Edgar Wind (1900-1971) was the University of Oxford’s first Professor of the History of Art. In 1954, he was first invited to give the Chichele Lectures at All Souls College, Oxford, where he delivered four lectures on Art and Scholarship under Julius II. By 1955, Wind was elected as the Professor of the History of Art at Oxford, and became a professorial fellow at Trinity College, Oxford. His lectures were so popular amongst students and members of the university that they were often delivered at the Oxford Playhouse Theatre in order to accommodate attendees. He also conducted a variety of informal instructions, principally on iconography, for his students, which were available by special arrangement. The following list comprises the titles of the lectures and classes delivered by Edgar Wind during his thirteen years at the University of Oxford. Wherever possible, through archival research and reconstructing lecture notes and slide lists, the titles of individual lectures and classes have been provided.
Materials relating to Wind’s career and his time at Oxford are located throughout the University. The Wind Papers are available by appointment in the Bodelian Library’s Special Collections Reading Room. Part of Wind’s personal library, as well as the books he collected for the History of Art’s Departmental Library, are located in the Wind Reading Room of the Sackler Library. Approximately 60,000 of the original black and white slides used by Wind for his lectures and classes are located at the History of Art Department’s Visual Resources Collection.
Several of Wind’s lectures and slide lists have been reconstructed by Ben Thomas. See Ben Thomas, ‘Wind, Edgar Marcel (1900-1971)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press (2004).
Edgar Wind and Oxford (link to the Bodleian Libraries' Art and Architecture Research Guide)
Catalogue of the Edgar Wind Papers at the Bodleian Library
