Welcome to my second column! This week we are moving across to China to look at the life and works of the artist Ch’en Shu (1660-1736).

Ch’en Shu, The White Cockatoo, Detail, 1721, Hanging scroll, ink and colours on paper, 94.0 x 43.7 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art,...

And there we have it: the reign of May is at an end. On Friday morning the Prime Minister stepped up to a podium set before the door of No.10 and announced she was off. Although not quite yet. She will stand down as Tory leader on June 7th to allow for the election of...

To begin with a bit of art news for a change, at Sotheby’s New York this week one of Claude Monet’s series of haystack paintings was sold at auction for £85.7m ($110.7m) to an anonymous buyer. This not only shatters the record price paid for the artist but also the rec...

If ever there was a time to be bull-headed it would be now, during Taurus season. But with the beautiful warm weather and arts buzz in London this spring, it doesn’t seem like we’ll get a long window to stay stagnant and stubborn. In fact, each sign is getting the urge...

In a relatively quiet week for news, there was a burst of activity when it was announced that the new Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, had gone into labour (no, not the political party – that really would be a surprise!) with her first child with her husband Prince Ha...

Fig. 1. Pompeii atrium reconstruction, House of the Vettii, Boboli Gardens, Florence, 2007 (Photo: Wikipedia Commons)

If I weren’t only eight years old during the seven-month run of Ancient Gardens from Babylon to Rome: Science, Art and Nature in the Florentine Boboli G...

This first week back for MPs, my column, and all Courtauld students was shaping up to be a suspiciously peaceful one, that was until the usual anarchy of politics burst back onto the scene on Wednesday with the surprise sacking of Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson fro...

Hello everyone and welcome to my new column on unsung women in the history of the arts! I’m Francesca, a second-year undergrad here at The Courtauld, and each week I’ll be highlighting a new woman whose work has gone un- or underacknowledged due to her gender. I’ll als...

S-1500 by Snøhetta (Image: snohetta.com)

A few weeks ago, I shared some facts about this chair on The Courtauldian’s Instagram page as a part of the weekly segment ‘Wednesday Wisdoms’. I thought my mention of it would be enough to get it off my mind, done and dusted. I...

It seems we are on the inside, looking out, of a storm of change in politics currently. While change is almost always seen as an unwelcome visitor, these particular winds of change can quite firmly be stated as going very much in the wrong direction. Historically, in t...