The Foreign Invention of British Art: From Renaissance to Enlightenment, Leslie Primo (2025), with Miranda Kaufmann (EMPIRE LINES Live at the National Gallery, London)

In this special episode, authors and historians Leslie Primo and Miranda Kaufmann join EMPIRE LINES live, to discuss migration, national identity, and the many heritages of Britain’s best-known artworks, drawing from the collections of the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery in London.

This episode was recorded live at the Supporters’ House Salon at the National Gallery in London in October 2025. Find all the information in the first Instagram post: instagram.com/p/DPogN0mgvtF/

The Foreign Invention of British Art: From Renaissance to Enlightenment by Leslie Primo is published by Thames & Hudson.

Heiresses: Marriage, Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery by Miranda Kaufmann is published by One World Publications.

Both are available in all good bookshops and online.

For more about National Trust properties, hear historian Corinne Fowler with visual artist and researcher Ingrid Pollard, linking rural British landscapes, buildings, and houses, to global histories of transatlantic slavery, through their book, Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain (2024): pod.link/1533637675/episode/9f4f72cb1624f1c5ee830c397993732e

Watch the full video conversation online, via Radical Ecology: vimeo.com/995929731

And find all the links in the first Instagram post: instagram.com/p/C8cyHX2I28

For more about Ottobah Cugoano, hear contemporary artist Billy Gerard Frank on their film, Palimpsest: Tales Spun From Sea And Memories (2019), recorded live as part of PEACE FREQUENCIES, a 24 hour live radio broadcast to mark International Human Rights Day in December 2023, and 75 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: pod.link/1533637675/episode/ODVmOTQ5NzEtNjU1YS00N2ZkLWE5YjUtZDIwNmUyZTI5MzY2

For more about Barbara Walker’s Vanishing Point series, hear curators Jake Subryan Richards and Vicky Avery on Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance (2023) at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Hear Ekow Eshun, curator of the touring exhibition, The Time is Always Now (2024) at the National Portrait Gallery in London and The Box in Plymouth: pod.link/1533637675/episode/df1d7edea120fdbbb20823a2acdb35cf

Hear artist Kimathi Donkor on John Singer Sargent’s Madame X (1883-1884) and Study of Mme Gautreau (1884) at Tate Britain in London: tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/sargent-and-fashion/exhibition-guide/sargent-fashion-audio

And hear artist Yinka Shonibare CBE RA on Decolonised Structures: Queen Victoria (2022) at the Serpentine in London: pod.link/1533637675/episode/NTE4MDVlYzItM2Q3NC00YzQ1LTgyNGItYTBlYjQ0Yjk3YmNj

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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