Speaker: Professor Dame Hazel Genn
Location: All Souls College Library

"Let’s not talk about Access to Justice: Unravelling the concept to create meaning in the non-legal world"

There will be a wine reception after the lecture.

The event is open to the public, but reservations are required. Please register using this form.

More than a decade after the 2012 changes to Legal Aid in England & Wales we are in yet another ‘access to justice crisis’. Post-pandemic, with an economic downturn, increased levels of poverty and developing public health crises, access to justice in political and public consciousness appears an irrelevant, if not invisible issue. Why should this be? The legal field is comfortable using ‘access to justice’ as a shorthand term covering a wide mix of concepts, debated in confusingly conflicting ways and without precise definition. In other spheres – public services, business, media, professions and political circles - the term lacks clear meaning, substance, or salience (outside of crime). The non-legal world doesn’t think much about how the justice system supports the collective social good nor its value in addressing current social and economic challenges. And yet there is real potential for legal services to work in partnership with other services, such as health, to make more impact on pressing social issues. A strategic approach to improving access to justice requires engaging more allies and advocates. This means we need to explain what access to justice is for, what its broader societal value is, and why it matters. Unbundling the concept and developing a comprehensible ‘access to justice’ lexicon that is relevant and focused on outcomes rather than process, is a necessary first step.

Speaker: Professor Beate Fricke (2024/25 Slade Professor in Fine Art)

Location: The Auditorium, St John's College, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JP

Booking Required 2024/25 Slade Lectures Booking Form (Names are checked upon entry)

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The final lecture is dedicated to missing parts in works of art (Sano di Pietro/Osservanza Master, 1435), a reliquary from Augsburg (mid-15th c), and altarpieces (Bern/Allerseelenaltar, 1505). These gaps in artefacts are not only signs of use but also demonstrate how such gaps can become the subject of artistic creation itself. How do we write the histories related to these gaps created by missing elements? The layers of the past inscribed through the traces of use into the object itself may contribute to writing a history of the object which differs from that of the cultural context for which it was produced.

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Beate Fricke is Professor and Chair of European Medieval Art at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bern. Previously, she was professor for Medieval Art at the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the history of sculpture, image theory and the objects as archives of a history of applied arts, materiality, knowledge transfer and trade in the global "Middle Ages". Among her publications are Holy Smoke. Censers across Cultures, 2023, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conquest and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art, 2015, and together with Finbarr Barry Flood Tales things Tell. Material Histories of Early Globalisms, 2024. She is leading the research project The Inheritance of Looting. Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums (SNF – https://looting.ch). She is founder and Editor-in-chief of the journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und Visuellen Kultur (link: https://21-inquiries.eu/en).

Booking Required 2024/25 Slade Lectures Booking Form

(Names are checked upon entry)

Location:  The Auditorium, St John's College, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JP

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How has life begun, how was the world created, and what lied at the origin of the creation? Human procreation, especially the origin of life, was frequently the subject of speculation and analysis in medieval thought. Drawings of the uterus accompanied and supported these reflections about the development of life in female bodies. These were made by anonymous draughtsmen and illustrators of medieval manuscripts as well as known scholars and artists like Hildegard von Bingen, Opicinus di Canistris, Jerome Bosch, and Leonardo da Vinci. Analysing the thoughts embedded into these images illuminates the creativity of such connections between divine creation, human procreation and artistic creativity ignited through an exploration of the unknown and the unseen.

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Beate Fricke is Professor and Chair of European Medieval Art at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bern. Previously, she was professor for Medieval Art at the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the history of sculpture, image theory and the objects as archives of a history of applied arts, materiality, knowledge transfer and trade in the global "Middle Ages". Among her publications are Holy Smoke. Censers across Cultures, 2023, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conquest and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art, 2015, and together with Finbarr Barry Flood Tales things Tell. Material Histories of Early Globalisms, 2024. She is leading the research project The Inheritance of Looting. Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums (SNF – https://looting.ch). She is founder and Editor-in-chief of the journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und Visuellen Kultur (link: https://21-inquiries.eu/en).

Speaker: Professor Beate Fricke (2024/25 Slade Professor in Fine Art)

Location: The Auditorium, St John's College, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JP

Booking Required 2024/25 Slade Lectures Booking Form (Names are checked upon entry)

_____

Distant places, visited by travellers, pilgrims and merchants, were included in paintings and drawings from the late medieval and early modern eras. These pictures, such as the Panorama from Scherzligen (1469) or the painting from the crypt in Bethlehem commissioned by four pilgrims to the Holy Land in 1520, provide images of regions of the world which could, for the most part, only have been imagined by their beholders. Late medieval paintings and accounts thereby bridge gaps in space and also reveal the creative potential of imaginations about distant, foreign, or imagined worlds.

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Beate Fricke is Professor and Chair of European Medieval Art at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bern. Previously, she was professor for Medieval Art at the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the history of sculpture, image theory and the objects as archives of a history of applied arts, materiality, knowledge transfer and trade in the global "Middle Ages". Among her publications are Holy Smoke. Censers across Cultures, 2023, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conquest and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art, 2015, and together with Finbarr Barry Flood Tales things Tell. Material Histories of Early Globalisms, 2024. She is leading the research project The Inheritance of Looting. Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums (SNF – https://looting.ch). She is founder and Editor-in-chief of the journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und Visuellen Kultur (link: https://21-inquiries.eu/en).

Speaker: Professor Beate Fricke (2024/25 Slade Professor in Fine Art)

Location: The Auditorium, St John's College, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JP

Booking Required 2024/25 Slade Lectures Booking Form (Names are checked upon entry)

_____

Archival documents do not always record and represent significant parts of past societies. The buildings of the Loge du Mer at Perpignan, the Lonja in Palma and the Lonja de la Seda in Valencia reveal how the construction of market halls and municipal organisations supporting trade can provide insights into the underrepresented histories of Muslims, enslaved people, or labourers. These presences are largely absent from archival records – but do emerge as significant elements in a painted panel for the Loge du Mer (1479). As a way to make sense of this apparent dissonance, this lecture unspools the material quality of the silk traded in these halls. A new reading of the architectural structures of the Lonjas through the lens of the material world of the cloth they contained leads to a reading of the markets’ spiral columns as spines supporting a different history. Shifting the narrative from the mastery of an architect towards the collectives involved in winding the threads of silk histories furnishes a new view of these innovative municipal buildings.

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Beate Fricke is Professor and Chair of European Medieval Art at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bern. Previously, she was professor for Medieval Art at the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the history of sculpture, image theory and the objects as archives of a history of applied arts, materiality, knowledge transfer and trade in the global "Middle Ages". Among her publications are Holy Smoke. Censers across Cultures, 2023, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conquest and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art, 2015, and together with Finbarr Barry Flood Tales things Tell. Material Histories of Early Globalisms, 2024. She is leading the research project The Inheritance of Looting. Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums (SNF – https://looting.ch). She is founder and Editor-in-chief of the journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und Visuellen Kultur (link: https://21-inquiries.eu/en).

Speaker: Professor Beate Fricke (2024/25 Slade Professor in Fine Art)

Location: The Auditorium, St John's College, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JP

Booking Required 2024/25 Slade Lectures Booking Form (Names are checked upon entry)

_____

Archival documents do not always record and represent significant parts of past societies. The buildings of the Loge du Mer at Perpignan, the Lonja in Palma and the Lonja de la Seda in Valencia reveal how the construction of market halls and municipal organisations supporting trade can provide insights into the underrepresented histories of Muslims, enslaved people, or labourers. These presences are largely absent from archival records – but do emerge as significant elements in a painted panel for the Loge du Mer (1479). As a way to make sense of this apparent dissonance, this lecture unspools the material quality of the silk traded in these halls. A new reading of the architectural structures of the Lonjas through the lens of the material world of the cloth they contained leads to a reading of the markets’ spiral columns as spines supporting a different history. Shifting the narrative from the mastery of an architect towards the collectives involved in winding the threads of silk histories furnishes a new view of these innovative municipal buildings.

_____

Beate Fricke is Professor and Chair of European Medieval Art at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bern. Previously, she was professor for Medieval Art at the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the history of sculpture, image theory and the objects as archives of a history of applied arts, materiality, knowledge transfer and trade in the global "Middle Ages". Among her publications are Holy Smoke. Censers across Cultures, 2023, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conquest and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art, 2015, and together with Finbarr Barry Flood Tales things Tell. Material Histories of Early Globalisms, 2024. She is leading the research project The Inheritance of Looting. Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums (SNF – https://looting.ch). She is founder and Editor-in-chief of the journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und Visuellen Kultur (link: https://21-inquiries.eu/en).

Speaker: Professor Beate Fricke (2024/25 Slade Professor in Fine Art)

Location: The Auditorium, St John's College, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JP

Booking Required 2024/25 Slade Lectures Booking Form (Names are checked upon entry)

_____

Focusing on this notion of gaps in the constitution of cultural heritage, the first lecture pursues the traces of loot and objects of war. Close readings of illustrations in fifteenth-century military manuals, of drawings in the Bernese chronicle of Diebold Schilling (1478-1483) and of drawings and prints by the mercenary soldier Urs Graf uncover important aspects of the transformation of booty into cultural heritage. The traces of the history of two pairs of looted canons from the 15th and 16th centuries are riddled with gaps. Following these blank spots reveals, however, how these objects and their fragmented histories may be understood as contributing to the pre-history of museums and their collections in Switzerland.

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Beate Fricke is Professor and Chair of European Medieval Art at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bern. Previously, she was professor for Medieval Art at the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the history of sculpture, image theory and the objects as archives of a history of applied arts, materiality, knowledge transfer and trade in the global "Middle Ages". Among her publications are Holy Smoke. Censers across Cultures, 2023, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conquest and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art, 2015, and together with Finbarr Barry Flood Tales things Tell. Material Histories of Early Globalisms, 2024. She is leading the research project The Inheritance of Looting. Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums (SNF – https://looting.ch). She is founder and Editor-in-chief of the journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und Visuellen Kultur (link: https://21-inquiries.eu/en).

Speaker: Professor Simon Gikandi, Princeton University

Location: All Souls College Library

This event will be followed by a wine reception.

All are welcome, but pre-registration is essential. Click here to book from Monday 13 January.