Who is the Crowd?: Learning from the French Revolution

Sat 15 Jun, 3 – 4pm

Free, booking recommended

In this 200th anniversary year of the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, and in conjunction with Manchester Art Gallery’s Getting Together to Get Things Done exhibition, cultural historian Dr Lindsay Porter looks at depictions of the crowd in the French Revolution, showing how it is by turns described as heroic, celebratory or threatening, and how this legacy cast its shadow over perceptions of crowds in England. Referring to a wide range of sources and artefacts – paintings, prints, political cartoons, historic newspapers and eyewitness reports – this talk uses at its starting point depictions of major events in Revolutionary-era France, and asks us to think about our own feelings towards crowds, crowd action and crowd participation today.  So… are you in?

Lindsay Porter is interested in the art and cultural history of the eighteenth century and popular ideas about elites, which has led her to publish books as various as Who Are the Illuminati? (a history of the myth of the secret society), Assassination: A History of Political Murder and, most recently, Popular Rumour in Revolutionary Paris, 1792–4, as well as to contribute to countless art publications. When not thinking about conspiracies, rumours and untimely deaths, she is a frequent guide at Manchester Art Gallery.

Image courtesy of the University of Manchester