Inclusive Histories at Compton Verney

We welcome new voices and critical engagement with our site and collections. Last year we hosted three Inclusive Histories Research Fellows – Babar Suleman, Martha Clewlow and Jenni Hunt. Their brief was to explore hidden histories at Compton Verney and present new perspectives. The Fellows each designed projects based around their research interests. This included exploring stories of disability and voicing queer and non-Western perspectives on the collections, house and grounds.

We are excited to be sharing the outcomes of this research in different ways throughout 2022. A film by artist and filmmaker Babar Suleman, titled HOW PERFECT IS THIS HOW BLESSED ARE WE, will be shown in Gallery A from 16 March – 13 May. This film is Babar’s response to the historic country house and landscape at Compton Verney. Upstairs in our Folk Art galleries, Jenni Hunt has a curated an in-focus display which looks at the stores of Disabled Lives. This display includes a tactile basket of sensory objects that you can touch and listen to, and will open on 16 March. Martha Clewlow looked at Enid Marx and Margaret Lambert as collectors, and this research will shape the development of our Marx-Lambert collection. Martha has also produced a Queering the Collections trail, which will run throughout the house and will be launched later this year.

We gratefully acknowledge TORCH, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities and Arts Council England for enabling and supporting this research.

Image – Left to right: Martha Clewlow, Babar Suleman, Jenni Hunt