Keren Hammerschlag, Martyn Jolly & Georgia Pike-Rowney | '"Led by the Beam": The Phenomenon of William Holman Hunt's The Light of the World

This event will be held both on-campus and online via Zoom (a link to the online stream will be sent to registered attendees) - please note that, due to the nature of the technology involved, we will be unable to share the slide projection following the talk with online participants.

William Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World (1854, 1857 and 1903) was more than just a Pre-Raphaelite painting declaring the religious symbolism of light, it was also a global event, transfixing audiences with its optical presence as it toured the world. But where did this power come from? And can we feel it again over a century later? Keren Hammerschlag, Martyn Jolly and Georgia Pike-Rowney approach the history of this complex image from different directions. Their discussion will prepare our audience for a special event — the projection of a collection of antique glass hand-coloured magic lantern slides of the painting through an authentic biunial magic lantern, accompanied by a soundtrack from the period.

Dr Keren Hammerschlag's research focuses on nineteenth-century British art and visual culture, and the many intersections and frictions between art and medicine during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. She convenes the Centre for Art History and Art Theory's Art History and Curatorial Studies Major and Minor, and is on the steering committee of the ANU Health Humanities Network. In 2015 she published her first monograph, Frederic Leighton: Death, Mortality, Resurrection (Ashgate), which offers a macabre counter-biography of the President of the Victorian Royal Academy, Frederic Lord Leighton. Her current book project, The Chosen Race: Troubling Whiteness in Victorian Painting (forthcoming with UC Press in 2026), offers the first account of the representation of racial supremacy, racial difference and racial indeterminacy in paintings produced in England during the reign of Queen Victoria.

Dr Martyn Jolly is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University School of Art and Design. He is an artist and a writer. As an artist he has participated in several major curated exhibitions and developed solo exhibitions which creatively re-use archival photographs. In 2006 his book Faces of the Living Dead: The Belief in Spirit Photography was published by the British Library, as well as in the US and Australia. In 2020, with Elisa deCourcy he co-edited The Magic Lantern at Work: Witnessing, Persuading, Experiencing and Connecting, and co-authored Empire, Early Photography and Spectacle: the Global Career of Showman Daguerreotypist J. W. Newland, both published by Routledge. His book, co-authored with Daniel Palmer, Installation View: Australian Photography Exhibitions 1848-2020, was published by Perimeter Editions in 2021. He is also researching Australian illustrated magazines, Australiana photobooks, colonial spectacle and modernity, colonial photography, the history of Australian media art, and early Australian visual education.

Dr Georgia Pike-Rowney is the Friends' Lecturer and Curator of the ANU Classics Museum. Georgia is a researcher and practitioner focussing on the role of the arts in education and health and wellbeing, from a historical perspective as well as in current practice. Georgia was Convenor of the Music Engagement Program (MEP) at the ANU School of Music from 2011-2018.  She graduated with her doctoral thesis in 2017, which developed a transdisciplinary framework encompassing classical studies, etymology, pedagogy, philosophy, and the origins of music in human society, for application to the everyday practice of music in classrooms and communities. Georgia's research shifted to the College of Health and Medicine from 2018-2022, where she undertook a range of research roles and fellowships within the ANU Medical School and the Centre for Mental Health Research. Her research during this period included projects concerning mental health peer work, medical education, and the impacts of music outreach on people living with Alzheimer's disease and dementia. In 2022 Georgia returned to the Centre for Classical Studies as Friends' Lecturer and Curator of the ANU Classics Museum. This role involves the development of new outreach and education programs for teachers, students and communities across the ACT and further afield.

Image: The Light of the World, slides to be projected.

The School of Art & Design Seminar series will continue weekly on Tuesdays from 1-2pm, between 17 February and 21 October 2025, co-convened by Dr Alex Burchmore and Alia Parker.