Turner 250 Conference

Timed to coincide with the Turner and Constable exhibition at Tate Britain and to help bring celebrations of Turner’s 250th anniversary year to a close, this conference will take Turner’s art and life as a starting point for exploring what it means to research Turner and to curate his work today.

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME, 4-5 December, 2025

Thursday 4 December, at Tate Britain (Day 1)

09:30–10am: Registration and Tea/Coffee

10–10.10am: Opening Remarks/Introduction, Amy Concannon
(Manton Senior Curator of Historic British Art at Tate)

10:10am–12.50pm: Panel 1: Curating Turner Now
Chair: Esther Chadwick (senior lecturer in history of art and
Head of the History of Art Department at the Courtauld Institute)

10:10–10:30am: Turner as Teacher: Lessons in Perspective
Helen Cobby (curator and lecturer, Bath Spa University)

10:30–10.50am: A Maligned Masterpiece?
Displaying J.M.W. Turner’s The Battle of Trafalgar in Greenwich
Katherine Gazzard (Curator of Art (Post-1800), Royal Museums Greenwich)

10.50—11.10am: Reimagining the Liber Studiorum:
Reasserting the Primacy of Print in Turner’s Art
Imogen Holmes-Roe (Curator (Historic Art), the Whitworth, the University of Manchester)

11.10–11.20am: Comfort Break

11.20–11.40am: Curating Turner in East Anglia
Emma Roodhouse (curator and researcher) and Francesca Vanke (Senior Curator and Keeper of Fine and Decorative Art,
Norwich Museums)

11.40am–12noon: A Site of Inspiration: Curating Turner at Petworth
Emily Knight (Property Curator at Petworth House, National Trust) and Sue Rhodes (Visitor Experience Manager, Petworth House)

12noon–12.20pm: The New Carthaginian: Turner, Memory and Imperial Echoes (Performative Lecture), Nick Makoha (poet and playwright)

12.20–12.50pm: Q&A

12.50–2pm: Lunch
Completing the Turner Cataloguing Project, the Paul Mellon Centre (PMC) film to be screened

2–3.40pm: Panel 2: Researching Turner’s Bequest
Chair: Nicola Moorby (Curator, British Art 1790–1850, Tate)

2–2.10pm: Introduction to Turner Bequest Catalogue
Matthew Imms (former Senior Cataloguer and Editor: Turner Bequest,Tate)

2.10–2.30pm: The Discovery and Assembly of the 1838 Tour
Hayley Flynn (former Turner Cataloguer, Tate)
This paper is generously supported by a Turner Society bursary

2.30–2.50pm: Turner Technical Studies: Their Legacy and Preservation
Joyce Townsend (senior conservation scientist, Tate)

2.50–3.10pm: Q&A

3.10–3.40pm: Comfort Break – Tea/Coffee
Completing the Turner Cataloguing Project, PMC film to be screened

3.40–5.20pm: Panel 3: Building Turner’s Reputation
Chair: TBC

3.40–4pm: About Carthage – An Exhibition of Seven Paintings by
Stephen Farthing RA Held at the UK Ambassador’s Residence in Carthage 2025
Stephen Farthing (artist)

4–4.20pm: J.M.W. Turner and Robert Hills: Collaborating Contemporaries?
Kimberly Rhodes (professor of art history, Drew University)

4.20–4.40pm: Paper Galleries and the Mediation of Art: J.M.W. Turner,
John Constable and Clarkson Stanfield in The Royal Gallery of British Art (ca.1851)
Chia-Chuan Hsieh (professor, Graduate Institute of Art Studies, National Central University, Taiwan)

4.40–5pm: From Patriotic Patronage to National Property:
The Trajectory of the Petworth Turners ca. 1805–1956
Andrew Loukes (Curator of the Egremont Collection,
Petworth House)

5–5.20pm: Q&A

5.20–5.30pm: Comfort Break

5.30–7pm: Art, Music and the Sublime,
Lecture by Tim Barringer with live performance by the Kyan Quartet of Franz Schubert’s string quartet no.14 in D minor, D.810, Death and the Maiden,
And Drinks Reception

Friday 5 December, at Tate Britain (Day 2)

10–10.30am: Registration and Tea & Coffee

10.30am–12.50pm: Panel 4: Eco-critical Approaches to the Artist
Chair: Tom Ardill (curator of paintings, prints and drawings, London Museum)

10.30–10.50am: Out of the Blue: Exploring Water in J.M.W. Turner’s work , Martha Cattell (artist, curator and researcher)

10.50–11.10am: Watermarks: Environmental Contingencies and the Turner Bequest,
Tobah Aukland-Peck (postdoctoral fellow, PMC) - This paper is generously supported by a Turner Society bursary

11.10–11.30am: Rethinking Turner’s Human Landscape, Caterina Franciosi (PhD candidate in the history of art, Yale University) - This paper is generously supported by a Turner Society bursary

11.30–11.40am: Comfort Break (no coffee)

11.40am–12noon: What Was in Turner’s Lungs?, Sarah Gould (assistant professor, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

12noon–12.20pm: Necro-Geographies of the Sublime: A Posthuman Reckoning with
Turner’s Horizon (Multimedia Video-Essay), Parham Ghalmdar (artist and researcher at The New Centre for Research & Practice)

12.20–12.40pm: Q&A

12.40–1.40pm: Lunch
Completing the Turner Cataloguing Project, PMC film to be screened

1.40–3.10pm: Panel 5: Artistic Legacies
Chair: John Bonehill

1.40–2pm: Encounters at MoMA: Turner, Rothko and the
Invention of ‘Modernist’, Nicole Cochrane (Assistant Curator, Historic Art, 1790–1850,
Tate Britain)

2–2.20pm: 1966: J.M.W. Turner, Frank Bowling and the Subject of Modernism
Ed Kettleborough (PhD candidate in history of art,
University of Bristol) - This paper is generously supported by a Turner Society bursary

2.20–2.40pm: Where Sky Meets Ground: J.M.W. Turner and
Sheila Fell in the Solway Firth, Kate Brock (researcher, Royal College of Art)

2.40–3.10pm: Comfort Break – Tea/Coffee
Completing the Turner Cataloguing Project, PMC film to be screened

3.10–3.30pm: Reservoirs of Recollection: John Akomfrah and the
Oceanic Afterlives of Turner’s Sublime, Sabo Kpade (writer, curator and researcher)

3.30–3.50pm: What Can We Find in Turner's Shadows?, Artist Libby Heaney at Orleans House Gallery, Julia DeFabo (curator and creative producer) - This paper is generously supported by a Turner Society bursary

3.50–4.20pm: Q&A

4.20–4.40pm: Varnishing Day: Ruskin, Turner, and the End of Idolatry
(Historical Fiction Story), Cal Barton (writer and teacher)

4.40–5pm: Closing Remarks and Institutional thanks
Nicola Moorby and Amy Concannon (Tate) and Martin Myrone (PMC)

Speakers biographies can be found at the bottom of the page here

Organised by Tate Britain in collaboration with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and supported by The Manton Foundation Fund for Historic British Art.

Image caption: J.M.W. Turner, The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, ex. 1817. Image courtesy of Tate.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Paul Mellon Centre