Family Collections and Scattered Archives

Thalia Allington-Wood is Lecturer in Art History at The Warburg Institute, University of London. Her research is interested in the materiality and environments of art objects, particularly early modern sculpture, in relation to their making and reception, as well as issues of ecology, gender and historiography. She completed her PhD at University College London (UCL) in 2019 and her research has been supported to date by awards from the AHRC, the Society of Architectural Historians, the Sixteenth Century Society and fellowships at UCLA and Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University. Prior to joining the Warburg Institute in 2021, Thalia held teaching and research positions at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, UCL and Oxford Brookes University. She is currently completing a book on the Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo and has peer reviewed articles published in the Open Arts Journal and Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. Prior to working in academia, Thalia had a career in museum education, curatorial and research at institutions including London’s Design Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. She is the daughter of the artist Julia Wood and manages her artistic estate.

Will Rea is Senior Lecturer in the Art History of Africa at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds. Trained as an anthropologist at the Sainsbury Research Unit, Norwich, he initially came to Leeds as Henry Moore Fellow in Sculptural Studies and successfully ran the MA in Sculptural Studies for ten years. His main research focus is on the masquerade traditions and carving practices of the Northeastern Ekiti Yoruba. He is completing a monograph on the former and starting a major research project with the British Museum on the individual carvers of the mid-twentieth century. He is currently lead consultant curator on the JK Randle Yoruba Heritage Museum currently being developed in Lagos. He leads the Variant Modernism: British Art of the Twentieth Century course at the University of Leeds, as well as courses on anthropology and art and classic and contemporary traditions of Africa.

Rosamund Lily West is a curator, writer and historian. Having previously worked as Paul Mellon Research Curator at the Royal Society of Sculptors, Rosamund currently works as Documentary Curator at London Transport Museum, a role which involves documenting contemporary London. Rosamund is also writing up her part-time PhD, ‘The ‘concrete citizens’ of the London County Council’s housing schemes, 1943 to 1965’ on the London County Council’s post-war public sculptures at Kingston University.