Dr Tom Normand

Dr Tom Normand
HRSA

Position: Senior Lecturer
Email: tan@st-andrews.ac.uk

Tom Normand writes on British art in the 19th and 20th centuries, and has a specialist interest in art and photography from Scotland. His research focuses on sociological and political interpretations of art with an emphasis on cultural and national identities. This extends to issues of memory and memorials, the role and character of official institutions, the nature of vernacular culture, and, the representation of the ‘local’ in the visual arts.

In relation to these research interests Tom’s current teaching explores the context and ideology of English art in the period 1900-1939, the conditions of Scottish art in the period after 1945, the history of photography from Scotland, and the politics of American art in the first half of the 20th century.

Tom received his PhD in the Sociology of Art from the University of Durham and has taught at the University of St Andrews since 1982. He is co-ordinator for the Harry and Margery Boswell Collection of Scottish Art at the University of St Andrews.

Tom would welcome applications from postgraduate students interested in all aspects of British visual culture, and its international context, in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Publications

Books

Scottish Photography: a History, Luath Press, Edinburgh, 2007.

Ken Currie : Details of a Journey, Lund Humphries (Ashgate), London, 2002.

Calum Colvin: Ossian, Fragments of Ancient Poetry, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2002 (simultaneous publication in Gaelic as Oisein, Bloighean De Sheann Bhardachd).

The Modern Scot: Modernism and Nationalism in Scottish Art 1928-1955, Ashgate Press, London, 2000.

Wyndham Lewis the Artist; Holding the Mirror up to Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992.

Recent Works

‘Alvin Langdon Coburn and the Vortographs’, M. Antliff and V. Greene (eds), The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-18, Tate Publishing, London, 2010

‘The Realm of the Oystercatcher’, Portfolio: Contemporary Photography in Britain, #52, Edinburgh, 2010

R. McKenzie and T. Normand, Michael Scott: Testament, Aristaeus Press, Glasgow, 2010

'Other Photographies, Different Histories: looking at photographs in Dunfermline',
Studies in Photography 2009, March 2010

‘Natural Magic: Calum Colvin and the legacy of Sir David Brewster’, in Natural Magic, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 2009.

‘Seeing Scottish Art Now’, catalogue The Scottish Show, Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery and Marjorie Barrick Museum, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2008.

‘Memory, Myth and Melancholy: Ossian and the tropes of Scottish photography’ in Interfaces: Image, Texte, Language, no. 27, Spring 2008.

‘Photography and the Book in Scotland’ in Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, vol 4: Professionalism and Diversity, 1880-2000, edited by David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.

'Calum Colvin: Ossian', Next Level: Art, Photography, Ideas, Edition 12, October 2007.

'Imagining and Imaging the Land: some ideological formations of landscape photography in Scotland',
in A Shared Legacy: Essay on Irish and Scottish Art and Visual Culture, edited by J. Morrison & F, Cullen, Ashgate, 2005.

'Alvin Langdon Coburn, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Edinburgh', History of Photography, vol.29, no.1, Spring 2005.

'David Williams: one taste: (n)ever changing', Portfolio; Contemporary Photography in Britain, #39 June 2004

Recent Activities

Steven Campbell (1953-2007),
'Portrait of Tom Normand',
1998, Mixed media, Boswell Collection, HC1999.1

Editorial Advisory Board, Studies in Photography, 2010 - present

2010 elected honorary member of Royal Scottish Academy of Arts, HRSA

August 2009. Scottish Parliament & Festival of Politics: Chair for 'Callie Shell: World Press Photographer of the Year'.

Consultant, invited committee of academics on re-development of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

1994-present Co-ordinator and fund manager ‘The Harry Margery Boswell Collection at St. Andrews University’ http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~muscoll/boswell/

St Andrews Scottish Studies Network at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/sassn/

Conference papers

'Wyndham Lewis: Vorticist', Simposio: I Vorticisti, Peggy Guggenheim Collection and Universita Ca'Foscari Venezia, Venice, Italy, January 2011.

'Circa 1964: The Royal Scottish Academy and its Discontents', Reading, Rebellion and Revolution: Scottish Culture in the 1960s, University of St Andrews, May 2010. (And, Conference Organiser).

'Vernacular Photography from Scotland', Trigger presentation 'The Tartan Lens: a Colloquium on Scottish National Identity in the Visual Arts', University of Aberdeen and Aberdeen Art Gallery, May 2009.

Keynote Speaker: ‘Other Photographies: Different Histories’, Scottish Society for the History of Photography, 25th Anniversary Conference, ‘Photography in Scotland: Then, Now and Beyond Our Time’, National Galleries of Scotland, 27-28 March 2009.

‘Visualsing Scottish Identity: the Vigorous Imagination Exhibition of 1987’, 40th Anniversary Scottish Studies Fall Colloquium, Centre for Scottish Studies, University of Guelph, Canada, 26-27 September 2008.

‘Memorials and Memory-places: Understanding Scotland's Photography’, Institut d'études Anglophones, Université Paris 7 Denis Diderot, Paris, December 2006.

‘Memory, myth and melancholy: aspects of history and photography from Scotland’, Ossian Then and
Now Conference, UNESCO, Paris, September 2005.