Professor Mark Hallett is ³Ù³ó±ðÌýMäritÌýRausingÌýDirector of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ.
Appointed as Märit Rausing Director in August 2023, Mark Hallett said that it was ‘a privilege to be asked to lead the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ at this time in its history. Famous for its path-breaking research, outstanding staff, superb collections and newly renovated Gallery, the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ is one of Britain’s great jewels, attracting a global community of scholars, students and visitors.’ Under his Directorship, the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ has expanded its academic programme, welcomed a record number of visitors to the gallery, and confirmed its plans to create a new world-class campus at Somerset House, London
Before joining the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ, Hallett spent more than a decade as Director of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, a London-based research institute affiliated with Yale University. Under his leadership, the Centre strengthened its international reputation for supporting scholarship on British art and architecture across all periods, pioneering innovative digital publications, broadening its learning programmes, and launching ambitious research initiatives.
As an art historian, Hallett is best known for his many publications on British art, and for his curatorial involvement in a series of major exhibitions at venues including Tate Britain, the Royal Academy, the Wallace Collection and the Yale Center for British Art. His work ranges from major monographs and exhibitions devoted to the eighteenth-century artists William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds, to publications on the contemporary artists George Shaw and Frank Auerbach. He also co-edited and contributed to the major online publication,ÌýThe Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769–2018. He is currently co-curating an exhibition titledÌýTurner and the Landscape Generation: Journeys in Watercolour,Ìýwhich will open at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Gallery in summer 2027.
Hallett, who grew up in mid-Wales, attended his local secondary School in Tregaron, Cardiganshire. He took his undergraduate degree at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and studied for a master’s degree and a PhD at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ. He was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at Yale University in 1990–91. Between 1994 and 2012, he taught at the University of York, where he spent five years as the Head of the History of Art department, and was a member of the University’s Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. He gave the 2011 Watson Gordon lecture at the Scottish National Gallery and the 2019 Aspects of Art lecture at the British Academy.
In 2021, Hallett was appointed a member of ³Ù³ó±ðÌý.
Publications
Books and Catalogues:
- Frank Auerbach: Drawings of People (co-edited with Catherine Lampert), Paul Mellon Centre, 2022
- George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field (ed.), Yale University Press, 2018
- The Great Spectacle: 250 Years of the Royal Academy Summer ExhibitionÌý(co-authored with Sarah Turner), Royal Academy Publishing, 2018
- Court, Country, City: Essays on British Art and Architecture, 1660–1735 (co-edited with Martin MyroneÌýand Nigel Llewellyn),ÌýYale University Press,Ìý2016
- Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint (edited with Lucy Davis), The Wallace Collection, 2015
- Reynolds: Portraiture in Action, Yale University Press, 2014
- Living with the Royal Academy: Artistic Ideals and Experiences in England, 1769-1848 (ed. with Sarah Monks and John Barrell), Ashgate, 2013
- Faces in a Library: ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds’ ‘Streatham Worthies’ (The Watson Gordon Lecture 2011),ÌýNational Galleries of Scotland, 2012
- William Etty: Art and Controversy (ed. with Sarah Burnage and Laura Turner), Philip Wilson Publishers, 2011
- Hogarth, co-authored with Christine Riding), Tate Publishing, 2007
- Eighteenth Century York: Culture, Space and Society, with Jane Rendall, Borthwick Institute, 2003
- Hogarth, Phaidon Press, 2000
- The Spectacle of Difference: Graphic Satire in the Age of Hogarth, Yale University Press, 1999
Online Publications:
- , 1769–2018 (co-editor) Paul Mellon Centre, 2018
Films and Recordings:
- , made with Jon Law, Paul Mellon Centre, 2021
- , made with Jon Law, Paul Mellon Centre, 2021
- , Paul Mellon Centre, 2020
- , Paul Mellon Centre, 2020
- , Paul Mellon Centre, 2020
- , 12 short films made with Rosie Ram and Jon Law, Paul Mellon Centre, 2019
Essays and articles:
- ‘’,ÌýThe Journal of the British Academy, volume 8 (2020)
- ‘A Double Capacity: Gainsborough at the Summer Exhibition’, in Christoph Vogtherr (ed.),ÌýThomas Gainsborough: The Modern Landscape, Hamburger Kunstalle, 2018
- ‘Cornucopia: Royal Female Portraiture and the Imperatives of Reproduction’ (co-authored with Cassandra Albinson), in Joanna Marschner (ed.),ÌýEnlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World, Yale University Press, 2017
- ‘A monument to intimacy: Joshua Reynolds’s The Marlborough Family’,Ìýin Art History, Vol.31, no. 5, 2008
- ‘Reynolds, Celebrity and the Exhibition Space’, and numerous catalogue entries, in Martin Postle (ed)ÌýJoshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity, Tate Publishing, 2005
- Reading the Walls: Pictorial Dialogue at the British Royal Academy’, inÌýEighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 37, no. 4 (2004)
- ‘From Out of the Shadows: Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Captain Robert Orme’, inÌýVisual Culture in Britain, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2004
- ‘Manly Satire: William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress’ in Bernadette Fort and Angela Rosenthal (eds.),ÌýThe Other Hogarth: The Aesthetics of Difference, Princeton University Press, 2001.
- ‘James Gillray and the Language of Graphic Satire’, in Richard Godfrey (ed.)ÌýGillray and the Art of Caricature, Tate Gallery Publications, 2001.
- ‘The Business of Criticism: the Press and the Royal Academy Exhibition in Eighteenth-Century London’ in David SolkinÌý(ed.)ÌýArt on the line: the Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House 1780-1836, Yale University Press, 2001.
- ‘The view across the City: William Hogarth and the visual culture of eighteenth-century London’ in David Bindman, Frederic Ogee and Peter Wagner (eds.),ÌýHogarth: Representing Nature’s Machines, Manchester University Press, 2001.
- ‘Painting: Exhibitions, Audiences, Critics, 1780–1830’, inÌýAn Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832, edited by Iain McCalman, Oxford University Press, 1999
- ‘The Medley Print in Early Eighteenth-Century London’, inÌýArt History, Vol 20, no. 2, June 1997
- ‘Framing the Modern City: Canaletto’s Images of London’, in Michael Liversidge and Jane Farrington (eds.),ÌýCanaletto and England, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 1993