Impact case study database

On the basis of her research expertise, Burke was appointed to the advisory committee for The Renaissance Nude, a major exhibition tracing the rise and development of the nude in the period 1400-1530, held at two high profile museums: The Getty, Los Angeles and The Royal Academy (RA), London. Burke’s research contributed to the exhibition’s presentation of Renaissance culture as relevant to the way we think about gender and body image today. The exhibition attracted a combined attendance of 229,514 (150,728 to the Getty – judged ‘highly successful’ [5.1, 5.2]; 78,786 to the RA) and selling over 6,300 catalogues. It ranked within the Getty’s top 20 most visited shows of all time [5.1].

The exhibition generated two key impacts:

Burke contributed to important changes in the curatorial representation of Renaissance art and the way major exhibitions can engage with topical debates and attract diverse public audiences. Incorporating Burke’s insights into ‘broader historical and cultural factors and methodologies’ [5.2], The Renaissance Nude moved away from the customary language of idealism and triumph towards a multifaceted, historically-situated contextualisation that spoke to current concerns.

The Senior Curator Emeritus at the J. Paul Getty Museum and lead curator for The Renaissance Nude confirmed that Burke’s ‘grasp of gender theory and deep understanding of social issues around the body’ were fundamental for the exhibition, offering ‘fresh ways of understanding Italian Renaissance art’ [5.2]. Her research also enabled the exhibition to speak to ‘contemporary audiences and helped to assure its strong attendance at both venues.’ Indeed, they highlighted Burke’s ‘ability to make her ideas accessible to a general audience’ [5.2]. Burke’s catalogue entries and catalogue essay were the basis for the wall texts and labels in the Getty presentation [5.2].

The RA Curator described Burke’s contribution as ‘crucial’ to The Renaissance Nude’s ‘attempt to revisit Kenneth Clark’s seminal The Nude’ and its aim ‘to develop a more nuanced understanding of the different perceptions of the nude in Italy and Northern Europe’ [5.3]. They noted that Burke’s essay in The Guardian about Renaissance nudes and gender ‘helped to further clarify our curatorial approach.’ [5.3]

Burke’s research contributed to the associated public events at the RA and the Getty. Her work on life drawing generated new engagement opportunities for the RA – a four-week ‘Drawing the Renaissance Nude’ life drawing course and an online #LifeDrawingLife class. Public events at the Getty involved broad groups of public intellectuals and contemporary artists, discussing issues around the presentation of the body and gender in well attended events (1,358 total attendees) [5.1].

The Renaissance Nude, notably ‘its reconsideration of gender and sexuality in early modern art’, fed into the conceptions of other exhibitions on Renaissance art such as Giulio Romano: Art and Desire, Palazzo Te, Mantua, 2019 – 2020 [5.4].

Burke’s research contributed to new appreciation of the historical complexity and socio-political currency of Renaissance nudes. It brought focus to the gender politics of representations of the nudes, ensuring that The Renaissance Nude spoke to topical public debates around gender, identity and body politics intensified through the #MeToo movement.

The Renaissance Nude was also influential in placing nude within a global context, expanding audiences ‘beyond the usual aficionados of Renaissance and pre-Modern art’ [5.2]. Burke’s research influenced the Getty’s decision to focus a study day on images of nudes outside Europe, which was ‘effective in bringing in local audiences of diverse ethnic backgrounds’ [5.2].

As the representative of The Renaissance Nude’s curatorial team responsible for media engagement, Burke played a key role in bringing the research informing the exhibition to the public. Her contributions included a post on Iris (the Getty blog) and an article on the RA website [5.5], widely discussed interviews for the BBC Culture blog and the Radio 4 programme Start the Week, a public lecture at London’s National Gallery, and guest appearances on the arts podcast Behind the Scenes at the Museum [5.6]. A Guardian opinion piece authored by Burke drew 200 responses in a single day. This included support for exhibitions that challenge the ‘new puritanism of art in our own age’ and make ‘a genuine attempt at generating sober debate’ [5.5]. Burke’s appearance on the BBC2 documentary Titian – Behind Closed Doors (aired 4 April 2020) brought a ‘fresh take on the subject of Titian’s poesie and […] the role of female models’ that revealed ‘the problematic nature of the subject matter, in contrast to more traditional views that focus largely on the skill of the artist’ [5.7].

The Renaissance Nude received significant positive media coverage. As the Senior Curator Emeritus at the Getty noted, ‘all the key reviews that have appeared thus far [….] singled out Jill Burke’s contributions with praise’ [5.2]. Consistent across the coverage was the acknowledgement that The Renaissance Nude led to new appreciation of the nude’s complexity and diversity with respect to media, subject, geographical origin and function. The magazine Apollo, discussing the Royal Academy iteration, stated that the broad chronology and cross-national focus showed the nude ‘to be far more multifaceted than one might have previously imagined’ [5.8]. The Guardian ranked The Renaissance Nude 13th in its top 20 exhibitions of 2019, calling it ‘thought-provoking’ and ‘a jolt to the system’. It commented that ‘the exhibition shows us that the variety of approaches to the naked body is almost as diverse as the artists who depicted them’ [5.8]. Frieze praised The Renaissance Nude for challenging ‘easy narratives about prurience and prudishness in Renaissance art’ [5.8], while The Telegraph stated that it gives ‘a sense of the renaissance as way weirder and more complex than you imagined’ [5.8].

London Review of Books commented that The Renaissance Nude ‘forcefully’ made the point ‘that the male and female nude have very different histories and significance.’ Critic Waldemar Januszczak’s YouTube video, which drew 2,573 views, highlighted the inclusion of male nudes: ‘by avoiding the obvious Venuses and nymphs, it’s a very fresh-feeling show’ [5.8]. H-France called it ‘one of the best full-scale shows of Renaissance art in the last two decades’ [5.8]. Singling out Burke’s research insights into the use of female models, it stated that the show ‘is above all a welcome and important challenge to revisit the iconography of the gendered body today, in light of the importance of resisting forced gender conformity six hundred years later’.

Indeed, at least five commentators writing for international newspapers ( The Art Newspaper, The Financial Times, The Times, The Spectator, The Independent and The Guardian [5.8]) explicitly linked the exhibition to #MeToo, with many more noting that it drew attention to the role of images in shaping negative attitudes towards women, LGBT+ people and other marginalised groups such as older people [5.8]. The Times described the Royal Academy iteration as a ‘definition-busting, picture-widening, sex-upsetting, #MeToo-welcoming, ratio-righting, image-correcting masterclass of a display’ which ‘overturns pretty much every preconception about its subject’ [5.8]. Other reviews commended the exhibition for shedding unexpected light on broader intellectual contexts, such as anatomy and artists’ use of life models [5.8].

The exhibition catalogue was also singled out for praise. H-France noted that the catalogue ‘extends the impact’ of the show through its ‘transnational approach’ and praised the ‘genuine engagement with figures from outside Europe’ [5.8]. The Historians of Netherlandish Art reviewers called the catalogue ‘exemplary’ and that ‘most impressive is the attention to nudes both North and South, and assertions that not all major developments arose in Italy’ [5.8].