Speaker: David Phillips
4 December 2018
Even in ancient Rome people made complaints about the mid-winter Saturnalia celebrations, remarkably like the complaints that we hear today about our commercialised Christmas. In a light-hearted historical review we discover some wonderful and some gloriously awful Christmas imagery, from Giotto’s painting of the first Christmas crib until Dickens meets Coca Cola amongst the movers and shakers who sometimes seem to have turned Christmas into Kitschmas.
Profile
David studied history at Oxford. From 1968-82 he worked for Nottingham Castle Museum and from 1982-98 he was a lecturer in Museum Studies and Art History at the University of Manchester. In 1997 he published a book about museum practice with Manchester University Press, ‘Exhibiting Authenticity’.