Oxford
Renaissance Worlds: Art and the Senses Exhibition
21st – 23rd September 2027
Oxford combines centuries of academic tradition with an extraordinary concentration of medieval, Renaissance and later art and architecture. During our visit, we will explore some of the city’s historic colleges, from the Gothic splendour of Magdalen and Merton to the remarkable medieval and Baroque architecture of All Souls. We will also visit the Bodleian Library, including the magnificent Divinity School and Duke Humfrey’s Library, and discover the history of the University and its close relationship with Christianity.
The highlight of our visit will be the Ashmolean Museum and its major exhibition, Renaissance Worlds: Art and the Senses, which brings together masterpieces and everyday objects to explore how the senses shaped Renaissance life and culture. We will continue this theme through Oxford’s exceptional collections of Renaissance art and scientific instruments, alongside the city’s rich Pre-Raphaelite heritage.
Itinerary
Tuesday 21st September
We will arrive in Oxford in the late morning and drop our bags at the hotel. We will begin with an introduction to the city at Madgalen College. The college was founded in 1458 by William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor; it is one of the oldest colleges of Oxford University, and arguably one of the most beautiful. We will discuss the Gothic architecture of the cloisters as we wander through their chapel, hall and library, before paying a visit to the famous deer orchard behind the college.
We will have lunch before moving on to All Souls College, which was planned, built, and endowed in the 1430s and early 1440s by Henry Chichele, long-serving Archbishop of Canterbury. The college displays a unique blend of 15th-century medieval Gothic and 18th-century English Baroque, making it an exceptional example of British architecture and its evolution. From here we will go to the Bodleian Library for a tour of the Divinity School, where we will discuss the significance of Christianity in the foundation of the University. We will also pay a visit to Duke Humfrey’s Library, which is part of the one of the oldest libraries in Europe. A good supper in town.
Wednesday 22nd September
We will start our morning off with the major exhibition at the Ashmolean, Renaissance Worlds: Art and the Senses. This exhibition features artworks by masters of the Renaissance alongside everyday objects – instruments, textiles and so on – to reveal the way that the human experience in the 15th to 17th centuries was shaped so strongly by the senses. Keeping our focus on the Renaissance, we will see more of the Italian Renaissance collection in the Ashmolean Museum, which has two newly reframed Renaissance masterpieces: Saint Jerome Reading in a Landscape by Giovanni Bellini and Portrait of a Young Man by Domenico Ghirlandaio.
After lunch, with the idea of senses and experience still fresh in our minds, we will visit the Science Museum, which is the oldest public museum in the world. They have a fantastic collection of Renaissance scientific instruments, which will shed light on the interests of the great polymaths of that time. We will have supper in a lively pub.
Thursday 23rd September
After breakfast we will head to the Oxford Union Library, where there are beautiful pre-Raphaelite murals by artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. These murals depict stories from Arthurian mythology, and we will discuss the pre-Raphaelite interest in medieval culture and its place in British history. We will then visit Norah’s Antiques, where the owner, Tara, will talk to us about suffragette jewellery. This will be an interesting counterpoint to the pre-Raphaelite murals, and we will discuss the opposition that many suffragettes felt against the depiction of women in pre-Raphaelite artwork.
After a good lunch, we will pop into the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin – where the Oxford Martyrs were tried in 1555 – later also seeing the site of their burning on Broad Street, before heading home.
Further Details
Tutors
Richard Stemp and Frankie Dytor will lead the trip, both of whom are experts in their field and have led trips for AHA for many years. Frankie lives in Oxford.
Hotels
We will stay at The Store; a lovely boutique hotel located centrally in the historic building of the former Boswells department store.
Itinerary
Please note that it is still too early for several of the colleges to confirm our visit. If anything turns out not be to possible, we will substitute it with a visit equally as interesting.
Travel
We do not book the travel to and from Oxford thus allowing you to travel to suit your budget and travel from different places or on different dates. Please note that we will meet at 11am in the hotel.
Ability
There is quite a lot of walking on this trip, there are a few slopes and many uneven cobbles. As is the case for all our courses, there is a lot of standing while we discuss the works we are looking at.
Lunches and Dinners
Lunches are a set menu of two courses to include drinks. Dinner is by no means compulsory, but we book a table for the group each night at different restaurants and divide the bill equally between everyone. Sometimes these may also need to be a set menu, but we try our best to avoid this. We will adjust the bill for those not drinking alcohol.
Cost
The fees are £1350 which includes accommodation and breakfast, all lunches, entrance fees, tuition, reading lists and local advice. The single occupancy supplement is £100 (double room for single use). Not included are all suppers, travel insurance. The group will not exceed 16 people and we will divide in to two smaller groups wherever possible.
To register – Please complete the online registration form, having read our terms and conditions and pay a deposit of £600 per person via bank transfer once you have received the confirmation email. Please note your place is not confirmed until we have received your deposit.
If you have any queries, please email [email protected] or call 01379 871800 (302)
NB you must organise your own transport to and from Oxford.
