Anna Jameson Lecture 2023

The third annual Anna Jameson Lecture was delivered by Professor Babette Bohn from Texas Christian University on Tuesday 18 April 2023. Professor Bohn delivered the first Anna Jameson Lecture that was not on the topic of Jameson herself. As a specialist in early modern Italy, Professor Bohn focused on the acquisitions of artworks by Italian women artists who lived before 1800, focusing on museums in largely English-speaking countries in the UK, USA and Ireland. Given that an investigation of this subject had never been undertaken before, her goal was to assess the evolving interest in Italian women’s art as seen in the development of museum collections that were mostly founded after the early modern period. She questioned why interest in this topic had emerged only recently, and what factors made work by Italian women artists desirable additions to museum collections, whether as gifts, bequests or purchases.

The article version of the lecture can be found below, accompanied by an appendix booklet with four spreadsheets detailing Professor Bohn’s primary research.

Download the lecture PDF

Babette Bohn, ‘‘Women of Undoubted Genius’: Collecting Women’s Art’, No. 3, 18 April 2023 (PDF, 19.6MB)

Babette Bohn, Anna Jameson Lecture 2023, Appendices: Spreadsheets 1–4 (PDF, 3MB)

The Anna Jameson Lecture series is generously supported by the Diane Apostolos-Cappadona Trust.