Lectures please note change of venue - (click here for the new venue) All society lectures start at 11.00am. Members should apply to the Membership Secretary for PRIOR PERMISSION to bring guests as restrictions will apply to the numbers using the hall. A fee of £7 is charged for each guest and guests must be booked in by the Monday prior to the lecture. Coffee will be available as usual from 10.15 for an 11.00 lecture. 28 May 2026 Mary Branson New Dawn: A Monument to Women’s Suffrage, Houses of Parliament This talk informs people about my artist process and what was involved in making this public work of art. I will start the talk with an introduction to my artistic practise, then go on to describe how I won the national competition to be artist in residence for Women’s Suffrage in Parliament. I go on to talk about the brief and how I came up with the concept for the monument and how the artwork was created. I will end with a video showing the piece being unveiled for the first time to the public. New Dawn. Artist Mary Branson 2016 Medium Metal and illuminated glass sculpture 2 July 2026 (a change from the previous date of June 25th) Alice Foster The Art of Partying – a feast for the eyes From Greek Mosaics in the second century, through weddings in the Bible, Renaissance allegories of refinement and excess, sixteenth century peasant parties out of doors, eighteenth century harlequins, to the celebratory styles of twentieth century painters, the depiction of parties has always been popular in the history of Western Art. Alice Foster traces the variety of merrymaking, banqueting, dances and music in a feast of colour. A late Roman-Republican banquet scene in a fresco from Herculaneum, Italy. Public domain 2 July 2026 (a change from the previous date of June 25th) Alice Foster The Art of Partying – a feast for the eyes From Greek Mosaics in the second century, through weddings in the Bible, Renaissance allegories of refinement and excess, sixteenth century peasant parties out of doors, eighteenth century harlequins, to the celebratory styles of twentieth century painters, the depiction of parties has always been popular in the history of Western Art. Alice Foster traces the variety of merrymaking, banqueting, dances and music in a feast of colour. A late Roman-Republican banquet scene in a fresco from Herculaneum, Italy. Public domain July 2026 No meeting 27 August 2026 & Lunch Raymond Warburton Basquiat and Banksy - Superstars of Street Art This lecture looks at the art of Banksy and Jean- Michel Basquiat. What binds them together is ‘street’ or ‘graffiti’ art? Banksy is British, out of Bristol, and emerged in the 1990s with a stencil-based approach to street art. His work pops up in the most surprising places. Most memorable are large rodents, girls with balloons and flower-throwing freedom fighters. Some see Banksy as a prankster but with increasingly serious cultural or socio-political points to make. The picture that shredded itself at Sotheby’s in 2018 is a good example. Banksy remains, anonymous despite his popularity. Born in Brooklyn in 1960, Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the neo-expressionism movement. He died in 1988. Click here for a booking form for lunch. Please return booking form by Augus 17th Important information about future meetings. Unfortunately for us, in the autumn of this year the Museum is likely to be closed for refurbishment which will allow for exciting displays of replicas of the Rutland ichthyosaur and Roman mosaic at Ketton. For some time, and probably the whole of 2027, we shall need to hold our lectures elsewhere - before, we hope, returning to the Museum one day. To explain further. we are too large a society to meet in the alternative Oakham locations available on Thursdays. Therefore we have arranged to meet at Greetham Valley Golf Club in September and November, (after our usual August lecture and lunch there), and apologise for the additional travelling that this will generate. In October, in keeping to a venue in the town, we are planning to meet in All Saints Church Oakham since it is available on the Thursday morning during Half Term. The challenge of where to meet will almost certainly stay with us during 2027, and since lecturers are booked well over a year in advance, your Committee has had to consider the implications already. What is more important? The traditional timing of our lectures or a location in Oakham? We believe that as “The Arts Society, Oakham” we should meet in or close to Oakham, but we do not believe that will be practical on Thursdays. Therefore, to help secure a good venue, and although it will disappoint some, from January 2027 we plan to move our lectures from the morning of the fourth Thursday to the morning of fourth Tuesday. Wherever and whenever we meet, our number one priority is, and always will be, the presentation of lectures of the highest quality. GREETHAM VALLEY GOLF CLUB 24 September 2026 Brain Stater From negative to positive: photography’s long road to recognition as Art John Ruskin, the leading critic and aesthete, wrote in the 1850s that photography could never be Art. This lecture traces the struggle to overturn that view, beginning with the Pictorialist school of Victorian photographers and closing with the recent emergence of photographic art inspired by digital technology. Along the way we examine the contested virtues of colour images and the present revival of old- fashioned film cameras. I Wait. Model is Rachel Gurney. Albumen print, 327 x 254mm (12 7/8 x 10"). Photo: Julia Margaret Cameron. Public domain ALL SAINTS CHURCH OAKHAM 22 October 2026 Cindy Polemis Miniature portraits: Tiny treasures close to our heart From diplomatic gifts to tokens of love, between the 16th-19th centuries miniatures were commissioned as small portraits which could be held in the hand or placed inside lockets creating an intimate relationship between the owner and sitter. I will look at the history of these tiny treasures of art. François Clouet - Henri II of Valois and Caterina de' Medici, Surrounded by Members of Their Family - Unknown author. Public domain The start of the new membership year 2026/27 GREETHAM VALLEY GOLF CLUB 26 November 2026 Elizabeth Gowing ‘The Silver Thread: silver filigree and traditional arts in Kosovo’ From the early Kosovan silver mines which are mentioned in Dante, through the twentieth century politics over Kosovo’s mines which resulted in both a war and a golf course, a silver thread winds through Kosovo’s history. Its most intricate tanglings are in the country’s cultural capital, Prizren, where a seventh generation of filigree artisans use ‘filum’ and ‘granum’, zigzags, ‘mouse-tooth’ designs and other twists and turns to magic lacy creations from dull sticks of raw material. The results – in boxes, buttons, jewellery, religious ornamentation and the talismans of superstition – are a fine narrative of Kosovo’s history and traditions. Medieval panagiarion Serbian. Photo: JohnGotten. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 December 2026 No meeting.