The Making of Little Sparta - The 9th Annual Sir Jeremy Morse Lecture

Join us to hear Professor Stephen Bann (CBE FBA, Emeritus Professor of History of Art) discuss Ian Hamilton Finlay's sculpture garden 'Little Sparta.'

Once described by Sir Roy Strong as the ‘only really original garden made in this country since 1945’, Ian Hamilton Finlay’s ‘Little Sparta’ recently achieved a place in the select group of British gardens recorded for television by Monty Don. Yet, for more than a decade after the Finlay family began to live in the small farmstead of Stonypath in the Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh, the classical title was not yet in use. Over this period, Finlay was acquiring knowledge of the Ancient World, and applying his study of practices such as Classical Epigraphy and Pre-Socratic Philosophy to the development of the garden. But it was only when his own artistic practice led him into direct conflict with the secular norms of contemporary arts policy that the new title was definitively adopted. Stephen Bann, who was a frequent visitor to the garden from 1967 onward and corresponded regularly with Finlay, retraces the stages by which Stonypath became ‘Little Sparta’.

To be followed by a free wine reception.