Acquiring Art: Our Latest Donations

We are delighted to add 10 artworks by the South African and British artist and writer, Deanna Petherbridge, CBE (1939 – 2022) into the University of Reading Art Collection. This gift was presented by the Trustees of the Estate of Deanna Petherbridge with Art Fund support.

An artist, writer, curator and tutor, Petherbridge worked as a Lecturer at the University of Reading School of Art in the 1980s. Shortly afterwards, in 1995, she was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal College of Art, where she launched the Centre for Drawing Research, the first doctoral programme of its kind in Britain. She was made a CBE in 1996, and was awarded numerous residencies and fellowships across the world, including Fellow of RIBA, Honorary Fellow of the Warburg Institute, and Research Fellow at the Getty Center in Los Angeles (2001-2002) and Yale University (2007).

As you can see above in Utopia Contemporanea, one of our new acquisitions, Petherbridge’s practice was drawing-based. She predominantly worked in pen and ink, producing monumental, monochromatic works without sketches, that often took months or years to complete. Architecturally inspired, her meticulously detailed, geometric drawings touch upon themes such as war and destruction, cities and buildings, landscapes, migrations and travel.

‘Drawing can be a million different things, but I think basically it’s a critical practice. You’re looking at the world in some way, or reinterpreting or making a world on paper, and involved in that are all sorts of questions and strategies and decision-making judgements.’ Petherbridge, 2017.

The Petherbridge acquisition has only just arrived and so has not yet been catalogued, but the artworks will soon be available to view in our dedicated Art Study Room. Announcements about where some of the artworks will be permanently displayed will be made in the coming months.