Rebecca Hossack has been a great champion of Non-Western artistic traditions. Hers was the first art gallery in Europe to exhibit Australian aboriginal painting, and it continues to promote such work through its regular Songlines seasons. Rebecca Hossack has also curated important exhibitions of work from the Bushmen of the Kalahari, from Papua New Guinea, and from tribal India. Much of this art would simply not have been seen in the UK but for the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery.

How does a mere mortal go about creating an image of a heavenly being? Across religions and centuries artists have sought to make spiritual messengers, protectors and protagonists visible through thei skill and imagination. In Christian iconography, angels have been visualised in a myriad of different ways, with realistic wings (Da Vinci) toddlers (Van Eyck) or phantoms (Blake).  

Sarah Burles  studied Art History at Cambridge University and undertook a Masters at UCL.  She went on to have a career in Museums and gallery education, establishing new services in three different museums before working at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge for many years.  Sarah is the founder of Cambridge Art Tours which runs tours and courses in and around East Anglia, as well as online. She is a tour director for an award winning  travel company  and has led tours to Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and America.  She became an Arts Society accredited lecturer in 2021.

Thus lecture covers the lives of passionate potters. William de Morgan, who rediscovered the secrets of Near Eastern lustre glazes. The eccentric and argumentative Martin Brothers who created a range of elaborate salt glazed pots. Sir Edmund Elton, the ‘potter baronet’, made pots which combine startling glazes with exotic forms, and Bernard Leach, the father of English studio pottery, married the arts of Japan and England.

Dr Julian Richards was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1992 and has long been involved in teaching and outreach projects, lecturing widely in continuing education and researching & presenting programmes on history & archaeology for the BBC.