Zoom lecture in collaboration with New York’s Morbid Anatomy

How to depict the impossible, a monster more bizarre than any medieval Apocalypse or engravings of krakens and rhinoceroses? This wretched problem faced artists and writers and alchemists before and after science, and skewed the way we saw and dealt with the whale. In his illustrated lecture, calling witnesses from Albrecht Dürer to Herman Melville, from Albertus Magnus to Marianne Moore, Philip Hoare scans the stormy horizon for fated, star-crossed beasts, elusive mammalian mountains of mystery. He explores the manner of their coming and their demise throughout modern history, how they changed according to what we demanded of them, and how their sacrificial bodies signify art, life, love and faith in our sublunary times.

These are extraordinary times and the plague has hit some harder than others, tickets are by donation – if you possibly can £10 is much appreciated, but £2 is also much appreciated. Thank you for your support.