A Lunchtime Talk with Dr Elsje van Kessel on Art and the Ocean

We are thrilled to be joined by Elsje van Kessel (University of St Andrews), who will explore seaweed in the context of the history of art and the oceans.

About the Speaker

Elsje van Kessel is an art historian specialising in western European art in a global context during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Her work is driven by the question how people in the past gave meaning and attributed value to works of art and material culture at the time they were made and long afterwards. She has published extensively on art in Renaissance Italy, particularly Venice, and on the long history of display. Her current research focuses on the circulation of art objects on the early modern oceans, and she teaches various modules in relation to this work.

She is currently working on my second monograph, which focuses on the oceanic journeys of early modern art objects, especially those travelling within the Portuguese maritime empire. What happened to objects on board ships when they crossed the dangerous oceans, and how did their fates intersect with early modern empire-building, colonisation, and the extraction of resources? This project has received generous support through fellowships at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study and the Leverhulme Trust.

About Treasures from the Deep

Treasures from the Deep is a three-month programme across a book club, lunchtime talks, workshops, an exhibition and storytelling sessions exploring how algal collections can inspire new ways of thinking, spark interdisciplinary conversations, and offer a lens into our past, present, and future relationships with the natural world.

Between January and April, we are delighted to be joined by art historian Elsje van Kessel, writer Christina Riley, modern languages scholar Damiano Benvegnu and Victorian literature scholar Laurence Talairach.

Free for St Andrews Botanic Garden Friends Members, £3 for visitors