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For centuries, women artists have produced autobiographical accounts of their lives and careers, using diaries, letters and other types of writing as a means of resistance, reflection, and self-fashioning. Taking a broad geographical approach, this symposium will address how women artists, between 1900 and the present, navigate their artistic identities through writing. We aim to explore women artists’ life writings not simply as biography or confession, but as creative and strategic sites of agency, where women articulate alternative scripts for the artistic life. Structured as a series of short papers and roundtable conversations, the conference aims to foreground discussion and debate.

Organisers: Dr Rebecca Birrell, Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, University of St Andrews, and Bye Fellow, 91����, University of Cambridge; Prof Linda Goddard, Professor of Art History, University of St Andrews; and Harriet Loffler, Director of The Women’s Art Collection, 91����

The symposium will accompany the Relative Ties exhibition that will explore the work of three generations of women artists from the illustrious Nicholson family, from the early twentieth century to today. Featuring paintings, wallpaper, fabrics, rugs, stencils and works on paper – many of which have never been on public display – the exhibition will unite works by Mabel Nicholson, Nancy Nicholson, EQ Nicholson and Louisa Creed. Tracing the influence between these women, the exhibition will reveal how creative legacies are inherited through matrilineal lines and will be accompanied by a new commission by artist Katie Schwab. Piecing together the entangled relationships of these women has been made possible via letters, exhibition ephemera and anecdotes passed down by the surviving generations. The exhibition provides the perfect backdrop to a symposium that looks at the remnants, traces and archives that document and outlive these women artists.

Image: Margaret Harrison, Dorothy Wordsworth (The White Foxgloves), 1982. The Women's Art Collection. 

Schedule

Buckingham House

9.30am Registration open

10 – 10.15am Introduction by Linda Goddard

10.15 – 11.30am Panel 1 Visibility / Invisibility

Chair: Catherine Grant (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

Senah Tuma (The Open University), ‘“I Don’t Know and I Don’t Care,” The Active Forgettings of Lucie Rie’

Jessica Braum (Temple University), ‘What Remains Unsaid: Reading Kim Lim’s Words, Silences, and Afterlives of Artistic Speech’

Helena Reckitt (Goldsmiths, University of London), ‘Coming After: Writing to, from, and with Gretchen Hupfel’

11.30 – 11.45am Coffee break

11.45 – 1pm Panel 2 Intergenerational, Matrilineal, and Diasporic Connections

Chair: Pragya Agarwal (Loughborough University and Newnham College, Cambridge)

Derya Sayın (Koc University), ‘Between Letters, Between Women: Artistic Identity and Solidarity in Writing’

Michelle Huang (University of St Andrews), ‘Art, Identity and Legacy: Nancy Kuo and the Self-Fashioning of Chinese Women Artists in Twentieth-Century Britain’

Harriet Atkinson (University of Brighton), ‘Material Memories and Matrilineal Legacies: Tracing My Grandmother’s Artistic Life’

1pm – 2.15pm Lunch (optional tour of Relative Ties at 1.30pm)

2.15 – 3.30pm Panel 3 Archives and Collections in Practice

Chair: Inga Fraser (Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge)

Annabel Bai Jackson (The National Gallery, London), ‘“Come and meet a real artist”: The National Gallery’s Oral Histories Project’

Delphine Wanes (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), ‘Study, Persist, Organize, and Thrive: Toward a Collective History of Women Artists through Their Writings’

Hester R. Westley (The British Library), ‘Artists’ Lives: Tracing the Borders of Women Artists’ Self-Narration’

3.30-3.45pm Tea break

3.45 – 5pm Panel 4 The Poetics of Life Writing

Chair: Rebecca Birrell

Aurélie Verdier (Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), ‘Everything that will be biographical (one day). Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster Life Writing’

Jude Browning (University of Edinburgh) and Corin Sworn (Northumbria University), ‘Unwieldy Transmissions’

Amy Tobin (University of Cambridge), ‘Rosemary Mayer’s Passages’

5-5.30pm Closing remarks: Susanna Avery-Quash (The National Gallery, London)

5.30-6.30pm Drinks

6.30 – 7.45pm Women Artists' Life Writing in Fiction and Biography

Join writers Rebecca Birrell, Harriet Baker and Alicia Foster for a discussion of how women artists’ life writing has been used in their work, encompassing fiction, non-fiction and biography. Chaired by Professor Linda Goddard.

The symposium will be followed by the Women and the Arts Forum 2026 conference "In Her Words: Women Artists and Life Writing Before 1920", at the National Gallery, London, on 2 October 2026.

Conference Bursaries

Funding is available to support those who wish to attend the symposium in person, but who are not presenting papers. Priority will be given to those who do not have institutional support to attend conferences. While online tickets are available, we recognise the benefits of attending in person, with the opportunities it offers for network-building and exhibition viewing.

To apply, please fill out this short form. Applicants will be asked to include a short statement explaining their interest in attending the event in-person, which should be no more than 250 words. Applications are due by 12:00 BST on Friday 29 May.

Applicants will be notified of their application status by 5 June. The exact amount of funding will be distributed based on the number of applicants and stated need, but we expect to give approximately £80 to each applicant where required. Following the symposium, participants will be asked to submit a short reflection (no more than 250 words) regarding their experience at the symposium.

Please direct any questions to Prof Linda Goddard (ljg21@st-andrews.ac.uk)

Accessibility

• Buckingham House is located away from the college's main building, situated on Buckingham Road - directly opposite (across the road from) the turning circle/main entrance to the college.
• The entrance is accessible via a power-assisted door with a 'Push to Open' button. Past this door, in the entrance vestibule, is a set of manual glass double doors, which can be pushed or pulled.
• Gendered toilets and one accessible toilet are located at the rear of the conference centre, to the right of the servery.
• The lecture theatre is located at the very end of the foyer via manual wooden double doors with pull handles, leading to a vestibule.
• Turning left, there is a route to a lift, which provides access to the front row of seating and the stage.
• Use of the lift must be pre-arranged as a key is required to operate it.

See here for more information about College accessibility: https://cambridgemeetingspace.com/accessibility-information

Please get in touch if you have any further queries or requirements: or call the Porter's Lodge at +44 (0)1223 762100.