The Museum and Gallery Today: 2021 Mellon Lectures Series

Every two years the Paul Mellon Centre co-hosts the Mellon Lectures with the Yale Center for British Art. In normal times one academic prepares a series of six lectures which are delivered in January in the National Gallery and then again in the Spring in New Haven.

Like everything else, this year was a little different. With the lectures happening online we experimented with a new format and invited six world-renowned museum directors to each respond to the topic of The Museum and Gallery Today. The result was a show-stopping autumn series with five top museum directors.

We began in late October with Gabrielle Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery on A Gallery ‘for the Use of the Public’: The National Gallery at Two Hundred.

In November we passed over to our colleagues at Yale for lectures by Director of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, Kaywin Feldman speaking on Building a National Collection in a Changing Nation and Director and Chief Curator, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Thelma Golden delivering Creating Space: The Studio Museum, Past and Present.

Returning back to London the PMC hosted a rousing call to arms by Iwona Blazwick, Director of Whitechapel Gallery asking What Are Collections Good For? We rounded off the year with a proposition by Maria Balshaw, Director of Tate on how museums can speak to an evolving public with her lecture Looking Back to Move Forward: British Art History at Tate.

Hotly anticipated final words still to come are expected in the spring from Maria Mok, Director of Hong Kong Museum of Art who will close the series in February 2022.

I hadn’t expected to deliver a lecture programme with a line-up of this calibre any time soon, though perhaps more of a surprise, I didn’t expect if I did it would run so stress free. With over 1000 attendees from 30 countries across UK lectures it was by far the best attended digital series produced by the PMC so far - alongside our YCBA friends of course.

Watch all the lectures on the PMC Website

Huge thanks to all the lecturers and in particular to Eleanore, Molly and Holly who ensured they were on screen on time and we’ll prepared. delighted to be collaborating with Jane Nowosadko on the lecture series and a thanks too to Courtney Martin, Sarah Turner and Mark Hallett for chairing the sessions. as always a big shout out to Dani Convey for working alongside me throughout and all the PMC team for supporting the programme.