Open Houses

Study Room Open House | "The Idea of Italy"

Free admission

A display of photographs, drawings, and watercolors will be on view in conjunction with the book discussion The Idea of Italy: Photography and the British Imagination, 1840–1900.

On Friday, September 30, 2022, the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) will host a panel discussion on The Idea of Italy: Photography and the British Imagination, 1840–1900, recently published by the YCBA and Yale University Press. The book examines how the new medium of photography influenced the British experience, appreciation, and perception of Italy in the nineteenth century.

The associated display, drawn from the museum's rich collection of more than five hundred works on paper depicting Italy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, brings together watercolors and drawings executed by artists on the Grand Tour alongside early nineteenth-century photographs of Italy. Together the works demonstrate the influence of photography on traditions of Grand Tour image making. 

Join us in the Study Room for this special display! Appointments are not needed. Please note that the Study Room will be closed 4–5 pm during the panel conversation.

The panel participants are Maria Morris Hambourg, writer, independent curator, and founding curator of the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Maria Antonella Pelizzari, Professor of the History of Photography at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York; Stephen C. Pinson, curator, Department of Photographs, the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Scott Wilcox, former Deputy Director for Collections at the Yale Center for British Art.

Learn more about the YCBA Study Room.

Publication

Purchase The Idea of Italy here.

Top image
Carlo Labruzzi, The Colosseum from the Caelian Mount, with the Arch of Constantine and a View of the Forum, Rome. (detail), undated, Watercolor and graphite on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund

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