WEDNESDAY 29 OCTOBER 2025
Timothy Wilcox
Laura Knight, woman and artist
At Stretton-on-Fosse Village Hall, GL56 9SR
In the fifty years since her death in 1970 at the age of 92, Laura Knight’s reputation has fluctuated hugely. Her achievement of becoming the first woman elected to the Royal Academy in 1936 for many years perhaps harmed rather than enhanced opinions of her. This series of three lectures takes a more nuanced look at Knight’s long career, her struggles for recognition in a male-dominated art establishment, and the bravery with which she shaped her own career as a woman artist. Embedding herself in many marginalised communities, whether impoverished fishermen, gypsies or circus performers, she exposed her own passionate humanity, and made questions of identity, community and self-worth central to her artistic mission.
With the headings ‘Women’, ‘Men’ and ‘Others’, each of the three lectures is built around networks of personal relationships, exploring how Knight’s strong self-awareness empowered her to negotiate the challenges of the British art world in the early twentieth century, casting her own original light on the whole of society at a time of perpetual flux and upheaval.
Timothy Wilcox is a writer and exhibition curator with special interests in British art and in landscape and watercolour painting. He was a curator in the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings following positions at the V&A, Liverpool and Hove. As a freelance curator he has organised exhibitions on Laura Knight and others at venues including Tate, The Lowry, The Wordsworth Trust and Dulwich Picture Gallery. He also regularly contributes to educational programmes at The Ashmolean Museum and lectures at museums and galleries in Britain, Europe and the USA.
The day starts at 10am with coffee for a 10.30am start and finishes at approximately 3.15pm.
Cost (including coffee and lunch): Members £45, Guests £48
Please see the attached form for booking details