Sarah Thomas
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Overview
Overview
Biography
Sarah Thomas has lectured widely in the UK and Australia. In 2001 her professional standing was recognised by the award of an Australian Government Centenary Medal for service to Australian society and art. She has taught museum cultures and history of art at ÌÇÐÄlogoÈë¿Ú since 2013. She has also taught at Kingston University and UCL. She is the inaugural Director of ÌÇÐÄlogoÈë¿Ú's Centre for Museum Cultures.
Her current book project is called Chattel: Art, Slavery and the British Collector, 1789-1833 (supported by a Paul Mellon Centre Senior Fellowship 2024-25; and a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship 2022-23). By tracing the provenance histories of key works of art, the project examines a core group of collectors (including George Watson Taylor, William Young Ottley, Philip John Miles, Alexander 'Picture' Gordon, Cecilia Douglas and William Beckford) who benefitted financially to a considerable degree from the plantation economy.
Her monograph Witnessing Slavery: Art and Travel in the Age of Abolition was published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in 2019. It examines the shifting iconography of slavery in British and European art between 1760 and 1840, and reconsiders how enslaved people were depicted within a historical context in which truth was deeply contested.
Sarah's latest research project, 'The Painted Specimen', proposes the creation of an international network of art and museum historians seeking ecological ways of understanding the relationship between the natural history specimen and its painted image. It seeks to deepen our understanding of the role of colonial natural history art in the production of European scientific knowledge. Sarah is the 2026 Ross Steele Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.
Other previous projects include 'Colonial Ways of Seeing: Caribbean Visual Cultures, 1750-1900' (August 2021). This special issue of Atlantic Studies: Global Currents was co-edited with Emily Senior and examines the ways of seeing that emerged under the conditions of slavery and its immediate aftermath. How were images and objects produced, circulated and viewed in colonial contexts? What forms of resistance are revealed by a focus on visual cultures? What traces of Black lives can yet be mined in the fragments and biases of the colonial archive?
Office hours
By appointment
Administrative responsibilities
- Director, Centre for Museum Cultures
- Programme Director, MA History of Art
Honours and awards
- Visiting Scholarship Yale Center for British Art, November 2019
- Ross Steele Fellow State Library of New South Wales, August 2026
- Research Fellowship Leverhulme, November 2022
- Senior Fellowship Paul Mellon Centre, November 2024
- Postgraduate Fellowship Paul Mellon Centre , November 2015
- Cultural Engagement Fellowship AHRC, November 2013
- Research Support Grant Paul Mellon Centre, November 2009
- Scholarship for the Study of Prints at the British Museum Sarah & William Holmes Foundation, University of Melbourne, November 1997
- Centenary Medal for Services to Australian Art and Society Australian Government, November 2001
ORCID
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Research
Research
Research interests
- Art and empire
- Slave-ownership - cultural legacies
- Slavery and visual culture
- Colonial natural history art
- Museology and empire
- Art and travel
- Decolonisation and museums
- Australian and Caribbean colonial art
- Art curating
Research overview
My most recent book project is 'Chattel: Art, Slavery and the British Art Collector, 1789-1833' (forthcoming), which re-evaluates the history of art collecting in Britain around the period of the Napoleonic Wars by exploring its myriad links with enslavement. It is a story which has remained largely hidden yet which has substantial ramifications for our understanding of Britain’s artistic heritage.
Two current projects investigate the role of colonial natural history art within the context of extractive capitalism. 'The Painted Specimen: Mobilising the Natural World in Early Colonial Australia(1768-1830)' considers the extraction of natural history knowledge from non-European cultures, particularly the knowledge of First Nations’ people. 'Tracing Extinction' draws on the rich collection of botanical and zoological prints and drawings from colonial Australia held by the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney to deepen our understanding of the epistemological role of colonial natural history illustration.Â
More generally my research focuses on the art history and museology of the British empire, the role and particularities of the itinerant artist, the visual representation of enslavement and the cultural legacies of British slave-ownership. My monograph, 'Witnessing Slavery: Art and Travel in the Age of Abolition' was published by the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art for Yale University Press in September 2019.Â
Previous publications include 'The Encounter, 1802: Art of the Flinders and Baudin Voyages' (Art Gallery of South Australia, 2002); book chapters ‘Slaves and the spectacle of torture: British artists in the New World, 1800-1834’ and ‘Allegorizing Extinction: Humboldt, Darwin and the Valedictory Image’; journal articles such as ‘Envisaging a Future for Slavery: Agostino Brunias and the Imperial Politics of Labor and Reproduction’ (Eighteenth-Century Studies) and ‘The Spectre of Empire in the British Art Museum’ (Museum History Journal).
Research Centres and Institutes
- Director,
- Member,
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Supervision and teaching
Supervision and teaching
Supervision
I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking research in any of my specialist areas.
Doctoral alumni since 2013-14
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CARLO RIZZO
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SEAN CHAM
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LIBERTY PATERSON
Teaching
I currently teach on the MA Museum Cultures and MA History of Art programmes. I lead an intensive module in the spring term called 'Curating', and an MA option called 'Slavery and its Cultural Legacies'. I also teach on the level 5 BA module, Art & Modernity in the 19th Century.
Teaching modules
- Frameworks: Histories and Theories of Art, Architecture, Photography
- Museum and Heritage Work Placement
- Slavery and its Cultural Legacies
- Art and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century
- Public History and Heritage: Theories, Issues and Practice
- Curating
- London: Places, Objects, Ideas
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Publications
Publications
Article
- Thomas, Sarah (2022) . Atlantic Studies 19 (1), pp. 60-85. ISSN 1478-8810.
- Thomas, Sarah (2022) . American Art 36 (2), ISSN 1073-9300.
- Thomas, Sarah (2018) . Eighteenth-Century Studies 52 (1), pp. 115-133. ISSN 0013-2586.
- Thomas, Sarah (2013) . Museum History Journal 6 (1), pp. 105-121. ISSN 1936-9816.
- Thomas, Sarah (2011) . Atlantic Studies 8 (2), pp. 213-232. ISSN 1478-8810.
Book
- Thomas, Sarah (2019) . London, UK: Yale University Press. ISBN 9781913107055.
- Thomas, Sarah, ed. (2002) . Adelaide, Australia: Art Gallery of South Australia. ISBN 730830055.
Book review
- Thomas, Sarah (2022) .
- Thomas, Sarah (2022) .
- Thomas, Sarah (2018) .
- Thomas, Sarah Bernier, Celeste-Marie, ed. (2014) .
Book section
- Thomas, Sarah (2026) . In: de Rooij, W. and Fatah-Black, K. (eds.) Dirk Valkenburg A Critical Analysis of Visual Culture in the Early Modern Netherlands. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. ISBN 9789048573714.
- Thomas, Sarah (2026) . In: Faucquez, A.-C. and Michael, A. (eds.) Decolonizing Representations of Slavery in European Museums: Theoretical, Curatorial and Artistic Approaches. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 9781805968559. (In Press)
- Thomas, Sarah (2026) . In: Gilroy-Ware, C. (ed.) Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam. London, UK: Royal Academy of Arts. pp. 32-37. ISBN 9781915815194.
- Thomas, Sarah (2021) . In: Diener, P. and Costa, F. (eds.) Rugendas: El Artista Viajero. Santiago, Chile: Ediciones Biblioteca Nacional de Chile. pp. 49-71. ISBN 9789562445160.
- Thomas, Sarah (2021) . In: Kehinde Wiley at the National Gallery: The Prelude. London, UK: National Gallery Company Ltd. pp. 65-77. ISBN 9781857096774.
- Thomas, Sarah (2020) . In: Lambert, D. and Merriman, P. (eds.) Empire and Mobility in the Long Nineteenth Century. Studies in Imperialism. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. ISBN 9781526126382.
- Thomas, Sarah (2016) . In: Thomas, Sarah and Riopelle, C. and Bonyhady, T. and Goudie, A. and Tunnicliffe, W. and Taylor, A.J. (eds.) Australia's Impressionists. London, UK: Yale University Press and The National Gallery Press. pp. 43-50. ISBN 9781857096125.
- Thomas, Sarah (2015) . In: Brauer, Fae and Keshavjee, Serena (eds.) Picturing Evolution and Extinction. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 9781443872539.
- Thomas, Sarah (2014) . In: Cusack, T. (ed.) Framing the Ocean: Envisaging The Sea As A Social Space. Basingstoke, UK: Ashgate. pp. 71-84. ISBN 9781409465683.
- Thomas, Sarah (2013) . In: Rycroft, D.J. (ed.) World Art and the Legacies of Colonial Violence. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. pp. 113-132. ISBN 9781409455882.
- Thomas, Sarah (2009) . In: Hoorn, J. (ed.) Reframing Darwin: Evolution and Art in Australia. Carlton, Australia: Melbourne University Publishing. ISBN 9780522856842.
- Thomas, Sarah (2009) . In: Anderson, J. (ed.) Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence. Carlton, Australia: Miegunyah Press. ISBN 9780522857108.
Editorial
- Thomas, Sarah and Senior, Emily (2022) . Atlantic Studies 19 (1), pp. 1-9. Taylor & Francis. ISSN 1478-8810.
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Business and community
Business and community
Outreach
'Colonial Afterlives', exhibition of contemporary art which travelled to various states in Australia. Winner, 'Communications & Research', ÌÇÐÄlogoÈë¿Ú Public Engagement Awards 2019.