Professor Sandra Kemp

Director, The Ruskin – Museum and Research Centre, Professor

Profile

Professor Sandra Kemp became Director of The Ruskin - Library, Museum and Research Centre in October 2017. She is an academic and curator who has worked at prestigious institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, including the V&A, the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.

Kemp led the successful fund-raising campaign to secure The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection for Lancaster University, and in 2019 – the bicentenary year of John Ruskin’s birth – relaunched The Ruskin as an integrated university museum, archive and research centre. The ‘landmark acquisition’ (Art Fund) was the largest grant awarded in 2019 by the National Heritage Memorial Fund, leveraged on Kemp’s vision for The Ruskin as one of the world’s leading University Museums, that encourages us all to look closely, see clearly and imagine freely through Ruskin's works.

Her exhibition Ruskin: Museum of the Near Future explored Ruskin’s intense processes of visual observation through works rooted in the particularities of the natural world. Commissions by contemporary artists, testifying to the relevance of Ruskin’s ideas today, were interspersed amongst Ruskin’s paintings and drawings, diagrams and models, books, daguerreotypes and woodcuts, manuscripts and letters. The exhibition was profiled in the Daily Mail and the Financial Times podcast ‘John Ruskin's message for our times’. A short film of Ruskin: Museum of the Near Future is on YouTube.

In 2021, The Ruskin announced its forthcoming season, Tomorrow’s World Today: Ruskin, Art and Science. The programme launched with the Google Arts and Culture exhibition Painting with Sunlight: Ruskin and Science, co-curated by Kemp in partnership with the Royal Society, introduced in the blog post Cloud Perspectives.

John Ruskin: Prophet of the Anthropocene
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

‘John Ruskin 19th-century visionary: 21st-century inspiration’
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Celebrating Imperfection: John Ruskin and the Creative Arts in the 21st Century
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

John Ruskin, Science and the Environment
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Grappling with the Futures: Insights from Philosophy, History, and Science, Technology and Society
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Museum Universalities in Western Cultures Capitals in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

FutureDesignEd: Innovation in Design Education and Innovation in Education by Design
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Comparative Museologies: Case Studies from Asia
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Comparative Museologies
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

John Lockwood Kipling: Arts & Crafts in the Punjab and London
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

'The Evolution of the Museum'
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Universal Histories and Universal Museums Workshop
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Locating Creation
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Kipling's Lahore
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

V&A Kipling Study Day
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Dialogue on Design, Exhibition and Research Impact
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

John Lockwood Kipling : Arts and Crafts in the Punjab and London
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

Past Matters, Research Futures
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Future Faces: New Lexicons for Identity
Invited talk

Universal histories and universal museums: a transnational comparison
Invited talk

Kipling in India: India in Kipling
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

John Lockwood Kipling Symposium
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

First International Conference on Anticipation
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

100 Years From Now
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Scenario. The Future of History: A Cultural Perspective
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Futures by Design: Thinking Forward Through the Past
Invited talk

A Unified Knowledge? Arts, Science and Technologies of Visualisation
Invited talk

Human Enhancement: Future Designs
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Future Face: Image, Identity, Innovation
Invited talk

Self-portraiture
Invited talk

Future Face
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

Future Face
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

Future Face
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

The Development of Studio-Based Research at the Royal College of Art
Invited talk

Photography’s Legacy: The Changing Face of Portraiture
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

  • Centre for War and Diplomacy