A Masterpiece Podcast

Printmaker and President of the Royal Academy of Arts, Rebecca Salter, will be in conversation with writer and critic, Thomas Marks, about her work and her role as President.

Anila Quayyum Agha is a Pakistani-American artist who works in a cross-disciplinary fashion with mixed media. She creates artwork that explores global politics, cultural multiplicity, mass media, and social and gender roles. Agha is perhaps best known for her immersive, large-scale light installations in which she laser-cuts elaborate patterns into three-dimensional cubes. Suspended and lit from within, the cubes cast lace-like, floor-to-ceiling shadows that transform the surrounding environment, alluding to the richly ornamented public spaces such as mosques that Agha was excluded from as a female growing up in Lahore.Anny Shaw is a contributing editor for The Art Newspaper, reporting on auctions, art fairs and market news globally since 2011, and is also a regular contributor to the Financial Times. 

Minerals, masterpieces of the natural world that include precious gemstones and some of the rarest substances on earth, have been coveted and collected by royal enthusiasts and other elite members of societies throughout history. Today these natural wonders are sought after by a much wider range of collectors. From prominent museums to high-net-worth individuals and celebrities, mineral specimens can be as highly prized as art and antiques, or like fine wines and vintage cars.If you have a keen eye for colour and aesthetics and an appreciation for some of the rarest and most beautiful objects on earth – or just a passing interest in one of the most rapidly growing and appreciating fields of collecting – then this presentation is for you.Please join moderator Fatema Ahmed from Apollo magazine, along with panel members Joel Bartsch, Daniel Tranchillo and Alan Hart – a museum director, a leading international dealer and an expert in the science of mineralogy and in collection development, respectively: three figures who are at the forefront of a resurgence in collecting and investing in the finest natural gems and crystals that nature has to offer.

First opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in December 2021 and then moving to the Wallace Collection where it is now on view, Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts has proven to be a critical success and a crowd-pleasing exhibition in both New York and London. It is the result of the close collaboration between the two museums across several departments, and with the Walt Disney Animation Research Library, and above all between the two curators. In this panel, Wolf Burchard and Helen Jacobsen discuss the project and the many years of working together to bring the exhibition to life. They will be joined by British theatre designer Tom Piper, one of the designers behind the Wallace Collection’s version of the show, who brings his own experience of collaborating with museums to the conversation.

Join Mali Morris, painter and Royal Academician, and Rebecca Lyons, Director of Collections and Learning at the RA, as they discuss Mali’s work and influences.

This talk gives an insight into the scope of William Klein’s career and why his approach to photography and image-making was pioneering. He is well known for his fashion photography and distinctive gritty style of street photography together with his unconventional approach to subject matter. This talk will consider all aspects of his career including his training as a painter and work with film set against the wider context of art historical developments at the time, particularly Surrealism. Alongside this, the conversation will reference the major William Klein retrospective on show at the International Center for Photography in New York from June to September 2022.The talk will also explore the relationship between artist and gallery and the long-term friendship between William Klein and Marcus Bury, co-founder of HackelBury Fine Art Gallery.“I came from the outside, the rules of photography didn’t interest me. There were things you could do with a camera that you couldn’t do with any other medium – grain, contrast, blur, cock-eyed framing, eliminating or exaggerating grey tones and so on…… I thought it would be good to show what’s possible, to say that this is a s valid of a way of using the camera as conventional approaches.” WK

If living through lockdowns has taught us one thing, it is that the spaces we live and work in have an enormous effect on our wellbeing. Carefully curated art and design can help us understand ourselves better, while also teaching us to look outwards – but how to create an environment that balances form with function, heritage with modernity, the personal with the universal? In this thought-provoking conversation, our three panellists will reflect on what good curatorial practice looks like today, while also offering practical tips on how to collect and display art in both private and public spaces.