Lecture on refugee restorers

"Refugee Restorers, Sir Kenneth Clark and the National Gallery"
Speaker: Morwenna Blewett
Robing Room
Freemason's Hall
60 Great Queen Street
London WC2B 5AZ
Thursday, 18 June 2015
Doors open at 6pm.
Talk 6:30 - 8pm

Freemasons Hall is close to both Covent Garden and Holborn Tube
Stations.

   "The chance of absorbing the best talent... one should not
    condemn them because they may be Jewish or German"

Connections between the National Gallery and refugee restorers, most
of whom were Jewish, were achieved through the personal
interventions of its director, Sir Kenneth Clark (1934-45).  His
actions saved lives. Alongside this however, Clark held bigoted
views about Jews active elsewhere in the arts.

In the case of Jewish restorers, at least, his prejudice seems
extinct. He used the gallery directly, and indirectly, to assist a
number of individuals; providing practical solutions to pastoral or
legal problems and help in finding work.  He also played a vital
role in a bid to resolve difficulties encountered when a group of
the established London trade restorers attempted to marginalise
their foreign counterparts.

Morwenna Blewett read the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute
of Art, completing her degree in 2000.  In 2003, she concluded her
training as a paintings conservator at the Department of
Conservation and Technology, also at the Courtauld.  She held an
Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Paintings Conservation at Worcester
Art Museum, Massachusetts from 2004-2006.  From 2006-2007 she held
the Straus Paintings Conservation Fellowship at the Straus Center
for Conservation at Harvard University.

After working as a paintings conservator at the National Galleries
of Scotland she took up the post of Paintings Conservator at the
Cambridge University-affiliated Ebury street studio of the Hamilton
Kerr Institute, to work under Anna Sanden.  She holds a Postgraduate
Diploma in Art Profession Law and Ethics, completed in 2008 and also
a Graduate Diploma in Law (CPE) completed in 2010.

She is currently completing an LLB in Law from the University of
Northumbria with a focus on the legislative provisions covering
malicious damage to movable cultural property.  She is also a PhD
candidate at the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism at
Birkbeck, University of London, completing a dissertation exploring
the role of the restoration profession in the expropriation of works
of art during the Second World War.  She is a Paintings Conservator
at the National Gallery, London.

Tickets:

    ICON members: UKP10
    Non- members: UKP15
    Students UKP5
    (student card required to be shown on the door) plus booking
    fee.

Free wine and cheese included in price of ticket.

Please apply for tickets through

    <URL:http://eventbrite  .com>


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 28:47
                   Distributed: Sunday, May 10, 2015
                       Message Id: cdl-28-47-006
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