NE/SAH is pleased to host a lecture from our 2023 John Coolidge Fellowship recipient, Carter Jackson of Boston University. 

Thursday, September 12
7:00 pm

Presented via Zoom. Pre-registration for this free event is required. Please register here!

In the 1890s, the British Empire covered nearly one quarter of the globe, but it faced growing dissent in its colonies and challenges to its hegemony. In response to these concerns, a massive building complex called the Imperial Institute opened in London in 1893. Its program included conference rooms, emigration and intelligence offices, as well as galleries of natural resources from the colonies—all of which were intended to serve as a “permanent binding force” for the Empire. However, the Imperial Institute never achieved its unifying purpose, and it has long been deemed an ill-conceived one-off and a failure. 

The 2023 John Coolidge Research Fellowship supported archival research for Carter’s doctoral dissertation, which includes an investigation of the Imperial Institute and similar institutional buildings. His lecture aims to situate the Imperial Institute within the longer, largely overlooked history of similar institutional buildings in Britain and its colonies. It will also explore the ambitions and assumptions that underpinned the Institute’s design and how they ironically thwarted its mission.

Carter Jackson is a PhD candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at Boston University. His dissertation, entitled “The Architecture of Britain’s Imperial Institutes and the Misgivings of Empire,” explores the privately funded institutional buildings that once served as the scientific, social, and economic centers that helped make Britain’s Empire tangible and facilitated its development. Carter has worked with architecture in the context of museums and historic preservation through internships and fellowships at Historic New England, the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts Historical Commission, the MIT Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.