Reframing Art Histories: Distinguished Scholars Series - Griselda Pollock

Inquiry or Pleasure: Realist and Impressionist Encounters with Modernity

Why do 19th-century French paintings of oak forests, shepherdesses, seaside resorts, and Parisian leisure remain so beloved today? How are they presented in light of feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial critiques that challenge traditional interpretations? What does it mean for audiences in a 21st-century city-nation with its own complex history to once again encounter the “glories” of Impressionism and its Realist forerunners—here shown through treasures from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston? How did Boston’s leading museum acquire such a collection, who donated these works, and does that history matter? 

With its distinct post-colonial and transcultural character, "Reframing Art Histories: Distinguished Scholars Series" presents scholars whose body of work has made a recognised contribution to the reframing of canonical understandings of art’s histories. The series is supported by a dynamic partnership: a young art history programme in Asia’s foremost University, the National University of Singapore; a leading visual arts institution overseeing the largest public collection of modern art in Singapore and Southeast Asia, the National Gallery Singapore; a leading peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.

About the speaker and discussants

Griselda Pollock is a feminist, postcolonial, and social art historian, author, and curator. She is Professor Emerita of Social and Critical Histories of Art at the University of Leeds, where she founded the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History and initiated the MA/PhD programme in Feminism and the Visual Arts. Recipient of the 2020 Holberg Prize, she has also received the 2023 CAA Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art, the 2010 CAA Distinguished Feminist Award for Promoting Equality in Art, and the 2024 Nessim Habif World Prize.

Her classic works include Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (with Rozsika Parker, 1981; 4th edition, 2022) and Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories (1999), while recent publications include Charlotte Salomon in the Theatre of Memory (Yale University Press, 2018) and Killing Men & Dying Women: Imagining Difference in 1950s New York Painting (Manchester University Press, 2022). She has curated several exhibitions, including Resonance/Overlay/Interweave: Bracha Ettinger in Freudian Space of Memory and Migration (Freud Museum, 2009) and Medium & Memory (HackelBury Fine Art, 2023).

Kamalini Ramdas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore.

Tania Roy is a Senior Lecturer and Chair of the Graduate Programme in the Department of English Literature at the National University of Singapore.