jAnE PAVitt - Victoria and Albert Museum

Richard CheckettsRichard Checketts began teaching on the V&A/RCAprogramme in January 2010, having previouslyheld a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at theUniversity of Leeds.His research centres on ideas about materials inseventeenth-century Europe. Broadly this involvesmapping the connections, resistances, andtransformations that occurred through encountersbetween made objects and questions aboutmateriality in other areas of the culture in thisperiod—both in the direct engagements with suchquestions in scientific or philosophical thought,and also, more or less implicitly, in a range ofother discourses and practices, from religion, toeconomics, to law. Most recently Richard has beenworking on polychrome marble in architecturaldecoration in Rome in the 1670s (in relation bothto constructions of political power and theories ofgeology), and on the work of the Utrecht silversmithAdam van Vianen (in relation both to the science ofmatter and definitions of property). This researchforms the basis of an article that will engage withsome specific questions about materials, andwith some wider questions about how we mightcomplicate conventional distinctions betweendifferent centres of production (and differenteconomic, political, and religious identities) acrossEurope in the seventeenth century.Alongside these projects, Richard has been workingon a study of the unfinished writings on art left bythe third Earl of Shaftesbury when he died in Naplesin 1713. Part of this, as an article currently underreview with Oxford Art Journal, looks at theintersections between Shaftesbury’s notions of theartwork and questions about substance and valuethat emerged during the Recoinage Crisis inEngland in the 1690s.This year Richard has given presentations on variousaspects of his research at the Henry Moore Institutein Leeds, at the Marxism in Culture Seminar at theInstitute of Historical Research in London, at theHistorians of Netherlandish Art session at theCollege Art Association Conference in Chicago, andat the History of Design Department’s ownResearch Seminar.Rome, S. Andrea Della Valle, Cappella Ginetti, detail20/21