Exhibition Talk: "Street Life: The 'Cries' in British Visual Culture, 1711-1877"

Lewis Walpole Library-Farmington Libraries Exhibition Talk

By Gillian Forrester, Independent art historian, curator, and writer

Thursday, June 11, 7-8 pm

Registration required

This evening talk by exhibition guest curator Gillian Forrester, is the latest in the series of community-focused evening talks offered in collaboration between the Lewis Walpole Library and the Farmington Libraries in connection with the exhibition on view at the Lewis Walpole Library. The talk will be followed by a period for questions, refreshments, and an opportunity to visit the exhibition with the curator on-site.

Gillian Forrester is an independent art historian, curator, and writer. She was formerly Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Yale Center for British Art and specializes in British print culture in a transnational context.  She co-edited Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and his Worlds (Yale University Press, 2007), which won the College Art Association’s 2009 Alfred H. Barr Jr., Award for an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, and contributed a chapter on nineteenth-century Jamaican photography to Victorian Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2018). She has a particular interest in the prints of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, and has published extensively on both artists. Other publications include essays on British WW1 prints for Modern Times: British Prints, 1913-1939 (Yale University Press, 2021), on Christiane Baumgartner’s recent woodcuts (Cristea Roberts Gallery, 2021), and on the African-Caribbean painter Hurvin Anderson (Tate, 2026).

Gillian Forrester is an independent art historian, curator, and writer. She was formerly Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Yale Center for British Art and specializes in British print culture in a transnational context.  She co-edited Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and his Worlds (Yale University Press, 2007), which won the College Art Association’s 2009 Alfred H. Barr Jr., Award for an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, and contributed a chapter on nineteenth-century Jamaican photography to Victorian Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2018). She has a particular interest in the prints of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, and has published extensively on both artists. Other publications include essays on British WW1 prints for Modern Times: British Prints, 1913-1939 (Yale University Press, 2021), on Christiane Baumgartner’s recent woodcuts (Cristea Roberts Gallery, 2021), and on the African-Caribbean painter Hurvin Anderson (Tate, 2026).

The exhibition Street Life: The “Cries” in British Visual Culture, 1711-1877 is on view at the Lewis Walpole Library through August 21, 2026.

Please note: Bags are not permitted in the library.