In Greek legend, Pandora was created with the express purpose of causing trouble to men which, by opening her box, she achieved. This lecture looks at the original sources for the story, draws parallels with both Eve in Genesis and Galatea in Ovid before showing how ballets, operas and plays from Coppelia to My Fair Lady and The Winter’s Tale to Educating Rita have developed the theme of a creation that runs out of control. Lecturer: Mary Sharp Mary is…

Avant-garde painter, designer, decorator, inspired colourist, mother and muse, Vanessa Bell was the warm heart of the Bloomsbury Group, once described by Dorothy Parker as “living in squares and loving in triangles”. This has perhaps lessened the fame of her work: this lecture asks the question - was Vanessa Bell the painter as radical as her sister, the writer Virginia Woolf? Lecturer: Julia Musgrave Julia Musgrave got her first degree in Chemical Engineering and went on to become a Chartered…

The 'poor little rich girl' who changed the face of twentieth century art. Not only was Peggy Guggenheim ahead of her time but she was also the woman who helped define it. She discovered and nurtured a new generation of artists producing a new kind of art. Through collecting not only art but also the artists themselves, her life was as radical as her collection. Lecturer: Alexandra Epps BA MA Official Guide and Lecturer at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and…

This colourful lecture explores the relationship between an extraordinary American painter and an equally remarkable place: the picturesque state of New Mexico. Having visited the mountain art colony of Taos for the first time in 1929, she moved permanently to New Mexico after World War II. Fascinated by the mountains and desert, adobe churches and sun-bleached bones, and above all by the brilliant light and vast skies of the state they call the Land of Enchantment, O’Keeffe painted constantly. She…