Abstract, Issue 29

WBGT Annual Lecture 2025 | Tues 20th May |

Professor Dorothy Price at The British Academy, London

We are delighted to announce that Professor Dorothy Price will be presenting the 2025 Annual Lecture at The British Academy in London. Tickets can be booked here via Eventbrite.

A Sense of Place: Lubaina Himid and the Sea

Professor Lubaina Himid CBE RA is an artist for whom the sea is especially significant in, across and through her oeuvre. In 1999 Himid held a residency at Porthmeor Studios, St Ives, where Barns-Graham also had a studio between 1940 and 1963. During her residency in Porthmeor, Himid produced a series of paintings and studies known as Plan B. In this lecture, Price will explore the sense of place formally inscribed in Himid’s Plan B series as well as considering the role of the sea in subsequent painting series by Himid, such as Zanzibar (1999) and Le Rodeur (2016).

Professor Dorothy Price is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Critical Race Art History at The Courtauld Institute of Art and a Fellow of The British Academy. She has published on the work of artists Frank Bowling, Lubaina Himid, Veronica Ryan, Chantal Joffe, Claudette Johnson, Chila Burman, Matthew Krishanu, Permindar Kaur amongst many others, as well as two monographs on modern art in Germany, Representing Berlin in 2003 and After Dada in 2014. Most recently Price has curated a series of groundbreaking exhibitions Making Modernism (at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2023); Claudette Johnson. Presence (for The Courtauld Institute of Art 2023) and Entangled Pasts. Art, colonialism and change (a main galleries show for the Royal Academy of Arts, 2024). She currently serves on the Advisory Board of Tate Britain and the Exhibitions Committee of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Further information can be found on the Eventbrite page. 

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A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things | Screening and streaming updates

International screenings

Mark Cousins’ superb Barns-Graham inspired film A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things continues to be seen by audiences across Europe particularly at the moment. In May the film will be shown in Poland as part of a wider retrospective of Mark’s films at the international Docs Against Gravity festival and is included in the Festival’s ‘Chopin’s Nose’ competition. Also in May the film will be screened in Germany at ‘DOK.fest München.’

Streaming now available in the UK, Ireland, and Spain

In the UK the film is available for download at home on BFI Player or Amazon Prime. In Ireland it is available on IFI@Home.
The film is now also available for download in Spain (where it has been renamed La pintora y el glaciar) via the Filmin website, where it is has already attracted some wonderfully positive reviews.

The film is still available for screenings in all kinds of cinemas, which is of course the best place to see it, for bookings contact Conic Film.

WBG at Tate St Ives | 24 Oct 2026 – 11 April 2027

The Tate recently announced its 2026 Exhibition Programme across all its sites this included the exciting news that:

“In the autumn (24 October 2026 – 11 April 2027), a survey of one of Britain’s most significant 20th century artists, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, will open at Tate St Ives. Featuring over 170 paintings, drawings, prints and archive materials, the exhibition will trace Barns-Graham’s development from her student days at the Edinburgh College of Art and early years in St Ives, where she found her place in a lively community of painters and sculptors, through to her later years working between Cornwall and Scotland.”

Look out for more information next year!

Sidney Nolan Trust | Colour and Line in Print – Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

We are excited to be working this summer with the brilliant Sidney Nolan Trust, a fellow UK single-artist focused organisation. As far we know the two artist never met, though they were very close contemporaries (Nolan was 5 years younger). From 5th July to 27th September, 2025 an exhibition, Colour and Line in Print, of Barns-Graham’s remarkable career long output of prints will be shown at the Trust’s base at The Rodd near Presteigne on the Wales/England border. We will also be supporting a print residency at The Rodd coinciding with the exhibition. Find out more at – https://www.sidneynolantrust.org/

Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, Poland | St Ives and Elsewhere

Now open at Muzeum Sztuki Poland is the exhibition St Ives and Elsewhere which runs until 7th June. Curated by Pawel Polit, major St Ives artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Sandra Blow, Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon, Margaret Mellis, William Scott, and Bryan Wynter are seen alongside the achievements of Polish artists of that period, in particular Sasza Blonder, Katarzyna Kobro, Leopold Lewicki, Władysław Strzemiński, and Adam Marczyński. The two milieus are linked by the work of Piotr Potworowski, whose sojourn in Poland in the years 1958–1962 was an opportunity to apply in the Polish context the ideas he developed in Great Britain.

St Ives and Elsewhere is presented as part of the UK/Poland Season 2025 project organised by the British Council, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Cultural Institute in London. The exhibition will feature 39 works from the British Council Arts Collection including the magnificent ‘Upper Glacier’, painted in 1950 by Barns-Graham after her trip to the Grindelwald Glacier the previous year.

More information can be found here.

New Acquisition

The Trust recently made a rare new acquisition to our art collections following the kind donation of a 1960s Barns-Graham painting by Fenella Stride and her bother Colin. Inherited from their father, the painting came with some illuminating correspondence between Barns-Graham and Mr Stride from the early 1990s, when he contacted her about his painting.

Book Updates

We are really delighted that our book for children, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: An Introduction to Her Life with Activities, has been recognised for Annabel Wright’s wonderful illustrations and selected for the longlist for the prestigious Klaus Flugge Prize for the most exciting newcomers to picture book illustration, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary. The shortlist will be announced on 15 May 2025 and the winner will be announced at an award ceremony on 10 September 2025. Good luck Annabel!

Our latest publication with Lund Humphries, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: The Glaciers, edited by Trust Director, Rob Airey with contributions from Archivist, Tilly Heydon, Collections Manager, Cassia Pennington, and essays and poems from Alice Strang, Professor Peter Nienow, Mark Cousins, Holly Corfield Carr and Alyson Hallett, is still available from our online shop, including a limited quantity of signed copies of the limited edition hardback edition, which comes with slipcase and photographic print!

The childrens book, Glacier book and lots of other goodies available too.

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A browse along Barns-Graham’s bookshelf

Margaux Beux-Pauly has recently completed a placement with us from the Museum and Heritage studies programme at L’École du Louvre and the University of St Andrews.

She has written a blog post detailing the insights she gained into Barns-Graham’s career-long interest in the art historical and literary writings of ‘Poet-Critic’ Herbert Read (1893-1968).

Read more about her findings here.

Where to See Willie

Although there are no specific Barns-Graham exhibitions currently on in the UK, works can usually be found on display in galleries such as:

• Pallant House Gallery, Chichester,
• Scottish National Galleries of Modern Art, Edinburgh,
• Tate Britain and Tate St Ives, 
• Penwith Gallery, St Ives,
• Aberdeen Art Gallery,
• Leeds Art Gallery,
• Sheffield Museums,
• and Pier Arts Centre, Stromness.