Professor Robert Cumming's talk is entitled “Now you don't see it? Now you do?” and will be illustrated through Manet's painting “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère”. Robert hopes that his “talk” will turn out to be more of a group discussion with plenty of audience participation rather than a “lecture”.

Professor Cumming will take one of the best-known paintings in London, Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, and show how most visitors to the Courtauld Gallery are effectively blind (as are, in his view, the curators), made sightless by too many labels, too many words, too many theories, and too much written information. He will hope to demonstrate that what is needed when visiting an art gallery is definitely not a guidebook, an audio guide, a guided tour, Wikipedia or an iPhone, but a sharp pair of eyes, a lively curiosity, and imagination. With these alone any great work of art becomes a cornucopia of pleasure and information about itself, its epoch, its creator, and the person now looking at it.

The schedule for the evening is

1900 Meet for drinks in the bar. A welcome drink is included

1930 Talk by Professor Robert Cumming

2030 Talk ends

2045 Buffet dinner