RCMG was recently awarded funding from Arts Council England through a National Lottery Project Grant, to work with Historic Royal Palaces, English Heritage and the National Trust on an exciting new project – Permissible Beauty. The core project team comprises David McAlmont (historian, researcher, performer), Robert Taylor (portrait photographer), Richard Sandell (researcher and creative producer) and Mark Thomas (filmmaker).
About the project
Our project asks, why are some forms of beauty, some lives, more highly valued – more permissible – than others? We are examining how beauty has been defined, hailed and perceived in the past and how this is reflected in – and shaped by – our nation’s heritage. We are exploring fresh ways of defining and celebrating beauty today, opening up the possibility of a new chapter of British Beauty.
Our tales begin with the collections of Stuart portraits (for example, works by Peter Lely, Godfrey Kneller and Michael Dahl) that hang in some of our best-known and loved historic buildings and the very particular notions of beauty they helped to constitute in the 1600s. Centuries later, our contemporary portrayals of Black Queer lives explore shifting and expanded notions of beauty, opening up, for all visitors, new ways of seeing, recognising and celebrating it today.
Expanding approaches to engaging with heritage
Permissible Beauty is an experimental project that explores new approaches to engaging audiences. Many heritage and museum projects seeking to engage more diverse audiences very often take as their starting point previously hidden histories, revealing the ways in which collections are linked to hitherto overlooked or marginalised histories of, for example, women or people of colour. Such approaches can be powerful ways of opening up connections and meaning for diverse audiences today, making visible the presence of different lives in the past as well as shining a spotlight on the role that museums and heritage have played – and continue to play – in celebrating, legitimising and valuing some lives whilst simultaneously marginalising others.
At the same time, these approaches inevitably have limitations; they represent a narrow point of entry to our heritage; they can be constrained by the paucity of material in our historic collections that reflect contemporary diversity; and they can be hampered by the problematic assumption that audiences can only find meaning and connection with historic collections which explicitly and directly reflect their own lived experiences. Rather than working from ‘hidden histories’ and starting with collections, Permissible Beauty starts with and prioritises contemporary lives and experiences.
We are currently at the earliest stages of the project - Permissible Beauty will be publicly launched in late summer 2022 – watch this space!
Written by Professor Richard Sandell
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