Portrait of J.J. Winckelmann by A. von Maron (1768)

Today marks the 250th anniversary of the untimely death of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, a pioneering scholar of antiquity and arbiter of taste in 18th-century Europe. As part of the Winckelmann anniversaries 2017-2018 (we celebrated the 300th anniversary of Winckelmann’s birth 9 December 2017) we are pleased to launch a special online exhibition curated by Connell Greene, currently a third year student in our BA in Classical Studies: Longing for what we have lost: An influential explorer’s pursuit of classical antiquity. This exhibition considers how, since his death, Winckelmann’s life and scholarship have continued to fascinate artists, writers and thinkers, and thus elevate his significance within European cultural history in general and LGBTQ history in particular. Connell worked on this exhibit as part of his UROP, under the supervision of Dr Katherine Harloe and Prof. Amy C. Smith.

On our Winckelmann research project web pages you can also explore upcoming events and our other exhibitions, From Italy to Britain. Winckelmann and the spread of neoclassical taste and Winckelmann and Curiosity in the 18th-century gentleman’s library. These latter exhibitions, which explore Winckelmann’s influence on the reception of the taste for classics in Europe, are the fruit of collaborations between the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology and partners at UoR and beyond. The latter exhibit, hosted by Christ Church Library, Oxford, and curated by our Dr Katherine Harloe and Prof. Amy Smith, together with Dr Cristina Neagu (Christ Church), will be launched 29 June 2018 and displayed until 26 October 2018. It is launched simultaneously with a workshop, organised by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford, in collaboration with Christ Church, Ideals and Nations: New perspectives on the European reception of Winckelmann’s aesthetics. This is the third and last of a trilogy of workshops we have organised on the theme, Under the Greek Sky: Taste and the Reception of Classical art from Winckelmann to the present, with colleagues at London (KCL and Warburg) as well as Reading and Oxford.

Our collaboration with Christ Church is particularly appropriate, since it recalls the University of Reading’s origins as an extension college—University Extension College, Reading—founded by Christ Church in 1892.