History Lectures
Alan Hertz
Event Hours(1)
Museums and galleries – In this series, we will combine classroom sessions with field trips. We will have an introductory session, then we will embark on a series of two-session explorations of a particular London [or greater London] museum or public gallery. Each unit will consist of an introductory session at the club, and a field trip.
The introductory session, on 6 September, will look at the origins and emergence of the museum in Enlightenment thinking and the Victorian cult of the Great Man. We will also develop a list of possible destinations.
Our first unit will focus on Leighton House. Our 13 September session will be on the Holland Park Circle of Victorian artists, designers, and aesthetes, concentrating on Frederic Leighton, William Burges, Luke Fildes, and George Frederick Watts. Then on 20 September, we will visit Leighton House. We will drive round the neighbourhood, tour the gallery, and perhaps lunch in the café.
Other visits may include: the Hunter Museum, the National Army Museum, the Garden Museum, the Foundling Museum, the Royal Observatory, the Docklands Museum, the Transport Museum, the Temple of Mithras, Kenwood House, the Photographers’ Gallery. But other destinations are certainly possible.
Please come along and join this fascinating series of lectures from September onwards.
About the lecturer
Alan is Professor of Humanities and Head of Liberal Arts at Hult International Business School. He is American by birth and nationality, but grew up largely in India and Pakistan, and has lived in the UK since 1977. He studied at Yale and the University of Toronto and obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge. He is married to Linda Collister and has three very English children.
Alan has been teaching the history of London to undergraduates for almost 30 years. His chief research interests are in Victorian poetry and journalism, and the cultural history of London. His teaching practice has always been to anchor the general in the particular, making as much use as possible of storytelling and field trips.
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