Areas of expertise
Art History, Art Museums and Galleries, London Art World
Courses taught
Masterpieces: Making and Meaning
London as Art Capital
Bio
Dr Lois Oliver is an art historian and curator whose courses offer in-depth engagement with the London art world, drawing on her extensive professional experience. She has worked as a curator at the V&A, the National Gallery and the Royal Academy. A core faculty member at Notre Dame London since 2011, Dr Oliver is also an Associate Lecturer at Boston University London and a Visiting Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Her career spans academia, museum practice, exhibitions and public engagement. Her recent exhibitions include Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism at Dulwich Picture Gallery and Jock McFadyen: Tourist without a Guidebook at the Royal Academy; she is currently preparing Edouard Manet & Music for the Royal Academy. She has created specialist multimedia interpretation for leading UK arts institutions and iconic sites, including Buckingham Palace and Blenheim Palace, and has appeared on BBC Radio and TV. She is also a printmaker and violinist. Dr Oliver studied English Literature at Cambridge and History of Art at the Courtauld, completing an MA in Venetian Renaissance Art and a PhD on The Image of the Artist, Paris 1815–1855.
Select Publications
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‘Ikonoklast – a collective freedom’, chapter in Future Language of the Ikonoklast (history of a UK-based graffiti collective), ed. Remi Rough Velocity Press (2025)
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Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism (co-author), exhibition catalogue, Dulwich Picture Gallery and Musée Marmottan Monet (2023)
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‘Inside the mind of Berthe Morisot’, RA Magazine, Spring 2023, p. 19
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‘Berthe Morisot’s English Holiday’, In View, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Spring/Summer 2023, p. 14-21
- ‘The Pioneer Impressionist: Berthe Morisot’, In View, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Autumn/Winter 2022, p. 40
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Jock McFadyen: Tourist without a Guidebook (Royal Academy, 2022)
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‘Monk or Lover? A nineteenth-century artist’s dilemma’, Journal of Art Historiography special issue ‘Modern Lives - Modern Legends’ (December 2020)
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Jean-Joseph Taillasson, ‘Virgil reading the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia, 1787’, in The Eighteenth-Century French Paintings, National Gallery Collection Catalogue, London (2018)
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‘Les visiteurs dans l’atelier de l’artiste: variations sur un thème pictural au XIXe siècle’, in L’Artiste en représentation: images des artistes dans l’art du XIXe siècle, Musée de La Roche-sur-Yon/Fage editions (2012)
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Rebels and Martyrs: the image of the artist in the nineteenth century (co-author), Exhibition Catalogue, National Gallery, London (2006)
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‘New Evidence towards an attribution to Holbein of a drawing in the V&A’ (with V. Button, A. Derbyshire, N. Frayling, R. Withnall), The Burlington Magazine (March 2006)
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‘The Evolution of Rubens’s Judgement of Paris (NG 194)’ (with R. Billinge, F. Healy, A. Roy), National Gallery Technical Bulletin (2005)
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Boris Anrep: The National Gallery Mosaics, National Gallery/Yale University Press, London (2004)
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Contributions to El Greco, National Gallery Exhibition Catalogue, London (2003)
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Contributions to Impressions of the Twentieth Century, ed. M. Timmers, V&A, London (2001)
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‘Bodies of Work: Models as Artists’ in Jill Berk Jiminez ed., Dictionary of Artists’ Models (2001)
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‘The Visual Art of David Jones’s In Parenthesis’, Agenda (November, 1998)