The Tessin Lecture 2022 and 2021: Melissa Hyde and Penny Sparke

This year the Tessin Lecture for both 2022 and 2021 will be held since last year’s lecture was postponed due to the pandemic. 15 September Melissa Hyde will talk about why, in the eighteenth-century, to wear pink was to make a statement – a statement made all the more emphatic and enduring when memorialized in portraiture. 28 September Penny Sparke gives a lecture on the changing roles and meanings of plants in interior design, from the Victorian era to the Modernism and beyond. The lectures are open to the public and admission is free.

The Tessin Lecture 2022
Melissa Hyde
In the Pink: Eighteenth-Century French Portraiture

Melissa Hyde is Professor and Distinguished Teaching Scholar at the University of Florida. Her research and publications focus on gender and visual culture in eighteenth century France. This talk will demonstrate why, in the eighteenth-century, to wear pink was to make a statement – a statement made all the more emphatic and enduring when memorialized in portraiture; and one in which gender, class and/or race played a fundamental role. These matters concerning portraiture ‘in the pink’ will be addressed by way of some very basic, but actually quite complicated, questions: what did pink mean in the eighteenth century? What colours were comprehended by ‘pink’? Who did or didn’t embrace this colour and why? In light of the complexities and nuances of pink, what might it have meant for a racially ‘white’ Frenchman to wear this notionally feminine colour (or to have himself depicted wearing it)?

Date: Thursday 15 September, 16:00-18:00
Venue: The South Courtyard (Södra ljusgården), Nationalmuseum, Södra Blasieholmshamnen 2, Stockholm
Language: English
Free admission, no pre-bookings, limited number of seats. 

The Tessin Lecture 2021
Penny Sparke
Nature Inside. Plants and Flowers in the Modern Interior

Penny Sparke is Professor of Design History and Director of the Modern Interiors Research Centre (MIRC) at Kingston University, London. Through a study that examines the changing roles and meanings of plants and flowers in both private and public indoor spaces created in the period following industrialisation and urbanisation in the western world, this talk will discuss the importance of design historians considering the ‘natural’ alongside the ‘material’ and the ‘spatial’. Tracing a narrative through from the Victorian era to that of architectural and design Modernism, Late Modernism and beyond, it will demonstrate the way in which this addition transforms the way we currently think about the history of the ‘Modern Interior’. This is the 2021 Tessin Lecture, postponed one year due to the pandemic.

Date: Wednesday 28 September, 17:00-19:00
Venue: The South Courtyard (Södra ljusgården), Nationalmuseum, Södra Blasieholmshamnen 2, Stockholm
Language: English
Free admission, no pre-bookings, limited number of seats.

The Tessin Lecture
Once a year the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm invites a prominent international scholar to give a lecture in art history. The lecture, which is public, is a way to pay tribute to an exceptional scholar in art history and emphasize the museum’s commitment to research.

Media enquiries
Hanna Tottmar, head of press, press@nationalmuseum.se, +46 8 5195 4400