What is to become of the Crystal Palace?

This workshop  aims to discuss new directions and possibilities for future research on the many lives of the Crystal Palace  We propose to use the Sydenham Palace (as archive, image, site and structure) to explore nineteenth and twentieth-century material, visual and exhibitionary cultures. Structured around materials and ‘things’, the workshop aims to avoid cataloguing individual ‘Courts’, and to focus on the overlaps and conversations to be had across art, manufacture, science, literature, architecture, film and horticulture. Many contemporary commentators deemed the Sydenham Palace’s contents superior, the building more spectacular and its educative potential much greater than its predecessor. Yet their predictions proved to be a little wide of the mark, and for a long time, studies of the Great Exhibition of 1851 have marginalised the Sydenham Palace.

This workshop is a collaboration between the British Art Research School of the History of Art Department and the Cultures of the Global research strand of the Centre for Modern Studies at the University of York. It is also very generously supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art.

Please email kate.nichols@york.ac.uk to register you interest in attending the workshop. Places are free but registration is essential. There is no need to register for the keynote lecture at 5.30 pm in V/123. Please see the programme for more details.

Crystal Palace Programme (MS Word , 38kb)

What is to become of the Crystal Palace? (PDF , 215kb) What is to become of the Crystal Palace? (PDF , 215kb)