Association for Art History

What an insightful day! ✨

Today’s symposium brought together doctoral researchers and early career scholars to explore the fragment as a critical and creative lens across art history, visual culture, artistic practice and curatorial studies.

Thank you to all our speakers and attendees for making the day such a rich and engaging gathering. Here are a few moments from the symposium 📸

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Just one week to go until our Summer Symposium 2026: The Fragment: Form, Method, and Meaning.

📅 Thursday 13 August, 10am–6.30pm
📍 The Gallery, 70 Cowcross Street, London, EC1M 6EJ
🎟️ Free to attend

Join us for a day of innovative research by doctoral researchers and early career scholars, providing a platform for discussion across art history, visual studies, practice-based research, and curatorial studies.

Book your free place: https://loom.ly/2ejE7f4

We're delighted to welcome Bill Balaskas and Anjalie Dalal-Clayton as incoming Trustees of the Association for Art History.

Bringing a wealth of expertise across art history, artistic practice, museum studies and research, Bill and Anjalie will join the Board this August as we continue to champion the discipline and support our community.

As Bill and Anjalie begin their terms, we also extend our sincere thanks to Michael White as he steps down from the Board at the end of the month. We are grateful for his commitment, insight and contribution to the Association during his time as a Trustee.

Please join us in welcoming Bill and Anjalie, and in thanking Michael for his time and expertise given to AAH.

We’re delighted to welcome Christine Bates as this year’s Art History Residency recipient, delivered in partnership with The Ampersand Foundation Due to unforeseen circumstances the previously announced resident was unable to take part this year.

The residency offers an art historian the opportunity for dedicated time to develop their research at Wigwell Lodge in the Derbyshire countryside, running from October 2026 to January 2027. Made possible through the generous support of The Ampersand Foundation, the residency provides space for sustained research and scholarly development.

We look forward to working with Christine over the coming months and to sharing more about her research in due course. At the conclusion of the residency, Christine will also present her work as part of the Association's Art History Festival.

Call for Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Applications

Have you written or marked a brilliant dissertation in art history or visual culture this year (2025-26 academic year)? If so, why not consider nominating it for our Undergraduate Dissertation Prize?

If you would like to apply or nominate a student, please email us your completed forms by the deadline.

Deadline: 13 September 2026
Find out more: https://forarthistory.org.uk/grants/

Image: Winslow Homer: Oranges on a branch. 1885.

As we wrap up our Meet the Team series, meet Gregory Perry, CEO of the Association for Art History

Gregory leads the organisation’s overall vision and direction, supporting our work to champion art history and connect people with the subject through research, programmes, and public engagement.

Thank you for following our introductions - we hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know the people behind the Association for Art History!

Summer Symposium 2026
The Fragment: Form, Method, and Meaning

A Doctoral and Early Career Research Committee (DECR) event

This annual one-day event showcases innovative research by doctoral researchers and early career scholars, providing a platform for discussion across art history, visual studies, practice-based research, and curatorial studies.

Exploring the fragment as a critical and creative paradigm across art history, artistic practice, and visual culture, the symposium considers how fragmentation, as a material condition, aesthetic strategy, and interpretive problem, shapes the ways objects, images, texts, and bodies are produced, encountered, and understood. From archival lacunae and dispersed histories to digital cultures and contemporary artistic practice, the fragment occupies a generative tension between loss and possibility, and between the partial and the whole.

Across five panels, speakers examine themes including gender and embodiment, photographic archives, war and political memory, museum collections, and digital culture. Papers explore topics ranging from feminist artistic practice, Black feminist archives, surrealist objects, and artificial wombs to Arctic expedition photography, Korean performance histories, wartime printmaking, memoricide, Aztec material culture, and the visual and computational fragments produced through digital technologies and blockchain aesthetics.

Together, these presentations demonstrate how the fragment functions not merely as a remnant but as a site of meaning-making, resistance, and reinvention, challenging assumptions about wholeness, origin, authenticity, and historical coherence across diverse cultural and historical contexts.

Join us to meet peers, share ideas, build new connections, and engage with some of the most exciting emerging research in the field today.

Organised by Ed Kettleborough, Man Li and Isaac Nugent of the DECR committee

📆13 August
📍The Gallery, 70 Cowcross Street | Free, in-person event
Book now: https://loom.ly/VBcu_jc

Next in our team introductions is Claire Parker, Administrator at the Association for Art History 👋

Claire helps keep everything running smoothly behind the scenes and supports the day-to-day work of the organisation.