Enjoy free Heritage Open Days taster events at BRLSI!
England’s annual Heritage Open Days are now a well-established opportunity to enjoy cultural activities that usually have to be paid for, or visit places not normally open to the public.
For Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution this September’s festival is a chance to offer something different in several ways – ‘taster’ treats, free to everyone, mostly shorter than the usual evening talks and mainly taking place at lunchtime. The normal evening paid-for programme is unaffected.
All special Heritage Open Days events are free, but places are limited so best to RSVP in advance at www.brlsi.org/whatson/
BRLSI is going all-out to welcome as many people as possible to its Queen Square building during the twelve months of its bicentenary celebrations, and we hope this special free programme will give an enticing glimpse of what the institution has to offer members and visitors.
Like the year-round talks, there’s an interesting mix of topics this week, from unusual poetry to analysis of world affairs. Who knew that the eminent eighteenth century physician, Dr William Oliver (inventor of the Bath Oliver biscuit) who lived in Queen Square, was also a poet? Duncan McGibbon, convenor of BRLSI’s poetry group, will give a rare reading of the doctor’s work, Myra, an Elegy for an unknown lady, published in 1753. That’s at lunchtime on Monday 9 September.
Four classical paintings that have graced BRLSI’s building since 1824 have inspired a free afternoon talk on Thursday 12 September about their eighteenth century artist, Andrea Casali. Far from a household name today, the Italian was chosen by wealthy slave plantation owner Alderman William Beckford to adorn his Palladian Wiltshire mansion. Although that house was later demolished by his son (another William) at least eleven of the Casali paintings from the mansion survive in the Bath area.
This was not because the younger Beckford brought them with him when he moved to Bath and built his tower up on Lansdown; he had sold most of them long before that, as Dr Amy Frost, senior curator of the Bath Preservation Trust, will explain in her afternoon talk on Thursday 12 September.
It will take place in the room where BRLSI’s four Casali ceiling paintings have been joined by two more of his works, on temporary loan from the Holburne Museum in Bath. These six paintings are back together under one roof for the first time in more than two hundred years.
A couple of the lunchtime events relate to Bath as artistic inspiration. Artist Charles L W Minty will reveal the places in the city he most wants to capture when painting people in landscapes. In addition, members of the BRLSI Bicentenary Workshops, led by Sue Boyle, who have been photographing favourite sights in Bath, will invite visitors to suggest captions and help create a collective poem from the work.
And the final Heritage Open Days event of the week tackles an intriguing question: what will the world look like in 2050? Andreas Wasmuht, BRLSI convenor for World Affairs, draws on globally respected sources to summarise the key social, political, economic, technological and ecological trends we can expect over the coming decades.
To book your free place for our Heritage week lunchtime talks, see our What’s On page here.
In addition, throughout the week there will be short videos to watch, some edited from previous BRLSI talks, ranging from Why Bath is a World Heritage City to Applying Artificial Intelligence to solve scientific mysteries, plus five insightful extra videos on how our brains shape the way we live.
These will be showing on a loop in the Draper Room: 10am on Monday 9, Thursday 12 and Friday 13 and 1pm every day. Please see our What’s On page for all details and timings including the film listings in full – no booking required for the films, just arrive at any time and go up to the Draper Room (top of the stairs on the right).
To read our article More Casalis? ‘Spring’ and ‘Summer’ make their way to BRLSI’s Elwin Room, see our blog here.
