In Conversation: Laura Freeman and Richard Calvocoressi – Jim Ede and Kettle’s Yard: The Genesis of a Biography
Wednesday 6 March 2024, 6–7pm
Join us online for a conversation between Richard Calvocoressi, who knew Jim Ede after he moved to Edinburgh in the 1970s, and Laura Freeman, author of the new biography Ways of Life: Jim Ede and the Kettle’s Yard Artists. They will discuss Jim Ede, Kettle’s Yard and the origins of her acclaimed book.
Jim Ede was a friend to artists such as Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Henry Moore, Christopher Wood, Barbara Hepworth, David Jones, Alfred Wallis and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. He was a man of extraordinary energies: a collector, dealer, fixer, critic. For Ede, art lived and a life without art, beauty, friendship and creativity was a life not worth living. Art was not for galleries alone and it certainly was not only for the rich. Here at Kettle’s Yard, this extraordinary man opened his home and his collection to all comers.
A link to join the talk will be provided ahead of the event.
About the Speakers
Laura Freeman
Laura Freeman is chief art critic of The Times. She has written for the Spectator, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, TLS, Apollo and World of Interiors. Her first book The Reading Cure, a memoir about hunger and happiness, addiction, obsession and recovery, was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2018. She studied history of art at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Richard Calvocoressi
Richard Calvocoressi joined Gagosian gallery in London in 2015, having been director of the Henry Moore Foundation (2007-15), director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (1987-2007), and a curator at the Tate Gallery (1979-87).
