Profile

Director of The Ruskin – Museum & Research Institute

As Director of The Ruskin – Museum and Research Institute at Lancaster University, Professor Sandra Kemp is responsible for strategic leadership of The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection, the preeminent collection of works by the epoch-defining writer, artist and environmentalist, John Ruskin (1819-1900). She developed the overarching vision and led the successful fund-raising campaign to secure The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection for Lancaster University, via the largest grant awarded in 2019 by the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

Throughout her career Sandra has combined appointments in universities and museums, including the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Southampton, and Imperial College London; and the V&A, the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. She has an international track record of working across the arts and sciences, and of championing the role of museums in education. At The Ruskin’s Research Institute, Sandra leads a team of researchers across fields from art history to artificial intelligence, and from material and data science to heritage and futures studies. Sandra is a member of the international jury of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and consults for international organisations on issues relating to heritage in conflict zones, collections management, and digitisation. She also investigates works of art for authorship and provenance. Her recent and forthcoming publications examine relationships between nineteenth century scientific and aesthetic traditions in the detailed observation of nature in art. She is the editor of the New Frontiers section of the Oxford University Press Intersection Environmental Change and Human Experience.

Exhibitions

In her curatorial role, Sandra collaborates with museums nationally and internationally to research and curate exhibitions bringing Ruskin’s works to new audiences, from Lancaster and Brantwood (Ruskin’s Lake District Home) to (in 2024-25) the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Spain, the Huntington Art Museum in the USA, the National Library in Scotland, the Musei di San Domenico in Italy and the Musée d'art moderne André Malraux – MuMa in France. Exhibition themes ranged from the reassessment of Pre-Raphaelitism to the influence of photography on painting, depictions of Italy in travel literature from the 15^th to the 19^th centuries, Ruskin’s shell studies and shell collections, and 200 years of climate change as represented in art.

Sandra’s first exhibition at the iconic MacCormac building at Lancaster University, Ruskin: Museum of the Near Future (2019), explored Ruskin’s intense processes of visual observation rooted in the particularities of the natural world. Commissions by contemporary artists were interspersed amongst works by Ruskin to explore their relevance today. The exhibition was profiled in theDaily Mailand the Financial Times podcast John Ruskin's message for our times. A short film of Ruskin: Museum of the Near Future is on YouTube.

From 2021-24, Sandra curated the John Ruskin in the Age of Science exhibition series with the Royal Society and Brantwood, accompanied by digital exhibits on Google Arts and Culture. The series is introduced in Sandra’s blog post Cloud Perspectives. In 2021, in response to the International Museum Day theme, The Future of Museums: Recover and Reimagine, Sandra curated the digital exhibition Tomorrow’s World Today, bringing together art, artefacts and ideas from Lancaster City Museum, Lancaster Maritime Museum, Judges Lodgings, Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster Castle and The Ruskin.

Before joining Lancaster, Sandra’s major exhibitions have included Future Face: Image, Identity, Innovation. Funded by the Wellcome Trust at the Science Museum, London, this explored the long intellectual union of art, design, technology and science in the analysis of the face as a 3D bar-code of identity, and what faces might be like in the future. At the V&A, Sandra co-ordinated V&A research in partnership with the Bard Graduate Center, New York, for an exhibition and related publications on John Lockwood Kipling and the international legacy of arts and crafts, Lockwood Kipling: Arts and Crafts in the Punjab and London.

Digital Platforms

Sandra is leading the creation and phased launch of The Ruskin’s Digital Platforms over 2025, including the new Collections Portal’, where for the first time works from The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection will be available online, including manuscripts viewed digitally as ‘Turning Page Books’.

The Digital Platforms are the first stage in The Ruskin’s project to unite digital collections of Ruskin material across the globe, starting with Harvard and Oxford Universities and pioneer ways of engaging with collections via interactive and immersive experiences such as augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR) and 3D modelling, as well as by digital exhibits on Google Arts and Culture.

Research

As Director of The Ruskin Research Institute, Sandra leads a team working across disciplines, from the arts and humanities to design, environmental and health sciences, and emerging technologies. This includes researchers at every career stage, in partnership with practitioners, policymakers, and public and private sector organisations.

With specialisms in collections-based research and practice, and in 19^th and 20^th century visual, literary and scientific cultures, Sandra’s own research is cross-disciplinary. Encompassing theoretical and technical enquiry, her recent and forthcoming publications examine relationships between nineteenth-century scientific and aesthetic traditions in the interpretative observation of nature in art. In 2019, Sandra’s exhibition, Ruskin: Museum of the Near Future, explored the relevance of Ruskin’s works today. ‘Radiant Form’: Ruskin and Shells, her fifth exhibition in the John Ruskin in the Age of Science series (the first four in partnership with the Royal Society from 2021-2024), places Ruskin alongside his scientific contemporaries examining what Ruskin called ‘the entire meaning and system of nature’, alongside ‘the connection between the laws of nature and those of art.’ Sandra is the editor of the New Frontiers section of the Oxford University Press Intersection Environmental Change and Human Experience.

Sandra’s current research projects include leading digital innovations for museum collections. Working with LU colleagues in The Ruskin, Innovation and Engineering, she is developing new forms of interaction with the Collection through virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) and 3D modelling. At the same time Sandra is linking collections through collaborative inter-institutional research projects across national and international Ruskin collections at The Ruskin, Ashmolean and Harvard Art Museums. Exploring the pre-eminence of the colour blue in Ruskin’s works, these projects seek to identify materials, modes of composition and authorship using contextual historical and technical research on science and aesthetics across the collections, alongside hyperspectral imaging and x-ray diffusion (XRD). Meanwhile, a new technical analysis using high resolution imaging investigates Ruskin’s daguerreotypes, a photographic technology which Ruskin described in 1846 as the ‘most marvellous invention of the nineteenth century’. Ruskin pioneered this early form of photography, which rivals modern high-resolution imaging in its exquisite detail. The 125 daguerreotypes in the Collection are amongst the most important surviving early photographs in the world.

Sandra’s work is underpinned by a broad theoretical understanding of images as vibrant shapers of knowledge, of draughtsmanship as a powerful conceptual tool, and of the transformative power of museum collections to generate new thinking about the relationships between past, present and future. From 2017 to 2020, Sandra led the international collaborative Universal Museums project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and LABEX, with co-investigator Hervé Inglebert, Professor of History at the University Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. In partnership with the V&A, Science Museum, Musée de l’Homme, Musée du quai Branly and Musée des Arts et Métiers, this transnational project explored the future of ‘encyclopaedic’ museums. Through case studies from comparative collections, it investigated the role of museums in critical enquiry through collections, display and engagement with diverse publics, and in building knowledge across disciplines.

In 2021, Sandra co-edited Futures, an Oxford University Press handbook, with Jenny Andersson. This book examines the increasing centrality of futures and futures-thinking across disciplines and started with an AHRC funded project at the V&A: The Future is our Business: A Visual History of Future Expertise. It brings together emerging perspectives on the future from disciplines including critical theory, design, anthropology, sociology, politics, and history. The book examines the future as an object of empirical study, a subject for theorisation, and an orientation for practice in the real world. It demonstrates how hybrid forms of knowledge are crucial in a world where the ways in which we make and produce knowledge are rapidly changing.

Sandra was a member of the steering group for the international AHRC-funded Nuclear Cultural Heritage research network led by Dr Egle Rindzeviciute, which brought together leading scholars, artists, designers, archivists, heritage practitioners, policy makers and nuclear industry representatives from the UK, Europe, Lithuania, Ukraine, Russia and the USA.

Further information on Sandra’s research funding and published works is available on her University research page.

Teaching and Learning

At Lancaster University, Sandra contributes to teaching and learning based in The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection at all levels, including BA and MA courses cross-campus. She has also developed interdisciplinary research methodology training for postgraduates in Lancaster Environment Centre’s ‘Envision’ doctoral training programme, and the MSc in Advanced Materials at the Centre for Doctoral Training in the Advanced Characterisation of Materials at Imperial College.

Beyond Higher Education, Sandra also contributes to the Morecambe Bay Curriculum (Eden Project Morecambe), with funding from Museum Development North West and the Art Fund to develop nature-centric workshop workshops introducing Ruskin’s art and ideas to Key Stage 2 pupils, and artist-led workshops for adults and families. While the Collection remains in temporary storage, she facilitates access for visitors, researchers and curators, and coordinates events – from school workshops to exhibition planning and expert research seminars.

Sandra has supervised PhD students on topics ranging from literary theory to museology, art history and the history of science, including at the Universities of Glasgow, Westminster and Lancaster, and welcomes applications from prospective students in these areas.

Collection Management

The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection contains thousands of artefacts – from paintings, drawings and photographs, to sketchbooks, manuscripts and letters and Ruskin’s own library. Highlights include 125 daguerreotypes, the earliest form of photography, comprising some of the earliest surviving photographs of the Alps, and of Venice, Florence and other European cities; and 44 lecture diagrams depicting objects from peacock feathers to Venetian columns, hand-drawn by Ruskin to illustrate his talks. As an experienced collections manager, with extensive experience in couriering artworks internationally, Sandra is responsible for all aspects of collections care at The Ruskin. She has developed a 10-year conservation plan (2023-2033), in partnership with the National Conservation Service and with funding from the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust. In 2021, Sandra led the relocation of the Collection to temporary storage at the start of the extensive refurbishment of the Museum building, migrating the paper catalogues onto an electronic collections management system, including previously uncatalogued works. She led the development of a new ‘Search the Collection’ digital platform. She is part of the team leading the redevelopment and extension of the iconic Ruskin building at Lancaster University.

Career

Professor Sandra Kemp is Director of The Ruskin – Museum and Research Institute where she is responsible for management and curation of The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection, and leadership of research. She joined Lancaster in 2017, and led the successful fund-raising campaign to secure The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection for Lancaster University, and in 2019 – the bicentenary year of John Ruskin’s birth – relaunched The Ruskin as an integrated university museum, archive and research centre. The ‘landmark acquisition’ (Art Fund) was the largest grant awarded in 2019 by the National Heritage Memorial Fund, leveraged on Sandra’s vision for The Ruskin as one of the world’s leading University Museums, encouraging us all to look closely, see clearly and imagine freely through Ruskin's works.

Sandra is an academic and curator who has worked at leading institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, including the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. Working across the arts and sciences, she has held academic positions at the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Southampton and at Imperial College and the Royal College of Art, alongside curatorial roles – until 2017 at the V&A. Her background is in English Literature with a D.Phil from the University of Oxford and research specialisms in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries literary, visual and scientific cultures.

Sandra has developed Masters teaching on academic and heritage related subjects, including an MA in Visual and Material Culture at CARTE (Centre for Arts, Research, Technology and Education) at the University of Westminster, with modules taught on site at the British Museum, Tate and the Science Museum, to provide professional training alongside academic study. She has supervised PhD students on topics ranging from literary theory to art history and the history of science, including at the Universities of Glasgow, Westminster and Lancaster. As Director of Research at the Royal College of Art from 2001-2008, Sandra funded the College’s Research Department and was responsible for the overall management of 112 research degree students. She developed research supervision across the South Kensington campus, with Imperial College, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum.

Before joining Lancaster, Sandra’s major exhibitions have included Future Face: Image, Identity, Innovation. Funded by the Wellcome Trust at the Science Museum, London, this explored the long intellectual union of art, design, technology and science in the analysis of the face as a 3D bar-code of identity, and explored what faces might be like in the future. At the V&A, Sandra co-ordinated V&A research in partnership with the Bard Graduate Center, New York, for an exhibition and related publications on John Lockwood Kipling and the international legacy of arts and crafts, Lockwood Kipling: Arts and Crafts in the Punjab and London.

Sandra is an experienced leader of cultural programmes, with an international track record including funded projects initiated at the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and SciFest Africa, working in association with biomedical scientists, medical physicists, surgeons, sculptors, filmmakers, painters and photographers. She was a member of the steering group for the international AHRC-funded Nuclear Cultural Heritage research network led by Dr Egle Rindzeviciute, which brought together leading scholars, artists, designers, archivists, heritage practitioners, policy makers and nuclear industry representatives from the UK, Europe, Lithuania, Ukraine, Russia and the USA.

External Roles

• Visiting Professor in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London. Sandra’s Professorship at ICL follows a four-year Senior Research Investigator role in the Department of Materials at ICL, and her work as the inaugural Research Director at the Royal College of Art (RCA) from 2000-2008.
• Member of the international jury of the Austrian Science Fund(FWF) and peer reviewer for the UKRI and publishers including OUP, CUP and Routledge.
• Heritage Representative for the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership from 2020-2024.
• Member of the Higher Education Academy.
• Consulting for the REF submissions, following panel membership for visual arts and media in REF2008.
• Consulting for international organisations on issues relating to heritage in conflict zones, collection preservation, and digitisation.
• Investigating works of art for authorship and provenance.

sandra.kemp@lancaster.ac.uk