Tate Britain, London

• ‘The Pre-Raphaelites at Tate Britain’, collaborative MA unit

• Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde, exhibition

• Tate British Art Network

‘The Pre-Raphaelites at Tate Britain’, collaborative MA unit, 2011–12

Led by Elizabeth Prettejohn (Bristol) and Alison Smith (Tate), this unit gave students the opportunity to research and catalogue paintings by Pre-Raphaelite artists in the Tate collection, in preparation for Tate Britain’s major exhibition, Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde (2012-13). The unit combined taught seminars on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, its artists and its historical contexts; visits to Tate Britain to work with Tate curators; and individual research into works in the collection. Students learned skills in museum cataloguing and object-based research, as well as studying the history of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde (Tate Britain, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Pushkin Museum, Moscow; the Mori Art Center, Tokyo, 2012-14)

In her influential book The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites (2000, reissued in paperback 2007), Elizabeth Prettejohn presented the provocative idea that the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was the first avant-garde movement in modern art. Tate’s exhibition Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde (2012-13) explored this hypothesis, arguing that the Brotherhood was deliberately unorthodox, and made possible radically new concepts and techniques in art and design. The exhibition became the second most popular show ever staged at Tate Britain and provoked lively discussion in the press and social media, including coverage on Radio 4's Front Row. Prettejohn was closely involved in the curatorial process. She sat on the advisory board, and contributed a catalogue essay on ‘The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy’ which The Telegraph (10 September 2010), described as ‘provocative and surprising’.

Tate British Art Network

A number of BARC members participate in Tate's British Art Network, which brings together professionals working on British art including curators, researchers and academics. For example, Grace Brockington gave a paper at the inaugural seminar, which explored the subject of art in Britain in the First World War (19 April 2013). She and Sophie Martin were both invited to participate in a workshop on 'Art Writing in Britain, 1910-1930' (13 December 2013).