Prof Claudia Hopkins
Job title:
Personal Chair of Art History
Role:
Editor of Art in Translation
Office:
O.58, Hunter Building
Research Output:
Edinburgh Research Explorer linkBiography
Claudia Hopkins is Professor of Art History at Edinburgh College of Art and Honorary Professor of Hispanic Art at Durham University, where she served as the Director of the Zurbarán Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art between 2020 and 2023. In 2023 she took on the role of editor of Art in Translation, the flagship journal of the School of History of Art, which is funded by ECA and the Getty Foundation. She was previously associate editor (2020-23), co-editor (2014-20) and managing editor (2008-2014) of the journal.
Her research centres on the visual arts in nineteenth- and twentieth-century transnational contexts. She is a leading expert of Spanish art and culture. Her work has been supported by the Leverhulme Trust, the Carnegie Trust, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Spanish Embassy, the Cervantes Institute, and the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica.
Her new book Art and Identity in Spain 1833-1956. The Orient Within (Bloomsbury, 2024) examines Spanish attitudes to Al-Andalus and Morocco over a period of 120 years, challenging overfamiliar understandings of Orientalism. Related to this research, she curated La España romántica: David Roberts y Genaro Pérez Villaamil (Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, 2021), in collaboration with the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica. Her edited volume Romantic Spain: David Roberts and Genaro Pérez Villaamil won the Mark A. Roglán Publication Award from The Custard Institute, Meadows Museum (Dallas) for exemplary scholarship on Spanish art, and the “Jonathan Brown Award” from the Society of Global Iberian Art (SIGA) for exceptional achievement in an exhibition catalogue. Recently she curated with Prof. Andy Beresford the online platform Spanish Art in County Durham (2022), and with Sir Barry Ife an exhibition of prints and drawings Impressions of Spain in the 1830s, Maughan Library, King’s College (2023). Her interest in curating dates back to 2009, when she contributed to the blockbuster exhibition / catalogue The Discovery of Spain: British Artists and Collectors: Goya to Picasso (National Gallery of Scotland, 2009).
Between 2015 and 2020, she co-led a major project on the European reception of US art, funded by the Terra Foundation, and involving numerous international experts and translators. The main output is: Hot Art, Cold War–Western and Northern European Writing on American Art 1945-1990 and Southern and Eastern European Writing on American Art 1945-1990, co-edited with I. B. Whyte (2020). The two volumes have been described as groundbreaking, as they “will definitely change the narrative” about the European reception of American art and be “an incredible resource for any scholar of American or European art during the Cold War period” (Critique d’Art 57, 2021).
She has (co-)convened many conferences, such as Translating Cultures in the Hispanic World, University of Edinburgh, 2013; a Postcolonial Approach to Francoist Spain, University of Edinburgh 2018, and recently Cold (War) Embraces: Spanish-American Exchanges 1945-1990 at the Fundación Juan March, October 2022.
Between 2005 and 2007, she was a senior researcher for the AHRC-funded National Research Inventory Project (led by the University of Glasgow and the National Gallery, London) and contributed to the free online resource of Continental European art in public UK collections.
External PhD students:
- Stephanie Bernard, Durham University
- Richard Jacques, Durham University
Research interests
- 19th- and 20th-century art, architecture, visual culture
- Spanish art and culture in transnational/transcontinental contexts
- Orientalism, Postcolonialism, Translation Theory, Decoloniality
- Latin American visual arts
- US Art and Culture, Cold War studies
Claudia lectures on 19th and 20th-century art and visual culture in the School of History of Art.
Specialist courses include:
- Orientalism in European Visual Culture
- Barcelona and Modernity 1858-1937
- Goya - the first of the modern
- Velázquez in Context
- The Golden Age of Spain: Art, Politics and Religion
- The Aesthetics of Difference: Postcolonial Perspectives from the 19th to the 20th Century.
Research
Research
Claudia Hopkins’ research focuses on the visual arts in the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries. She is a leading expert of Spanish art and architecture in broad transnational and transcontinental contexts (Europe, North and South America). She is interested in debates about constructs of self and other; Orientalism; empire, race and nation; art and politics/diplomacy, memory studies; postcolonialism, decoloniality, translation theory.
She welcomes PhD applications for projects in the above areas.
Select publications:
Art and Identity in Spain 1833-1956: The Orient Within (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 304pp), July 2024. Single-authored book.
Cold (War) Embraces: Spanish-American Exchanges, edited with Javier Ortiz-Echagüe, special issue of Art in Translation 16.1 (2024).
Romantic Spain: David Roberts and Genaro Pérez Villaamil (CEEH, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 2021), 512pp. Edited volume. Awarded the Mark A. Roglán Publication Award from The Custard Institute at the Meadows Museum (Dallas); and the Jonathan Brown Award from the Society of Iberian Global Art (SIGA).
La España romántica: David Roberts y Genaro Pérez Villaamil (CEEH, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 2021), 512pp.
Hot Art, Cold War. Western and Northern European Writing on American Art 1945-1990 edited with Iain Boyd Whyte (New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2020), 578pp.
Hot Art, Cold War. Southern and Eastern European Writing on American Art 1945-1990, edited with Iain Boyd Whyte (New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2020), 666pp.
Pop Art. Translation, Imitation, Transcreation, special issue of Art in Translation, edited with Stefana Djokic, vol. 14.2 (2022), 125pp.
Postcoloniality and Franco’s Spain, special issue of Art in Translation, vol. 12.2 (2020), 172pp. Co-edited with María Iñigo Clavo.
Spain and Orientalism, augmentedspecial issue of Art in Translation, vol. 9.1 (2017), co-edited with Anna McSweeney. 181pp.
Translation and Hispanic Culture, special issue of Art in Translation, Vol.7.1 (2015). 159pp.
Pascual de Gayangos: A Nineteenth-Century Spanish Arabist, co-edited with Cristina Álvarez Millán (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008). 264pp.
Book chapters and articles
“Eternal Convivencia”. From Madrid’s Painters of Africa to the School of Tetouan”, in Challenging Orientalism: New Perspectives on Perception and Reception, World Art ed. Emily Christensen and Erica Payet (2023): 29-61.
“Bienvenido. Welcoming American Art in Francoist Spain”, in Hot Art, Cold War. Southern and Eastern European Writing on American Art (New York, Routledge, 2020), 59-68.
“Introduction: Pop Art. Imitation, Translation, Transcreation,” with Stefana Djokic, Art in Translation, special issue, 14.2 (2022), 103-107.
“Editors’ Introduction”, with Iain Boyd Whyte, Hot Art, Cold War. Southern and Eastern European Writing on American Art 1945-1990, (New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2020. xx-xiv.
“Editors’ Introduction”, with Iain Boyd Whyte, Hot Art, Cold War. Western and Northern European Writing on American Art 1945-1990 (New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2020).
“Navigating Stereotypes and Perceptions of Spain,” in The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spain, ed. E. Marti-López, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2020.
“‘All Softness' - Murillo through British artists' eyes,” in Collecting Murillo in Britain, ed. Xavier Bray and José Luis Colomer, CEEH, Madrid, 2020.
“Al-Andalus at the Pintores de África exhibitions,” Carl-Justi Mitteilungen 2020, pp. 93-102.
“The Politics of Spanish Orientalism: Distance and Proximity in Tapiró and Bertuchi,” Spain and Orientalism, special issue of Art in Translation, vol. 9.1 (2017), 134-167.
“Spain and Orientalism”, co-authored with Anna McSweeney, Spain and Orientalism, Art in Translation, vol. 9.1 (2017), 1-6.
“Beyond Orientalism: The Case of Jenaro Pérez Villaamil,” Hispanic Research Journal, 17:5 (2016): 385-408. Refereed journal.
"The Power of Translation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Spain," Art in Translation, vol. 4.1 (2012), 61-72.
“The Alhambra in Britain. Between Foreignization and Domestication,” Art in Translation (Special Issue on Translation and Visual Culture), vol. 2.2 (2010), 201-222.
"The Spanish Picturesque," The Discovery of Spain. British Artists and Collectors. Goya to Picasso, ed. David Howarth (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2009), 47-64.
"Andalusia: A Dream of the South," The Discovery of Spain. British Artists and Collectors. Goya to Picasso, ed. David Howarth (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2009), 65-79.
"Gayangos and the World of Politics," with Miguel Ángel Álvarez Ramos, in Pascual de Gayangos. A Nineteenth-Century Spanish Arabist ed. C. Álvarez Millán and C. Heide (Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 24-48.
"‘Más ven cuatro ojos que dos’ - Pascual de Gayangos and Anglo-American Hispanism," in Pascual de Gayangos. A Nineteenth-Century Spanish Arabist ed. C. Álvarez Millán and C. Heide (Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 132-158.
“Art History and Translation", co-authored with I. B. Whyte, in J. Anderson (ed.), Cross-Cultural Art History in a Polycentered World, special issue of the UNESCO journal Diogenes, no. 231, English edition, August 2011. Refereed journal.
"Histoire de l'Art et Traduction" (co-authored with I. B. Whyte), in J. Anderson (ed.) Pour une histoire transculturelle de l'art, special issue of the UNESCO journal Diogène, no. 231, French edition, 2010.
Curatorial projects
Spanish Art in County Durham, https://zc-exhibitions.org/
Online platform curated by Claudia Hopkins with Andy Beresford in 2022. Partners: The Bowes Museum, The Spanish Gallery, Ushaw College, Durham Cathedral, Ruby Castle, and Durham University. Funded by Durham University and the Spanish Embassy.
Impressions of Spain in the 1830s. Curated by Claudia Hopkins and Sir Barry Ife. Maughan Library, King’s College, London, September-December 2023. Partners: King’s College, The Spanish Embassy.
La España romántica: David Roberts y Genaro Pérez Villaammil. Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, 7 October to 16 January 2022. Curated by Claudia Hopkins. Organised with the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica.
The Discovery of Spain: British Artists and Collectors: Goya to Picasso, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, July-October 2009. Curated by Christopher Baker, Claudia Heide, David Howarth, Hilary McCartney, Paul Stirton, Nicholas Tromans.
Online catalogue entries
350 catalogue entries, published in the online National Inventory of Continental European Paintings-database of 10,500 pre-1900 paintings in the UK’s public collections. The database, was created by the National Inventory Research Project (NIRP) led by the University of Glasgow and National Gallery, London with funding from the AHRC, Getty Foundation, Kress Foundation, the Pilgrim Trust and the John Ellerman Foundation, National Gallery Trust. https://www.vads.ac.uk/digital/collection/NIRP
Examples of review articles, editorials, and notes
“Introduction to Antonio Saura,” in Hot Art, Cold War. Southern and Eastern European Writing on American Art (New York, Routledge, 2020), 85.
“Introduction to Ricardo Gullón,” in Hot Art, Cold War. Southern and Eastern European Writing on American Art (New York, Routledge, 2020), 77.
“Introduction to Vicente Aguilera Cerni,” in Hot Art, Cold War. Southern and Eastern European Writing on American Art (New York, Routledge, 2020), 87-88.
“Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Culture by Eric Calderwood”, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 5.1 (2021), 295-297. Book review.
“On the ways of viewing Spanish Art. Review of Nigel Glendinning and Hilary Macartney (eds.), Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland 1750-1920", in Art History (Sept. 2012), 848-850. Book review.
“Review: Javier Barón (ed.), “El Greco & La Pintura Moderna, Museo Nacional del Prado, June-October 2014)”, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, vol. 93. 6 (2016), 1075-1077. Book review.
“Editorial,” Difference, special issue of Art in Translation, vol. 8.4 (2016), 389-392.
“Editorial: From Perception to Reception,” Art in Translation, vol. 7.4 (2015), 413-416. Refereed journal.
“Editorial: Translation and Hispanic Visual Culture,” Translation and Hispanic Visual Culture, special issue of Art in Translation, vol. 7.1 (2015), 5-8. Refereed journal.
“Editorial: The Reception of African Art,” Art in Translation, vol. 5.4 (2013), 423-428.
“Editorial: The Art in Translation Student Prize,” Art in Translation, vol. 4.3 (2012), 271-273.
“Introduction to Carmen Fracchia’s ‘The Fall into Oblivion of the Works of the Slave Painter Juan de Pareja’,” Art in Translation, 4.2 (2012), 164-165. Refereed journal.
Archived video talks
“Meet the Expert: David Roberts’ Travels,” The Wallace Collection, April 2022. https://www.youtube.com/@TheWallacecollection/videos
“10 Years of Art in Translation”, archived video https://vimeo.com/322799014 from the symposium Translating the History of Art, Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz / German Institute for Art History, Max-Planck Institute, Florence, 2019.
Published translations
Ernst Grosse, “Ethnology and Aesthetics,” translated from German by Claudia Hopkins (“Ethnologie und Aesthetik”, Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 1891, vol. 15 no. 4), in Art in Translation, vol. 6.1 (2014), 9-28.
Günter Bandmann, “On the Meaning of the Romanesque Apse,” translated from German by Claudia Heide (‘Zur Bedeutung der romanischen Apse’, Wallraff-Richartz Jahrbuch, 15, 1955), Art in Translation, Vol. 2.3 (2010), 79-85.
Leo Frobenius, “Ancient and Recent African art,” translated from German by Claudia Heide (‘Alte und junge Afrikanische Kunst’, Die Kunstwelt, 1912, vol. 2) in Art in Translation, Vol. 2. 2 (2009), 189-197.
Angel Guido, “A Wölfflinlian view of Hispano-Inca Architecture,” translated from Spanish by Claudia Heide (Arquitectura Hispanoincaica a través de Wölfflin, Rosario: Cruz del Sur, 1927) in Art in Translation, Vol. 2.2 (2009), 259-271.
Current PhD students
PhD Supervision Topics
- Spanish art, architecture, visual culture (esp. late 18th to 21st c)
- Anglo-Spanish relations
- The internationalisation of Spanish art and culture
- European / American Orientalism
- Latin American visual arts
- European reception of North American art/visual culture
- Art, architecture, visual culture in relation to politics and diplomacy
- Visual arts and the Cold War
