Slade Lectures in Fine Art 2026 with Professor Terry Smith

The Department of History of Art at the University of Cambridge's Slade Professor of Fine Art for the 2025-26 academic year is Professor Terry Smith, who will be delivering a series of eight lectures titled 'Frames of Vision: The Intelligence of Artists'.

About the Series:

Each lecture will depart from a close reading of one work of art or one iconic image to explore a major aspect of human world picturing as it has been understood and transformed by the pictorial intelligence of a particular artist. The historical trajectory will range from Indigenous Dreaming imagery (including that of Australian Aboriginal artists Yirawalla, Narritjin Maymuru, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula and Emily Kam Kngwarreye) and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, through Piero della Francesca’s portrait of Saint Augustine, Giorgione’s meditation on philosophy, and key works by (among others) Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, and Willem de Kooning, to installations, actions and projects by several contemporary artists and art collectives, locating them within current image economies, or iconomies.

Dates and Lecture Titles:

• Tuesday 27th of January: Introduction: Visual Allegories of Seeing as Knowing, Plato and Giorgione.
• Tuesday 3rd of February: Seeing Time at Sansepolcro: Piero Della Francesca paints St Augustine.
• Tuesday 10th of February: The Origins of Abstraction, The Body as Medium: Edgar Degas.
• Tuesday 17th of February: Figuring the Truth in Painting: Paul Cézanne and the White Abyss.
• Tuesday 24th of February: Women, Lack, War: Picasso, Kahlo, de Kooning.
• Tuesday 3rd of March: Everywhen: Yirawalla, Narritjin Maymuru, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, and Emily Kam Kngwarreye.
• Tuesday 10th of March: In and out of the cave: World picturing in contemporary art installations.
• Tuesday 17th of March: Utopics within the Iconomy: world changing art activism, picturing world futures.

Lectures are free to attend and open to all members of the University and the public. All lectures are in-person and will not be recorded.