Faberge and the Firebird: Cultural Exchange and the European Avant-Garde in the 20th Century This illustrated lecture follows the last phase of Russia’s artistic journey. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Russian culture had come of age. The intense preoccupation with national destiny gave way to a creative explosion during which Russian artists, writers…
From Paris to St Petersburg: How the fine arts travelled to Russia in the 18th century Until the beginning of the eighteenth century, Russia was a country of icons and folk art which looked decidedly towards Asia. All that changed when Peter the Great became the first Russian Tsar to travel abroad, commissioning the first state…
Live & Virtual: The Life of the Mesozoic Sea Dragons The ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and other marine reptiles of the Mesozoic were amazing predators. New analytical methods are helping palaeontologists to extract enormous amounts of new information from the fossils, and to use this to work out their modes of life (how they swam, diets; reproduction)…
Live & Virtual: Digital Ichthyosaurs & Rebuilding in Three Dimensions After 200 years of study there remain many questions about the biology of the Jurassic fish-like sea dragons, ichthyosaurs. Many specimens are superbly preserved but often pancake flat. However, specimens from the ‘Jurassic Ark’ at Strawberry Bank, Ilminster, are fully three dimensional. Combining these fossils…
Online: Strawberry Bank – exceptionally preserved fossils in geological context The astounding three-dimensional preservation of the Strawberry Bank fossils is a consequence of environmental conditions during a relatively short time period during the Toarcian stage of the Lower Jurassic. However, these conditions were not unique, because exceptionally preserved fossils from the same time are known…
Live online talk: Strawberry Bank Lagerstätte – from Victorian hammer to twenty first century laboratory Somerset geologist Charles Moore discovered and collected remarkable fossils, near to his hometown of Ilminster, in the 1840s. His ‘saurian, fish, and insect bed’ contained exquisite animal fossils, uncompressed and exceptional in their detail. Though preserved at BRLSI since he…
Please note that this event is FREE of charge and is ONLINE only. The pandemic has impacted so many aspects of our lives, from schools and education, our economy and the high street, to the way we interact with each other and with elements of our city. How can we build on Bath’s potential to…
You can watch this event live at Queen Square OR online; please select the relevant tickets when booking. The Great Spa Towns of Europe: Bath’s newest World Heritage Inscription How did the Unesco World Heritage group of Great Spa Towns of Europe come about, which are the other ten towns and why are they included,…
“The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.” Somewhat neglected in his own lifetime, William Blake is now considered amongst the greatest writers and artists England ever produced. If Jerusalem is our national Hymn, then pop icons such as Patti Smith and the Verve have kept Blake’s cultural flame burning for…
The 2021 Victor Suchar Christmas Lecture Our Earth has existed for 45 million centuries, but this is the first time that just one species – ours – has the planet’s future in its hands. And Covid 19 is a wake-up call, reminding us how vulnerable our interconnected global civilisation is. Advances in biotechnology, robotics, and…
Victor Suchar Christmas Lecture 2023 Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) is among the most celebrated works of Victorian fiction, with its compelling story of the grasping Ebenezer Scrooge and the three terrifying ghosts who transform his life. This talk will explore the lasting significance of A Christmas Carol in the context of other…
