The alumni Art History Network is very pleased to welcome back to College local expert in architectural history and Somervillian, Dr William Aslet (History, 2013) on Sunday 10 May. Do sign up below to join us for his talk, entitled ‘James Gibbs and the Creation of Eighteenth-Century Oxford‘.
The Radcliffe Camera is one of Oxford’s best-loved buildings. This talk looks at how it came into being, at the paths not taken in its design, and at how the library that was built to designs by the architect James Gibbs helped shape the urban fabric of the city surrounding it.
The talk will begin at 3pm in the Margaret Thatcher Centre, and, as ever, the discussion will continue afterwards over afternoon tea.
Dr Aslet is an architectural historian who works on eighteenth-century Britain and Europe. His PhD, which he is currently turning into a monograph, was on the architecture of James Gibbs, architect of the Radcliffe Camera and other buildings, with a particular focus on his training in Rome. He took his first degree at Somerville, before pursuing his graduate studies at the University of Cambridge. Until recently, he was the Scott Opler Fellow in Architectural History at Worcester College, Oxford, where he remains affiliated as an Associate Member of the SCR.