Gail Brown:

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I have been a passionate advocate for the empowering potential that the study of art and its makers provides for more than 30 years. Since my first contact with the subject as an A level student, to an undergraduate and then a teacher of Art History for over 25 years.

 

In an age where our experience is saturated with visual imagery, the study of art provides an extraordinary language to talk about and analyse what we look at. Through my talks I aim to provide a rigorous and wide-ranging investigation into some of the greatest aspects of human achievement and endeavour. To be able to converse and discuss value and meaning, philosophies and theories relating to these endeavours is an entirely empowering skill and one which I would like to share and foster as widely as possible.

 

As a teacher, I have worked in Art departments in the state and private sector, as well as a Sixth Form college, and in each of these institutions I have taught History of Art in one form or another. In my first and last schools, I set up the A Level where there had not been one before. Former students who have gone on to study not only History of Art at degree level, but subjects as varied as Music to Anthropology, have told me that the knowledge they acquired during their History of Art A level and the spirit of critical inquiry it fostered have been invaluable to them. To bring to life and see the immense pleasure and satisfaction students have had in gaining an understanding of how art fits into the human struggle to express and understand itself is hugely rewarding, both professionally and personally.

 

I will never forget the sight, from the corner of my eye, of a student openly weeping before Caravaggio’s Calling of St Matthew on a study trip to Rome, having had “An individual heart-shock” as put by Donna Tartt in The Goldfinch – a remarkable piece of writing about the power of art.

 

Alongside my teaching practice, I was an examiner for AQA, marking the A2 19th century topic paper, for 8 years. Following AQA’s withdrawal of the subject, I contributed to the fight for its restoration, as a speaker on the panel at the Courtauld Institute and Association for Art History’s event on The Future of Art History in Education in November 2016. I am now an Associate Examiner for EdExcel History of Art A Level and a member of the Association for Art History.