Lectures please note change of venue - (click here for the new venue) All society lectures start at 11.00am. Members should apply to the Membership Secretary for PRIOR PERMISSION to bring guests as restrictions will apply to the numbers using the hall. A fee of £7 is charged for each guest and guests must be booked in by the Monday prior to the lecture. We have just received notice from the Trustees of the Victoria Hall that from the beginning of 2026 they are no longer able to open the upper floor for our lectures. We understand that this is for financial reasons. Although we are aware of various rescue plans, these are unlikely to lead to a reopening before the summer. We are therefore forced to find an alternative venue for the time being. We are delighted that Rutland County has offered to accommodate us in the Museum in Catmos St, Oakham from January until May, and we have accepted that offer. We are also in discussion with a number of sites in or close to Oakham for a longer term solution. Apart from this new venue, our programme remains unchanged. Coffee will be available as usual from 10.15 for an 11.00 lecture. On Thursday 22 January we look forward to welcoming Ian Swankie to the Museum and hearing the amazing story of Battersea Power Station, its listing and varied roles over the century. From January until May 2026 we shall meet at the Rutland County Museum, Catmos St, Oakham LE15 6HW. Locations for lectures later this year will be announced in due course. 22 January 2026 at the Museum in Catmos Street, Oakham Ian Swankie Battersea Power Station – the Four Iconic Chimneys This is a talk about just one building. It has 60 million bricks, four chimneys and an amazing story to tell. Planned in the 1920s, the massive power station operated for fifty years but was then abandoned for the next forty years while dozens of ideas were proposed for its use. It is now a Grade 2* listed building and has been brilliantly converted into a landmark development including residential, retail, offices and leisure which all still reflect its industrial heritage. In this sumptuously illustrated talk, Ian will take us on an armchair tour of this famous site. A view of Battersea Power Station in 2008, when not in active service and before major redevelopment of the area. Photo: Gaetan Lee from London 26 February 2026 Sarah Burles Les Trois Grandes Dames of Impressionism The Impressionists were an innovative and radical group of artists whose took Paris by storm in the 1870s. Using new colours and techniques, they created paintings of modern life which shocked and horrified the art establishment. From the start the group included women artists but their contribution to Impressionism has often been overshadowed by their male contemporaries. Marie Bracquemond, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt all exhibited regularly at the Impressionist exhibitions alongside artists such as Monet, Renoir and Degas. Marie Bracquemond Under the Lamp Public domain 26 March 2026 Mary Alexander The Waldorf Hotel: The extraordinary story of two iconic hotels built on Astor Feuds, Fortunes and Art Patronage. Immortalised in Cole Porter’s lyrics “You’re the top! You’re a Waldorf salad”, the Waldorf Astoria hotel, New York was ‘home in New York to the stars’, international celebrities and world leaders. Built at the height of the Depression and famous before it opened, its glittering Jazz Age interiors were created by leading European designers, artists and sculptors. The Waldorf Astoria, New York. After 1898 23 April 2026 Juliet Heslewood Fathers: artists’ portraits of their own fathers So many portraits of artists’ fathers show them sitting still, wearing dark suits and reading a newspaper. But further research reveals broader aspects of how artists have viewed their parent – not always with filial affection. Daniel Huntington: Portrait of the Artist's Father 1889 28 May 2026 Mary Branson New Dawn: A Monument to Women’s Suffrage, Houses of Parliament This talk informs people about my artist process and what was involved in making this public work of art. I will start the talk with an introduction to my artistic practise, then go on to describe how I won the national competition to be artist in residence for Women’s Suffrage in Parliament. I go on to talk about the brief and how I came up with the concept for the monument and how the artwork was created. I will end with a video showing the piece being unveiled for the first time to the public. New Dawn. Artist Mary Branson 2016 Medium Metal and illuminated glass sculpture 25 June 2026 Alice Foster The Art of Partying – a feast for the eyes From Greek Mosaics in the second century, through weddings in the Bible, Renaissance allegories of refinement and excess, sixteenth century peasant parties out of doors, eighteenth century harlequins, to the celebratory styles of twentieth century painters, the depiction of parties has always been popular in the history of Western Art. Alice Foster traces the variety of merrymaking, banqueting, dances and music in a feast of colour. A late Roman-Republican banquet scene in a fresco from Herculaneum, Italy. Public domain July 2026 No meeting 27 August 2026 Raymond Warburton Basquiat and Banksy - Superstars of Street Art This lecture looks at the art of Banksy and Jean- Michel Basquiat. What binds them together is ‘street’ or ‘graffiti’ art? Banksy is British, out of Bristol, and emerged in the 1990s with a stencil-based approach to street art. His work pops up in the most surprising places. Most memorable are large rodents, girls with balloons and flower-throwing freedom fighters. Some see Banksy as a prankster but with increasingly serious cultural or socio-political points to make. The picture that shredded itself at Sotheby’s in 2018 is a good example. Banksy remains, anonymous despite his popularity. Born in Brooklyn in 1960, Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the neo-expressionism movement. He died in 1988. 24 September 2026 Brain Stater From negative to positive: photography’s long road to recognition as Art John Ruskin, the leading critic and aesthete, wrote in the 1850s that photography could never be Art. This lecture traces the struggle to overturn that view, beginning with the Pictorialist school of Victorian photographers and closing with the recent emergence of photographic art inspired by digital technology. Along the way we examine the contested virtues of colour images and the present revival of old- fashioned film cameras. I Wait. Model is Rachel Gurney. Albumen print, 327 x 254mm (12 7/8 x 10"). Photo: Julia Margaret Cameron. Public domain 22 October 2026 Cindy Polemis Miniature portraits: Tiny treasures close to our heart From diplomatic gifts to tokens of love, between the 16th-19th centuries miniatures were commissioned as small portraits which could be held in the hand or placed inside lockets creating an intimate relationship between the owner and sitter. I will look at the history of these tiny treasures of art. François Clouet - Henri II of Valois and Caterina de' Medici, Surrounded by Members of Their Family - Unknown author. Public domain The start of the new membership year 2026/27 26 November 2026 Elizabeth Gowing ‘The Silver Thread: silver filigree and traditional arts in Kosovo’ From the early Kosovan silver mines which are mentioned in Dante, through the twentieth century politics over Kosovo’s mines which resulted in both a war and a golf course, a silver thread winds through Kosovo’s history. Its most intricate tanglings are in the country’s cultural capital, Prizren, where a seventh generation of filigree artisans use ‘filum’ and ‘granum’, zigzags, ‘mouse- tooth’ designs and other twists and turns to magic lacy creations from dull sticks of raw material. The results – in boxes, buttons, jewellery, religious ornamentation and the talismans of superstition – are a fine narrative of Kosovo’s history and traditions. Medieval panagiarion Serbian. Photo: JohnGotten. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 December 2026 No meeting.