Displaying Victorian Sculpture: Phd students
Desiree de Chaire
Princess Louise’s Sculptural Circle
PhD student, University of Warwick
Thesis title: Princess Louise’s Sculptural Circle
After graduating from Humboldt University in Berlin where I wrote my M.A. thesis on the Roman Farnese gardens on mount Palatine and its antique sculpture collection during the Renaissance, I worked on research and cataloguing projects at the Sculpture Department at Christie's in London, the Royal Collection in Windsor and the Sculpture Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum. These experiences advanced my enthusiasm for sculpture of the late Victorian period. My PhD focuses on the art patronage and artistic practice of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's children and their relationship with sculpture as collectors, patrons, and practitioners.
Eoin Martin
Victoria, Albert and Sculpture
PhD student, University of Warwick
Thesis title: Victoria, Albert and Sculpture
I completed my Bachelors degree in History at Trinity College Dublin (2005-2009), following which I completed an M.Phil degree in Irish Art History at the Irish Art Research Centre, Trinity College Dublin (2009-2010), where I researched the connections between Prince Albert and the movement to establish the National Gallery of Ireland, 1854-64. I am interested in the nineteenth-century art world and art institutions in Britain and Ireland, particularly in issues surrounding the audiences for art and the means by which it was disseminated in the Victorian period. The title of my PhD thesis is ‘Victoria, Albert and Sculpture.’ I will be examining Queen Victoria's and Prince Albert’s sculpture collection; the ways in which they displayed, disseminated and promoted sculpture; and the audiences and modes of display of sculptural representations of the royal family during Victoria’s reign.
Gabriel Williams
Sculpture and the International Exhibitions
PhD student, University of York
Thesis title: Sculpture and the International Exhibitions
I received my BA from the University of Leeds in 2008 and my MA from University College London in 2009. I have studied late Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite art throughout my academic career, with particular interest in notions of representation, aesthetic perception and aestheticism. My PhD will focus upon sculpture at the international exhibitions of art and industry, from the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the beginning of the twentieth century. These exhibitions will be considered as a pivotal forum for stimulating new public perceptions of the sculptural craft in relation to technology, industry and utility, as well as loci for changing modes of sculptural display in general.
Charlotte Drew
Sculpture at the South Kensington Museum
PhD student, University of York
Thesis title: Sculpture at the South Kenginston Museum
I studied for my BA in History of Art at the University of Bristol (2005-2008) where I became interested in nineteenth-century British art, criticism and culture. Following this I completed an M.A. in History of Art at the same institution (2009-2010) where I focused my research on nineteenth-century British sculpture and Victorian attitudes towards the medium. I became particularly interested in reviewing sculpture's traditional Hegelian categorisation and the display of sculpture within the Victorian museum/exhibition. My M.Phil/PhD thesis addresses the formation and early development of the sculpture collections at the South Kensington Museum. I will be examining the relationship between sculpture as transcendent and sculpture as material culture and the ways in which this unconventional Museum addresses these potentially antithetical conceptions of the medium; and investigating the contribution made by the sculpture collections to the educational mission of the Museum.