Enfilade

J.M.W. Turner, The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, exhibited in 1817, oil on canvas, 170 × 239 cm (London: Tate, accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, N00499).

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From the Paul Mellon Centre:

Turner 250

Tate Britain, London, 4–5 December 2025

2025 marks two hundred and fifty years since the birth of Romantic painter J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851). 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.

t h u r s d a y ,  4  d e c e m b e r

9.30  Registration with tea and coffee

10.00  Opening Remarks — Amy Concannon (Manton Senior Curator of Historic British Art at Tate)

10.10  Panel 1 | Curating Turner Now
Chair: Esther Chadwick (senior lecturer in history of art and Head of the History of Art Department, The Courtauld)
• Turner as Teacher: Lessons in Perspective — Helen Cobby (curator and lecturer, Bath Spa University)
• A Maligned Masterpiece? Displaying Turner’s The Battle of Trafalgar in Greenwich — Katherine Gazzard (Curator of Art (Post-1800), Royal Museums Greenwich)
• Reimagining the Liber Studiorum: Reasserting the Primacy of Print in Turner’s Art — Imogen Holmes-Roe (Curator (Historic Art), the Whitworth, University of Manchester)
• Curating Turner in East Anglia — Emma Roodhouse (curator and researcher) and Francesca Vanke (Senior Curator and Keeper of Fine and Decorative Art, Norwich Museums)
• A Site of Inspiration: Curating Turner at Petworth — Emily Knight (Property Curator, Petworth House) and Sue Rhodes (Visitor Experience Manager, Petworth House)
• The New Carthaginian: Turner, Memory, and Imperial Echoes (Performative Lecture) — Nick Makoha (poet and playwright)

12.50  Lunch break
Completing the Turner Cataloguing Project, the Paul Mellon Centre (PMC) film to be screened

2.00  Panel 2 | Researching Turner’s Bequest
Chair: Nicola Moorby (Curator, British Art 1790–1850, Tate)
• Introduction to Turner Bequest Catalogue — Matthew Imms (former Senior Cataloguer and Editor: Turner Bequest, Tate)
• The Discovery and Assembly of the 1838 Tour — Hayley Flynn (former Turner Cataloguer, Tate), with support from the Turner Society.
• Turner Technical Studies: Their Legacy and Preservation — Joyce Townsend (Senior Conservation Scientist, Tate)

3.10  Tea and coffee break
Completing the Turner Cataloguing Project, PMC film to be screened

3.40  Panel 3 | Building Turner’s Reputation
• About Carthage – An Exhibition of Seven Paintings by Stephen Farthing RA Held at the UK Ambassador’s Residence in Carthage 2025 — Stephen Farthing (artist)
• Turner and Robert Hills: Collaborating Contemporaries? — Kimberly Rhodes (professor of art history, Drew University)
• Paper Galleries and the Mediation of Art: 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)
• From Patriotic Patronage to National Property: The Trajectory of the Petworth Turners, 1805–1956 — Andrew Loukes (Curator of the Egremont Collection, Petworth House)

5.20  Drinks reception

6.15  Evening Lecture
• Art, Music, and the Sublime — 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

f r i d a y ,  5  d e c e m b e r

10.00  Registration with tea and coffee

10.30  Panel 4 | Eco-critical Approaches to the Artist
Chair: Tom Ardill (Curator of Paintings, Prints and Drawings, London Museum)
• Out of the Blue: Exploring Water in Turner’s Work — Martha Cattell (artist, curator and researcher)
• Watermarks: Environmental Contingencies and the Turner Bequest — Tobah Aukland-Peck (postdoctoral fellow, PMC), with support from the Turner Society.
• Rethinking Turner’s Human Landscape — Caterina Franciosi (PhD candidate in the history of art, Yale University), with support from the Turner Society.
• What Was in Turner’s Lungs? — Sarah Gould (assistant professor, Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne)
• Necro-Geographies of the Sublime: A Posthuman Reckoning with Turner’s Horizon (Multimedia Video-Essay) — Parham Ghalmdar (artist and researcher, The New Centre for Research & Practice)

12.40  Lunch break
Completing the Turner Cataloguing Project, PMC film to be screened

1.40  Panel 5 | Artistic Legacies
Chair: John Bonehill (senior lecturer in history of art, University of Glasgow)
• Encounters at MoMA: Turner, Rothko, and the Invention of ‘Modernist’ — Nicole Cochrane (Assistant Curator, Historic Art, 1790–1850, Tate Britain)
• 1966: Turner, Frank Bowling, and the Subject of Modernism — Ed Kettleborough (PhD candidate in history of art, University of Bristol), with support from the Turner Society.
• Where Sky Meets Ground: Turner and Sheila Fell in the Solway Firth — Kate Brock (researcher, Royal College of Art)
• Reservoirs of Recollection: John Akomfrah and the Oceanic Afterlives of Turner’s Sublime — Sabo Kpade (writer, curator, and researcher)
• What Can We Find in Turner’s Shadows? Artist Libby Heaney at Orleans House Gallery — Julia DeFabo (curator and creative producer), with support from the Turner Society.

4.20  Historical Fiction
• Varnishing Day: Ruskin, Turner, and the End of Idolatry — Cal Barton (writer and teacher)

4.40  Closing Remarks — Nicola Moorby and Amy Concannon (Tate) and Martin Myrone (PMC)