH, FAHA, INHA, is Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Sydney, and Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. He is Slade Professor of Fine Arts, University of Cambridge 2025-2026; Professor in the Division of Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought at the European Graduate School; Professor at Large of The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah; and Faculty at Large, Curatorial Program, School of Visual Arts, New York. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities since 1996, in 2010 he was named the Australia Council Visual Arts Laureate and won the Mather Award for art criticism conferred by the College Art Association (USA). In 2022, CAA conferred on him its Distinguished Teacher of Art History Award. He is author of Making the Modern: Industry, Art and Design in America (University of Chicago Press, 1993); Transformations in Australian Art (Craftsman House, Sydney, 2002); The Architecture of Aftermath (University of Chicago Press, 2006), What is Contemporary Art? (University of Chicago Press, 2009), Contemporary Art: World Currents (Laurence King and Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2011), Thinking Contemporary Curating (Independent Curators International, New York, 2012), Talking Contemporary Curating (Independent Curators International, 2015), The Contemporary Composition (Sternberg Press, 2016), One and Five Ideas: On Conceptual Art and Conceptualism (Duke University Press, 2107), Art to come: Histories of Contemporary Art (Duke University Press, 2019), Curating the Complex & The Open Strike (Sternberg and MIT Press, 2021), Iconomy: Towards a Political Economy of Images (Anthem Press, 2022), Six Paintings from Papunya: A Conversation (Duke University Press, 2024), with Fred R. Myers, and editor of Okwui Enwezor: Selected Writings (two volumes, Duke University Press, 2025). A founding Board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, he served on the board of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, and is Board Member Emeritus of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Biennial Foundation, New York. See www.terryesmith.net/web/about.

Title of series: Frames of Vision: The Intelligence of Artists

Dates of lectures: 

• Tuesday 27^th of January: Introduction: Visual Allegories of Seeing as Knowing, Plato and Giorgione.

• Tuesday 3^rd of February: Seeing Time at Sansepolcro: Piero Della Francesca paints St Augustine.

• Tuesday 10^th of February: The Origins of Abstraction, The Body as Medium: Edgar Degas.

• Tuesday 17^th of February: Figuring the Truth in Painting: Paul Cézanne and the White Abyss.

• Tuesday 24^th of February: Women, Lack, War: Picasso, Kahlo, de Kooning.

• Tuesday 3^rd of March: Everywhen: Yirawalla, Narritjin Maymuru, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, and Emily Kam Kngwarreye.

• Tuesday 10^th of March: In and out of the cave: World picturing in contemporary art installations.
• Tuesday 17^th of March: Utopics within the Iconomy: world changing art activism, picturing world futures.

All lectures will be taking place from 5-6pm in the Bateman Auditorium at Gonville and Caius College. No registration is required; all are warmly invited to attend. 

Elections to the Slade Professorship of Fine Art, 2025–2030

The Department is pleased to announced that the following persons have been elected by the ad hoc Board of Electors to the Slade Professorship of Fine Art:

We look forward to welcoming these distinguished individuals to the Department in the coming years.