About

See the Queen’s House and its collections in a new light with this series of free lunchtime talks exploring art, architecture, history and the contemporary culture.

The term ‘salon’ was used historically to describe social gatherings in the domestic sphere. Participation was open to a range of individuals, and women often acted as hosts. Salons were alternative spaces for learning, debate and the exchange of ideas. 

Speakers at the Salons series include artists, researchers, curators and creative practitioners. Taking inspiration from the history of the Queen’s House and its collections, their talks bring to light new insights and share different perspectives.

Programme: 

Architectures of Empire: The Queen’s House and Inigo Jones’s legacy  (30th October)
The Queen’s House in Greenwich is among the first buildings in a Palladian style to be designed in Britain. Inigo Jones’s design for the house was inspired by Italian Renaissance architecture, in particular the work of Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). In 1613-14, Jones had visited Italy and studied Palladio’s villas, celebrated for their symmetrical proportions and balanced layouts.  

Completed in the late 1630s, the Queen’s House set a precedent for a ‘revolution’ in architectural history and design in Britain and overseas. Jones’s design of the Queen's House has significantly influenced the development of British architecture from colonial times to the present day. Over the centuries, the geometrical symmetry and calculated proportions of the Queen’s House were adopted and re-adapted according to different spaces, climates, social and human experiences in the British-owned colonies overseas. 

By focusing on the migration of Palladian architecture across time and space, this talk by Assistant Curator Vittoria Cervini will investigate and question how early modern architecture has visualised and responded to complex histories of empire and resistance, whose legacy still shapes our modern world. 

This talk includes exclusive access to the Queen’s House Loggia. 

NOTE: For security reasons, children under the age of 12 cannot access the Loggia.  

Provocation in Porcelain (13th November)
Can an art practice using porcelain shed light on colonial histories of white oppression and encourage dialogue about the role of whiteness in racial injustice? Porcelain is cherished for its purity, whiteness and delicate strength. These values are both materialised and projected by porcelain objects. 

Porcelain was collected obsessively by royalty and aristocracy in 17th-18th century Europe, who paid for it using the wealth generated by slave labour in plantation colonies. In the 20th century porcelain was employed as a propaganda tool by the Third Reich regime in Germany. 

For a maker, porcelain is a notoriously difficult material to work with. Can its properties – its fractiousness and vulnerability when raw, its strength, whiteness and delicate translucency when fired – be exploited to challenge ideological whiteness? 

Join artist Victoria Burgher to talk about the colonial legacies materialised in ceramics.