Race and representation tours

Join art historian Melissa Baksh to explore the ways in which artworks reveal and obscure the real, complex experiences of non-Europeans during the period 1500-1900.

Each week this tour will consider two paintings in the collection where people of colour have an implicit or explicit presence and will examine how increased global colonial encounters and the explosion of the Atlantic slave trade impacted the ways they were represented, often in ways that reinforced ideas about racial difference.

Melissa Baksh is a London-based art historian, writer, curator, educator, and broadcaster/DJ. A desire to make art accessible and open up art collections to a wide range of audiences underpins her work and as well as at the National Gallery, she has delivered lectures, tours and workshops at the Hayward Gallery, Wellcome Collection and the National Gallery of Umbria. She has written for publications including The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, The Art Newspaper, Frieze and ArtReview on historical and contemporary art, colonial legacies and public art.