2026 Grainger Symposium: Percy Grainger's 'Legends'
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Percy Grainger was an avid visual artist and self-taught curator. In order to communicate his unique curatorial vision for his autobiographical Grainger Museum, he and his artist wife Ella (née Ström), designed and produced 58 framed and unframed didactic panels to complement their physical collections.
These extraordinary objects, which he called his ‘Museum Legends’, go far beyond standard museum labels, either then or now, combining text elements with a variety of collage techniques, becoming artworks in their own right. The works were then hand-framed by the couple, overpainting standard framing materials in a vibrant range of colours in order to beguile visitors: as Grainger wrote in 1938 when the Museum was opened, ‘our particular sort of museum need not woo dignity thru drabness’.
The Legends were intended to provide insight into Grainger’s idiosyncratic view of the musical world and give context to his broader collection. Covering topics from his family history and personal creative practice to the biography and work of friends and colleagues in music, literature, and art, these panels provide a snapshot of music-making and cultural history in the first half of the twentieth century.
This symposium interrogates Grainger’s ‘Legends’, by bringing together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, from music and art history to museology, architecture, photography, and fashion. With each presentation focussing on a different ‘Legend’ from the collection, this symposium will make a distinct contribution to our understanding of Percy Grainger as a visual artist and curator, as well as to broader and cosmopolitan twentieth-century cultural historical themes.
WEDNESDAY 2 December
OPENING | |
9:15 am | Heather Gaunt and Sarah Kirby – Introduction |
Session 1 | |
9:30am | Paul Jackson – Cyril Scott, Musical Originator |
10:00am | Lewis Foreman – Sir Arnold Bax (Charm in Complexity) |
10:30am | Eric Saylor – Vaughan Williams (Greatness in Simplicity) |
BREAK 11:00am – 11:30am | |
Session 2 | |
11:30am | Penelope Thwaites – Rose Grainger |
12:00pm | Stuart King – John H. Grainger |
12:30pm | David Pear – Thomas A. Sisley: Author, Painter, Poet and Elocution Teacher |
BREAK 1:00pm – 2:30pm Museum tour: 1:45pm | |
Session 3 | |
2:30pm | Georgina Walker – From London Music Room |
3:00pm | Anne Maxwell – Photographs of Aldridge Family |
3:30pm | Monica Syrette – Designs for Rime-Tiles by Ella Grainger |
BREAK 4:00PM – 4:30PM | |
Session 4 | |
4:30pm | Geoffrey Hawker – James Mackinnon Fowler: Legislator and Historian |
5:00pm | Grant Woods – Robert Atkinson: Language-Reformer, Poet, Musician, Humanitarian |
THURSDAY 3 December
Session 5 | |
9:00am | Lene Halskov Hansen – Evald Tang Kristensen, The Greatest of Folksong Collectors, & the Men & Women Who Sang to Him |
9:30am | David Irving – Arnold Dolmetsch: Musical Confucius |
10:00am | Graham Freeman – English Folk-Singers |
10:30am | Teresa Balough – Free Music |
BREAK 11:00am – 11:30am | |
Session 6 | |
11:30am | Peter Tregear – Karl Klimsch: Percy Grainger’s Only Composition Teacher |
12:00pm | Malcolm Gillies – Edvard Grieg and Percy Grainger |
12:30pm | Elizabeth Kertesz – British Women Composers |
1:00pm | Peter Campbell – Outline History of Orchestral Music in Melbourne by Sir James Barrett |
CONFERENCE ENDS 1:30pm | |
The 2026 Symposium celebrates the forthcoming publication of the book Percy Grainger’s Legends: Music, History and the Twentieth-Century Museum edited by Sarah Kirby and Heather Gaunt (Australian Scholarly Publishing), supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation (Publication Sponsor).
