Visions, bodies, shadows, worlds
A suite of lectures by Professor Terry Smith on the human drive to picture worlds: from Italian Renaissance painting, to modernist art in France and the Americas, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, and world contemporary art.
Terry Smith, photograph by Filip Wolak.
In this series, Terry Smith, Slade Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Cambridge, will present a set of four lectures on the physical processes and mental frameworks we use to picture worlds. The lectures will range across Italian Renaissance painting, modernist art in France and the Americas, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and world contemporary art in a series of lectures at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Drawing on fifty years of research, these lectures bring together several ongoing personal projects and offer close readings of how one artist – or a small group of artists – has used visual perception, emotional intelligence and conceptualisation to both manifest and transform major aspects of human world picturing.
This series premieres in Sydney over four consecutive Tuesdays in August, offering audiences a rare opportunity to encounter Professor Smith’s evolving scholarship and the ideas shaping an upcoming publication.
The Slade Lectures in Fine Art
This series distills and builds on Professor Smith's eight-part lecture series "Frames of Vision, Images as Ideas: The Intelligence of Artists", held between January and March this year at the University of Cambridge as the 2026 iteration of the University's Slade Lectures in Fine Art.
Professor Smith delivered these lectures in his capacity as the Slade Professor of Fine Arts 2025-26. The Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Cambridge was founded in 1869 as the result of a bequest from the art collector Felix Slade (1788-1868). At the same time, similar chairs were founded in the Universities of Oxford and London. Beginning with John Ruskin, the Slade Professorship of Fine Art has been held on an annual basis by many of the most distinguished historians of art and architecture from around the world, among them James Ackerman, Anthony Blunt, Anita Brookner, Roger Fry, Ernst Gombrich, Nicholaus Pevsner, Griselda Pollock, Virginia Spate (former Director of the Power Institute), and Rudolf Wittkower.
Presented in partnership with the Art Gallery of NSW.
Register for lectures at the Art Gallery of NSW's website
Events
Upcoming
Visual allegories of seeing as knowing
A lecture about Piero Della Francesca's painting of St Augustine, Giorgione, and Plato’s Allegory of the cave. Part One of Professor Terry Smith's lecture series, "Visions, bodies, shadows, worlds".
People
Terry Smith
Terry Smith is Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Sydney and Andrew W Mellon Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.
He is the author of numerous books on contemporary art and curatorial practice, most recently Curating the complex and the open strike (2021), Iconomy: towards a political economy of images (2022), Fred R Myers, Six paintings from Papunya: a conversation (2024) and the edited volume Okwui Enwezor: selected writings (2025).
A founding board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, he has served on the board of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, and is Board Member Emeritus of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
Photograph: Filip Wolak
A lecture about Edgar Degas and Willem de Kooning, Suzanne Valadon and Frida Kahlo. Part Two of Professor Terry Smith's lecture series, "Visions, bodies, shadows, worlds".
People
Terry Smith
Terry Smith is Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Sydney and Andrew W Mellon Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.
He is the author of numerous books on contemporary art and curatorial practice, most recently Curating the complex and the open strike (2021), Iconomy: towards a political economy of images (2022), Fred R Myers, Six paintings from Papunya: a conversation (2024) and the edited volume Okwui Enwezor: selected writings (2025).
A founding board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, he has served on the board of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, and is Board Member Emeritus of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
Photograph: Filip Wolak
A lecture about Yirawala, Narritjin Maymuru, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, Emily Kam Kngwarreye, and Archie Moore’s kith and kin. Part Three of Professor Terry Smith's lecture series, "Visions, bodies, shadows, worlds".
People
Terry Smith
Terry Smith is Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Sydney and Andrew W Mellon Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.
He is the author of numerous books on contemporary art and curatorial practice, most recently Curating the complex and the open strike (2021), Iconomy: towards a political economy of images (2022), Fred R Myers, Six paintings from Papunya: a conversation (2024) and the edited volume Okwui Enwezor: selected writings (2025).
A founding board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, he has served on the board of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, and is Board Member Emeritus of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
Photograph: Filip Wolak
Utopics and dystopia within the iconomy
A lecture on world picturing by contemporary artists. Part Four of Professor Terry Smith's lecture series, "Visions, bodies, shadows, worlds".
People
Terry Smith
Terry Smith is Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Sydney and Andrew W Mellon Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.
He is the author of numerous books on contemporary art and curatorial practice, most recently Curating the complex and the open strike (2021), Iconomy: towards a political economy of images (2022), Fred R Myers, Six paintings from Papunya: a conversation (2024) and the edited volume Okwui Enwezor: selected writings (2025).
A founding board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, he has served on the board of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, and is Board Member Emeritus of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
Photograph: Filip Wolak
People
Terry Smith
Terry Smith is Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Sydney and Andrew W Mellon Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.
He is the author of numerous books on contemporary art and curatorial practice, most recently Curating the complex and the open strike (2021), Iconomy: towards a political economy of images (2022), Fred R Myers, Six paintings from Papunya: a conversation (2024) and the edited volume Okwui Enwezor: selected writings (2025).
A founding board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, he has served on the board of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, and is Board Member Emeritus of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
Photograph: Filip Wolak