'The handing on of our values depends crucially on the young’, Craig Clunas, Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, the University of Oxford.

We were delighted that Craig Clunas, Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, the University of Oxford, who has long championed and supported Art History Link-Up, was announced as an Association for Art History Fellow for his  “significant contribution to Art History” at the AAH’s conference last month.

Accepting his award, Craig gave a speech praising inclusivity in art history and acknowledging the important role of younger art historians in passing on vital knowledge and values.

Craig began his career as a curator of Chinese Art at the Victoria & Albert Museum, before moving to teach at the University at Sussex, and the SOAS, University of London. He was then appointed Chair of Art History at the University of Oxford between 2007 and 2018, and the first holder of the chair to work on the art on Asia.

In 2016, Craig was a founding supporter of AHLU, and since 2018, a volunteer visiting teacher. Craig has helped Art History Link-Up in many ways, not least giving mock interviews to our Art History Oxbridge candidates, with extraordinary outcomes. This year, all five of our Oxbridge Art History candidates were awarded places, following many others before them. Craig’s kindly, but always exacting, mock interviews are hugely valuable experience for our students.

Craig’s support, along of course with our students’ talent, dedication and hard work, means we can proudly say that from this autumn, AHLU will have alumni students in every undergraduate year of both the University of Oxford and Cambridge’s Art History Departments.

Craig spoke of the importance of the Association for Art History in the UK at this year’s conference, held at the University of York, and how central it has been to his work.

In his speech, he focused on the importance of passing on knowledge, pointing to Confucius who said, ‘I transmit, and do not create’.

And we were so proud that Craig also singled AHLU out for praise to the conference’s delegates, saying, ‘Since retiring from full-time teaching I’ve had the privilege of some involvement with the charity Art History Link-Up, which, since 2016, has been providing opportunities for young people in state supported education to study art history without charge in their free time. Paradoxically, the move of all teaching online during the pandemic actually made it easier for the cohort of dedicated teachers on which Art History Link-Up depends to deliver courses, right up to A-level, to state school students across Britain. A number of Art History Link-Up students have gone on to art history in higher education. I think it’s a brilliant initiative, and I commend it to your attention, if you don’t already know about it.’

Craig also told delegates that he, ‘commended the more inclusive approach, along with excellence, advocacy and respect, to Art History which has developed over recent years and which has made a bit more space for all sorts of artistic practices and traditions that did not get much of a look-in when I began my career.  Instead of a single canon, we have I believe become a lot better at looking at all kinds of things, and from all sorts of places. What I am keen to insist upon, however, is that all my experience teaches me that there exists an eagerness to know, and an eagerness to transmit, to ‘pay it forward’, across the full and expanded range of images and objects we deal with, among the extraordinary young women and young men I’ve been lucky enough to meet in the course of teaching in a whole range of contexts, and at a number of institutions. They display a willingness to engage with a broad range of histories and geographies and human possibilities which can be very humbling, but also very inspiring’.

At Art History Link-Up we couldn’t agree more! Congratulations Craig on your well-deserved award and thank you for all your dedicated art history teaching, and for your support of AHLU’s students and work over the years.

Rose Aidin MBE

Founder and CEO of Art History Link-Up

Find out more about the 2025 Association for Art History’s Fellows here: https://forarthistory.org.uk/latest_news/2025-association-for-art-history-fellows/

‍