Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Affiliation: Honorary Professor, University College London; previously Curator of 16th & 17th Century British Art at Tate Britain

Keywords: Migrant artists in 16th & 17th century Britain, Tudor art, Elizabethan art, Jacobean art, Stuart art, Elizabeth I portraits, British-Netherlandish artistic links, 16th & 17th-century British art and material culture, pregnancy portraits, portrait miniatures, Anthony van Dyck, Nicholas Hilliard, Cornelius Johnson, historical representations of pregnancy, embroidery in portraits, beauty spots in portraits

About Me: In 2020, I curated the exhibition “Portraying Pregnancy: from Holbein to Social Media” at The Foundling Museum, London.

In 2015, I curated the exhibition “Cornelius Johnson: Charles I’s Forgotten Painter” at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

In 2012 I curated the Tate Britain exhibition “Rubens and Britain”.

Also in 2012, I conceived the idea for, and co-curated, the Tate Britain exhibition “Migrations: Journeys into British Art”, about the central role of migrant artists in British art.

In 2009, I curated the major Tate Britain exhibition, “Van Dyck and Britain”.

In 2002-3, I curated the Tate Britain exhibition “Marcus Gheeraerts II: Elizabethan Artist”.

In 1995-6, I was the Curator of the influential Tate Britain exhibition in London, “Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530-1630”. My catalogue for this continues to be a standard teaching text. For this project, I received a European Woman of Achievement Award.

Recent Publications: Magnifying Miniatures: Nicholas Hilliard & Isaac Oliver in The Portland Collection, 2021 – Gallery Talk // Magnifying Miniatures // Karen Hearn – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICXkXjgsziY.

Mildred Cooke Cecil: Pregnancy Portrayed in Elizabethan England – University of Hertfordshire Chancellor’s Lecture 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmL_2I_3Jl0.

“Portraying Pregnancy: from Holbein to Social Media”, London, 2020.

‘Van Dyck’s London Studio’, essay in “Antoon van Dyck e l’Europa Delle Corti”, exhibition catalogue, Galleria Sabauda, Royal Museums, Turin, 2018 .

“Cornelius Johnson 1593-1661″, London, 2015.

‘”Picture-drawer, born at Antwerp”: Migrant Artists in Jacobean London’, in “Painting in Britain 1500-1630: Production, Influences & Patronage”, British Academy, 2015, pp. 278-28.

“Rubens & Britain”, Tate Britain, London, 2011.

“Van Dyck & Britain”, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London, 2009.

‘Lady Anne Clifford’s “Great Triptych”‘, in “Lady Anne Clifford: Culture, Patronage and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Britain”, in Karen Hearn and Lynn Hulse, eds, Leeds, 2009, pp. 1-24.

‘Saved through childbearing: a Godly Context for Elizabethan Pregnancy Portraits’, in Tara Hamling and Richard L Williams, eds, “Art Re-formed”, Newcastle, 2007.

“Nathaniel Bacon: Artist, Gentleman, Gardener”, London, 2005.

Media Coverage: https://www.npr.org/2020/01/26/799629311/london-museum-explores-5-centuries-of-pregnancy-portraits'Netherlandish Painters Active in Britain in the 16th & 17th Centuries' http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/cholmondeley-ladies-artist-unknown

Expertise by Topic: Art & Architectural History, Material Culture, Migration & Immigration, Women