The Milein Cosman Project Curatorship

at the British Museum

The Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust is delighted to announce the appointment of Grant Lewis as the new Milein Cosman Project Curator for the British Museum’s Late Michelangelo exhibition which will take place in 2024. Grant is currently working on a PhD at the Courtauld Institute, following his MPhil and BA studies at the University of Cambridge. For the next two years he will be responsible for various aspects of organising the Late Michelangelo exhibition, beginning with researching and writing the exhibition publication. He has already worked for the British Museum, having held a three-year fellowship on the Getty Paper Project and he contributed to this year’s exhibition of Parmigianino drawings at the Courtauld Gallery. In June he published an article in Apollo Magazine called ‘The Renaissance Art of Thieving’, which talks about Michelangelo’s drawings.

The British Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings is one of the greatest collections in the world. The BM is committed to developing the next generation of curators and it provides remarkable opportunities for research on objects as well as practical experience of exhibition organisation.

Supporting the activities of the BM’s Department of Prints and Drawings is something which would have been dear to Milein Cosman’s heart. From 1939 to 1942 Milein attended the Slade School of Fine Art, which moved from London to Oxford to escape wartime bombing. Back then, an artist’s training began, as it had done since the Renaissance, with a long period dedicated entirely to drawing. Since the Ashmolean’s collections had been evacuated from Oxford, she was probably not aware of the great drawings normally housed there, especially Raphael and Michelangelo. But she was already a knowledgeable art historian and followed with pleasure the classes of Tancred Borenius. Another of her tutors was Philip Hendy, who went on to become Director of the National Gallery, and he focused almost entirely on the Italian Renaissance. After leaving the Slade, Milein got together a group of friends to take classes with Kurt Badt, a distinguished German art historian who likewise had a special interest in the Renaissance. In the post-war years, as her career developed, she became a passionate visitor of exhibitions, in London and abroad, and often visited the gallery of the BM’s Department of Prints and Drawings.

The exhibition on which Grant Lewis is working will focus on the later part of Michelangelo’s long career when he was living in Rome. As well as creating sculptures for the Tomb of Pope Julius II, and frescoes such as the Last Judgement for the Sistine Chapel, he worked as the architect of Saint Peter’s. Major tasks such as these required the making of a great many drawings, and important groups connected with these projects are held by the Department of Prints and Drawings. We look forward to sharing news of Grant’s work on the project in due course.