Terry Smith has been appointed Slade Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Cambridge for 2025-2026. The Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Cambridge was founded in 1869 as the result of a bequest from the art collector Felix Slade (1788-1868). At the same time, similar chairs were founded in the Universities of Oxford and London. Holders of the Chair usually deliver eight public lectures and four classes for students in the department of the History of Art during either the Michaelmas or the Lent Term of their year in office. The Slade Professorship of Fine Art has been held by many of the most distinguished historians of art and architecture from around the world, among them James Ackerman, Anthony Blunt, Anita Brookner, Roger Fry, Ernst Gombrich, Nicholaus Pevsner, Griselda Pollock, Virginia Spate, and Rudolf Wittkower.
During Lent Term 2026 (January 27 to March 19), Smith will deliver eight lectures in a series entitled ‘Image as Idea: Seeing, Showing, Thinking in the History of Art’. Each lecture will depart from a close reading of one work of art or one iconic image to explore a major aspect of human world picturing. The historical trajectory will range from Indigenous Dreaming imagery (including that of Australian Aboriginal artists Yirawalla, Narritjin Maymuru, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula and Emily Kam Kngwarreye) and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, through Piero della Francesca’s portrait of Saint Augustine and key works by Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, and Willem de Kooning, to installations, actions and projects by several contemporary artists and art collectives, locating them within current image economies, or iconomies.
Learn more about forthcoming Slade Professors at https://www.hoart.cam.ac.uk/aboutthedept/sladeprofs