Friday Lates: All about David
A performance lecture by David McAlmont
Tickets
| Standard: | £10 |
| Concessions: | £5 |
Please book a ticket to attend this event.
This talk will take place in the Pigott Theatre which is located at Level -1 of the Sainsbury Wing.
Please view our General Admissions page for more information.
Concessions are for full-time students, jobseekers, and disabled adults.
This event is open for House and Exhibition Members priority booking until Thursday, August 21, 2025.
About
Dr David McAlmont presents ‘All About David’: a fictionalisation of the life and times of painter, statesman, impresario and regicide, Jacques Louis David, arguably the most significant artist of the 18th century; certainly in France. McAlmont’s performance lecture marks the 200th anniversary since the artist’s death, in the only public collection in the UK that boasts David paintings.
After five years of deep research visiting collections in Brussels, Paris, Versailles, New York and Washington, McAlmont illuminates the life and times of David through the imagined voices of his sitters, family and associates. Born in Paris during the reign of Louis XV and ending his life in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the artist lived a remarkable 76 years from 1748 to 1825, through a steadily tumultuous period in the life of France.
Accompanied by London Obbligato Collective, the period-instrument chamber ensemble led by harpsichordist Masumi Yamamoto, McAlmont's live, multimedia experience – painting detail, music, sound design, verse and prose – poses a universally potent question for our own century: Does the world ever go mad, or do we just survive long enough to notice how crazy it is?
Jacques Louis David would know.
Dr David McAlmont
Singer, songwriter and art historian David McAlmont became Doctor of Letters at the University of Leicester in July 2025 and curated the Royal Society of Sculptors summer exhibition with the theme ‘Reality Check’ that same year. The doctorate was the culmination of an ongoing collaboration with the University of Leicester’s Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG), in which McAlmont developed a richly researched performance practice.
‘Girl Boy Child’ (2017), for example, performed across a string of National Trust properties as part of its Prejudice & Pride initiative, was a multimedia examination of queer lives lived in National Trust properties. ‘Permissible Beauty’ (2022), a composite portrait project, saw McAlmont collaborating with RCMG and Historic Royal Palaces on a film, text and Hampton Court Palace installation, bringing 17th-century portraiture into conversation with contemporary Black sitters. It was short-listed for a Museum & Heritage Association award.
'Portrait of a Black Queer Briton' (2018) performed at the National Portrait Gallery in 2018 quoted from 20 interviews, while Heraclean Angst (2019) for the Architectural Association public lecture series set the myth of Hercules to the music of Duke Ellington. McAlmont concluded his work with the Architectural Association Interprofessional Studio in January, 2025 and released his 12th studio album, 'Hifi Sean & David McAlmont: Twilight'.
He has been studying the life and work of Jacques Louis David since 2016.