The Bloomsbury Group has become the most famous and widely publicized coterie of writers, artists, intellectuals, and general hangers-on in modern British culture. Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Stratchey and Dora Carrington, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry and Clive Bell—these names and reputations are as familiar as their spectacular and sometimes scandalous private lives. Organized by the Tate Gallery and curated by Richard Shone, the leading authority on Bloomsbury, this was the first major exhibition devoted to the artistic achievements of the Bloomsbury Group. It offered a comprehensive and definitive overview of the movement, focusing on the art of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Roger Fry. The exhibition also displayed applied arts from the Omega Workshop as well as fascinating documentary material, such as photographs, books, and the various publications associated with the Bloomsbury Group.
Venues
Tate Gallery: November 4, 1999–January 30, 2000
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens:
March 4–April 30, 2000
Yale Center for British Art: May 20–September 3, 2000
View works from the collection included in this exhibition here.
Credits
BP Amoco was the sponsor of the American tour of the exhibition.
Top image
Harold Gilman, Sylvia Darning (detail), 1917, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Extended reading
The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant
Edited by Richard Shone