Curatorial Conversations | The Van de Veldes at the Queen’s House, Greenwich

Curators Allison Goudie and Imogen Tedbury in conversation with Bill Sherman (Warburg Institute Director) and Gregory Perry (CEO, Association for Art History).
This event was organised by the Association for Art History in conjunction with The Warburg Institute, University of London.
For almost 20 years in the late 17th century the Queen’s House at Greenwich was the studio address of the marine painters Willem van de Velde the Elder and his son, Willem the Younger. Although the building itself bears little trace of the Van de Veldes’ presence, in the 20th century the Queen’s House once again became a home for their work, as the dedicated art gallery of the National Maritime Museum, custodian of the world’s largest collection of works by the Van de Veldes. Spanning scores of oil and pen paintings, a tapestry and some 1,500 drawings, the collection is unique in what it can tell us about how a 17th-century artist’s studio functioned. The physical evidence provided by this collection proved invaluable for the evocation of the Van de Velde studio that formed a centrepiece of the recent exhibition, 'The Van de Veldes: Greenwich, Art and the Sea', marking 350 years since the Van de Veldes moved to England from the Dutch Republic. Showcasing major conservation projects on important works in the Greenwich collection that have their origin point in the Queen’s House studio, and notwithstanding a select number very generous loans, the exhibition was also a pragmatic solution to some of the challenges facing museums as they emerged from Covid: how to make an event out of a permanent collection.
Dr Allison Goudie is Curator of Art (Pre-1800) at Royal Museums Greenwich. Before coming to Greenwich, she was Curator of Kenwood House and previously held curatorial positions at the National Gallery and the National Trust. She completed her PhD on the subject of royal portraiture during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars at the University of Oxford in 2014. She is the recipient of a Getty Paper Project grant to bring to life the collection of Van de Velde drawings at Greenwich, and is leading on RMG's programme in 2023 marking 350 years since the Van de Veldes arrived in England, the centrepiece of which is an exhibition in the Queen's House co-curated with Dr Imogen Tedbury.
Dr Imogen Tedbury is an art historian and curator. She has held curatorial positions at Royal Holloway, University of London, the National Gallery, London, and the Queen's House, Royal Museums Greenwich, where she was the co-curator of The Van de Veldes: Greenwich, Art and the Sea. Her PhD (2018) explored the reception of Sienese painting and her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Getty Research Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Paul Mellon Centre and the Warburg Institute. She is currently undertaking research for the early Italian paintings catalogue of the Norton Simon Museum.
Curatorial Conversations invites museum directors and makers of recent exhibitions at world-leading museums and galleries to the Warburg to discuss their work. The conversations, led by academics at the Warburg Institute, discuss the issues of setting the directorial or curatorial agenda and staging meaningful encounters with objects. The series is designed to draw out discussion of the discoveries made, challenges tackled and the lessons learned in heading a collection and putting together internationally renowned exhibitions.
Find out what else is on at the Warburg: warburg.sas.ac.uk/whats-on

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