WBGT Annual Lecture 2025

The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust is pleased to announce the 2025 Annual Lecture, presented by Professor Dorothy Price, and taking place at The British Academy, London.

A Sense of Place: Lubaina Himid and the Sea

Professor Lubaina Himid CBE RA is an artist for whom the sea is especially significant in, across and through her oeuvre. In 1999 Himid held a residency at Porthmeor Studios, St Ives, where Barns-Graham also had a studio between 1940 and 1963. During her residency in Porthmeor, Himid produced a series of paintings and studies known as Plan B. In this lecture, Price will explore the sense of place formally inscribed in Himid's Plan B series as well as considering the role of the sea in subsequent painting series by Himid, such as Zanzibar (1999) and Le Rodeur (2016).

Professor Dorothy Price is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Critical Race Art History at The Courtauld Institute of Art and a Fellow of The British Academy. She has published on the work of artists Frank Bowling, Lubaina Himid, Veronica Ryan, Chantal Joffe, Claudette Johnson, Chila Burman, Matthew Krishanu, Permindar Kaur amongst many others, as well as two monographs on modern art in Germany, Representing Berlin in 2003 and After Dada in 2014. Most recently Price has curated a series of groundbreaking exhibitions Making Modernism (at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2023); Claudette Johnson. Presence (for The Courtauld Institute of Art 2023) and Entangled Pasts. Art, colonialism and change (a main galleries show for the Royal Academy of Arts, 2024). She currently serves on the Advisory Board of Tate Britain and the Exhibitions Committee of the Royal Academy of Arts.

The Annual Lecture coincides with a new display of works by Barns-Graham on loan to The British Academy from the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust.

Event details

• Doors will open at 18:30, please join us for a a drink before the lecture commences at 19:00.
• This ticketed event is free with a suggested donation of £10. Please pay if you are able.
• We anticipate high demand for this event. If you are no longer able to attend, we'd be grateful if you could cancel your ticket on Eventbrite to make it available for someone else to book.

Banner image: Lubaina Himid, Sea: Wave Goodbye Say Hello (Zanzibar), 1999, acrylic on canvas, each canvas: 101 x 152 cm. © Lubaina Himid. Courtesy the artist, Hollybush Gardens, London, and Greene Naftali, New York. Photo: Andy Keate

Professor Dorothy Price by Fergus Carmichael, 2025