Leighton House – The Renovation and Transformation of an Artist’s Studio House

Speakers: Dr Melanie Gibson and Hannah Lund

Abstract

This lecture will present two aspects of the transformation of Leighton House: the making of the Arab Hall by Leighton in the 1870s, and the museum’s recent capital project completed in October 2022.

Frederic Leighton and his architect and friend George Aitchison began constructing the Arab Hall in 1877. It was finally completed four years later, a carefully conceived space inspired by the architecture that Leighton had experienced during his travels to Algiers, Istanbul, Cairo and Damascus and the tiles that he collected while in these cities. Although he nonchalantly described it as ‘a little addition for the sake of something beautiful to look at once in a while’, its planning and construction were considerably more complex and in this talk Melanie Gibson will explore some of these aspects of its creation.

Leighton House has recently reopened after two years of closure for the major Hidden Gem to National Treasure project. This project has seen the renovation of the two twentieth century additions to the museum to create additional display and exhibition space, new visitor facilities, step free access, a purpose-built collection store, and dedicated learning centre. As part of the project the museum also commissioned Shahrzad Ghaffari to complete the mural Oneness in the new helical staircase – the first contemporary work to be on permanent display at the museum. Hannah Lund will discuss the different elements of this renovation project, looking at its implications for the historic house and the future of the museum.

Speaker biographies

Hannah Lund is Assistant Curator at Leighton House and Sambourne House. Over the past three years she has been focused on creating new displays, interpretation, and exhibitions for the museum’s
reopening in October 2022. Hannah joined the museum fulltime in 2018, working on a project
to rationalise the reserve collection. Prior to this she worked as a teaching assistant on the MOOC Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites organised by the National Museum of Scotland in collaboration with Edinburgh University. Hannah studied History of Art at Edinburgh University, completing a Research Masters in British material culture in 2017.

Melanie Gibson PhD (SOAS, London University) is Executive Trustee of Gingko and Editor of the Gingko Art Series. She was convenor of the Islamic Art module of the Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art at SOAS from 2005-2017 and currently acts as consultant to the module and was formerly head of the Art History department at New College of the Humanities, London. Her research specialises in the ceramics, glass and sculpture of the Islamic world. For the last seven years she has been a trustee of The Friends of Leighton House and is closely involved with the education programme at the house as well as researching all aspects of the making of its ‘Arab Hall’.

Contact

Email: rw51@soas.ac.uk