Profile

Sally-Anne Huxtable has been Head Curator of the National Trust since July 2019. She was formerly Principal Curator of Modern and Contemporary Design and National Museums Scotland where she curated the permanent gallery Design for Living, 1851-1951 which opened in July 2016. Sally was previously a Lecturer in Art & Design at Northumbria University and as Research Associate at Dallas Museum of Art where she worked on the exhibition and catalogue Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement. She has also undertaken work for a number of museums and galleries including Tate and the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico, and is a former editor of the Review of the Pre-Raphaelite Society and Trustee of the Design History Society.

Sally’s historical and art historical expertise focuses on nineteenth and early twentieth century century art, design and history, and she has a particular interest in artistic movements and in the relationship between artistic movements and practice and spiritual and religious belief. She also researches and writes on the history and reception of the country house in Britain.

Publications

Selected publications and reviews:

• Forthcoming monograph: Steampunk in Visual and Material Culture, London: Bloomsbury, 2021.
• Forthcoming: ‘Interior Visions: Symbolism and the Decorative Arts in Britain, 1847-1918’ in Steven Martin (ed) Arts & Crafts Enameling, Publisher TBC 2020.
• Sally-Anne Huxtable, Corinne Fowler, Christo Kefalas and Emma Slocombe (eds), Interim Report on the Connections Between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery (2020)
• ‘‘The Drama of the Soul’: Time, Eternity and Evolution in the Designs of  Phoebe Anna Traquair’ in Zoe Hendon and Anne Massey (eds), Design, History, and Time, London: Bloomsbury, February 2019
•  ‘‘Her False Crafts’: Morgan Le Fay and the Wild Women of Frederick Sandys’ Imagination’, The Review of the Pre-Raphaelite Society, Autumn 2016.
•  ‘White Walls, White Nights, White Girls: Whiteness and the British Artistic Interior, 1850–1900’ Journal of Design History, 27 (3) September 2014. pp. 237-255.
•  ‘In Praise of Venus: Tannhäuser as Aesthetic Anti-Hero’ in Amelia Yeates and Serena Trowbridge (eds), Pre-Raphaelite Masculinities, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014.
• ‘Whistler, The Peacock Room and the Artist as Magus’ in Linda Merrill & Lee Glazer (eds) Palaces of Art: Whistler and the Art Worlds of Aestheticism, Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press 2013.
• Sally-Anne Huxtable, Alison Smith, Cheryl Hartup (eds) Catalogue of the British 18th and 19th Century Art in the Museo de Arte   de Ponce, Puerto Rico, Seattle WA: Marquand Books, February 2013. 
•  ‘“Love the Machine, Hate the Factory” Steampunk Design and the Vision of a Victorian Future’ in Cynthia Miller, Julie Taddeo, Ken Dvorak (eds) Steaming into the Future: A Steampunk Anthology, Lanham MD: Scarecrow Press, September 2012.
•  ‘Order and Disarray: Two Watercolours by Frederick Walker’ essay in Life, Legend Landscape: Victorian Drawings and Watercolours, Courtauld Institute, February 2011.
•  ‘Re-Reading the Green Dining Room’ in Jason Edwards and Imogen Hart eds. Rethinking the Aesthetic Interior. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010.
• La Bella Durmiente: Pintura Victoriana del Museo de Arte de Ponce. Milan: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2009 (Co-authored with: Cheryl Hartup, Richard Aste, Heather Birchall and Alison Smith).

External activity

Selected Conference Papers

• ‘Letting off Steam?  Unpicking Steampunk’s Sustainable Design Retrofuture’ Design History Society Annual Conference, University of Oslo, September 2017.
• ‘The Drama of the Soul’: Time, Eternity and Evolution in the Designs of Phoebe Anna Traquair’ Design History Society Annual Conference, Middlesex University, September 2016.
• ‘‘Her False Crafts’: Morgan Le Fay and the Wild Women of Frederick Sandys’ Imagination’, Reading Art: Pre-Raphaelite Painting and Poetry, Birmingham City University/ BMAG, May, 2016
•  ‘House Beautiful: Time, Eternity and Evolution in the Work of Walter Pater and Phoebe Anna Traquair’ British Association of Victorian Studies Conference, Leeds, August 2015.
•  ‘Aesthetic Dress and Its Absences’ College Art Association Annual Conference, Los Angeles, February 2012.
• ‘’Love the Machine, Hate the Factory’ Steampunk Design and the Vision of A Victorian Future’ Design History Society Annual Conference, Barcelona, September 2011.
•  ‘“To These Belong the World and the Future”’ Harvey Ellis, Illustration and the Craftsman Magazine, 1903.’ Craftsman Farms 1st Annual Symposium, April 2011. 
• ‘”The Melting Pot of the Future”’: Nineteenth Century British Metalwork and Design Reform.’ Dallas Museum of Art, Gallery Talk, September 2009
•  ‘“Beautiful and Useful:” Dress, Aestheticism and Artistic Identity 1831-1890.’ Artistry and Industry, University of Exeter, July 2008.
• ‘Re-reading the Green Dining Room.’ The Aesthetic Interior, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of London, September 2005.

Selected Invited Lectures and Talks

• ‘‘A Jewelled Crown’ in Edinburgh’s New Town’:  Phoebe Anna Traquair and the Murals of the Catholic Apostolic Church, 1893-1897’, Edinburgh New Town and the new towns in Scotland, 1767-2017, Logis du Roy, Amiens, October 2017, and Edinburgh College of Art / Patrick Geddes Centre, June 2018.
• ‘‘The Drama of the Soul’ Phoebe Anna Traquair at National Museums Scotland’, Patrick Geddes Centre, January, 2018.
• ‘Folk Horror and the Pre-Raphaelites’, Folk Horror Revival: The Unseelie Court, Summerhall, Oct. 2017
• ‘The Song School Murals of Phoebe Anna Traquair’, Friends of St Mary’s Cathedral, St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral Song School, October 2017
• ‘Temples of Glass: Architecture, Empire and Spectacle in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain’, The Victorian Society, the Art Worker’s Guild, London, November 2016
• 'Living Up to One’s Teapot’:  Wilde, Art, & the Theory of Evolution, ‘The Wunderkammer’ by Do Not Adjust Your Stage at the Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 18th August 2016

• ‘Colour and the Artistic Interior 1848-1900’, Soc. of Furniture Historians, Wallace Collection, April 2016.
• ‘Sensing Pictures: Art and Synaesthesia’ National Gallery, London, June 2015.
• ‘The Romance of the Rose: Chivalry, Symbolism and Edward Burne-Jones’s Quest for Perfect Love' Stanhope Country Study-day, Cannon Hall, April 2012.
• ‘The Romance of the Rose: The Small Briar Rose Series and Edward Burne-Jones’s Quest for Perfect Love’ Treasures of the Collection in Context: The Pre-Raphaelites, Museo de Arte de Ponce, February 2012.
• ‘“Art and Money, or the Story of the Room,” Whistler, The Peacock Room and the Artist as Magus’ Lunder Consortium Symposium: Palaces of Art: Whistler and the Art Worlds of Aestheticism Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, October 2011.

Conferences Co-organised:

• ‘How We Live and How We Might Live’: Design and the Spirit of Critical Utopianism’, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, September 2015 (with Professor Barry Katz).
• ‘Design for War and Peace’, Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, September 2014 (with Dr Claire O’Mahony)
• ‘Towards Global Histories of Design: Postcolonial Perspectives’, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, September 2013 (with Dr  Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan and Tanishka Kachru).
• ‘The Material Culture of Sport’, University of Brighton, September 2012 (with Dr Paul Jobling)
• Art & Industry: Representations of Creative Labour in Literature and the Visual Arts circa. 1830-1900’. University of Exeter 18-20 July 2008. Co-organised with Dr Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi, Dr Sunie Fletcher and Dr Patricia Zakreski, of Exeter University.