Simon Shaw-Miller (born 1960) is

emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

professor of

history of art The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetics ...

at the University of Bristol. He is a specialist in the relationships between art and music in the modern period.

Early life and education

Simon Shaw-Miller was born Simon Miller in 1960 in

Pembury Pembury is a large village in Kent, in the south east of England, with a population of 6,128 at the 2011 census. It lies just to the north-east of Royal Tunbridge Wells. The village centre, including the village green and High Street area is a ...

, on the outskirts of Royal Tunbridge Wells. He was brought up in the village of Hollingbourne and the council estates of Park Wood and Senacre on the outskirts of Maidstone, in Kent. He attended Oldborough Manor High School, and then went to Brighton Polytechnic (later the University of Brighton) to study for a joint degree in art with music, graduating in 1982. He did post graduate research in the Department of Art History and Theory at the

University of Essex The University of Essex is a public university, public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, it is one of the original plate glass university, plate glass universities. The university comprises three camp ...

, studying with

Michael Podro Michael Podro (13 March 1931 – 28 March 2008) was a British Art history, art historian. Podro, the son of Jewish refugees from central Europe, was born in and grew up in Hendon, Middlesex. He attended Berkhamsted Collegiate School, Berkham ...

, Peter Vergo, John Nash, Dawn Ades and Thomas Puttfarken, and was awarded his doctorate in 1988 for "Music and Art and the Crisis in Early Modernism: An introduction to some non-serial dodecaphonic techniques". The examiners of his doctorate were the composer

Gordon Crosse Gordon Crosse (1 December 1937 – 21 November 2021) was an English composer. Biography Crosse was born in Bury, Lancashire on 1 December 1937, and in 1961 graduated from St Edmund Hall, Oxford with a first class honours degree in music, where h ...

and the musicologist Donald Mitchell.

Academic career

Simon Shaw-Miller is emeritus chair of history of art at the

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

having been appointed in 2013 and made professor emeritus in 2022. He was previously the professor of history of art and music in the School of Arts,

Birkbeck College Birkbeck, University of London (formally Birkbeck College, University of London), is a public research university located in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. Established in 1823 as the London Mechanics' ...

, University of London, where he was first appointed in 1995. He is an honorary associate and research fellow of the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is one of the oldest music schools in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the firs ...

, a fellow of the

Royal Society of Arts The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, commonly known as the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), is a learned society that champions innovation and progress across a multitude of sectors by fostering creativity, s ...

and a fellow of the

Higher Education Academy Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy) is a British charity and professional membership scheme promoting excellence in higher education. It advocates evidence-based teaching methods and awards fellowships as professional recogniti ...

. He was in post at Birkbeck for over 17 years having previously held a senior teaching and research fellowship jointly in the Department of History of Art and the Department of Music at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

. Prior to this he was a junior teaching and research fellow in the Department of History of Art at the

University of St. Andrews The University of St Andrews (, ; abbreviated as St And in post-nominals) is a public university in St Andrews, Scotland. It is the oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and, following the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, t ...

, Scotland. He is a specialist in the relationships between music and the visual, his research interests are the history of art and music in the modern period (1800-1960s). His research is concerned with questions of interdisciplinary methodology,

modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

, the concepts of

visual music Visual music, sometimes called color music, refers to the creation of a visual analogue to musical form by adapting musical structures for visual composition, which can also include silent films or silent Lumia work. It also refers to methods ...

, musical iconography,

synaesthesia Synesthesia (American English) or synaesthesia (British English) is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People with sy ...

, musical ekphrasis, sound art and the aesthetics of the

Gesamtkunstwerk A ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' (, 'total work of art', 'ideal work of art', 'universal artwork', 'synthesis of the arts', 'comprehensive artwork', or 'all-embracing art form') is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. ...

Curating

Shaw-Miller has been active as a curator and was involved in the programming of music in the gallery at Tate, St Ives, between 2004 and 2007. He has curated exhibitions at the Crawford Arts Centre, St Andrews; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester and the Royal College of Art, London. He was also an advisor to the major exhibition ''The Art of Music'' at the San Diego Museum of Art, which ran from 26 September 2015 through to 8 February 2016, before moving to the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, from 10 March – 5 June 2016. From January to May 2018 he curated, with Charlotte de Mille, the exhibition 'Out of Time' at King's Place in London, relating self-portraiture according to four themes emanating from the Spring music programme of 'Time Unwrapped': memory, suspension and reflection, alternative time, and movement. The exhibited works came from Piano Nobile's Ruth Borchard Collection of British self-portraiture in the 20th and 21st centuries. He has laterly been involved in the major exhibition, 'Fabienne Verdier: Vortex', at Waddington Custot Gallery in London, writing on music and art interactions in Verdier's recent paintings.

Awards

In 2007 he was made an Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, (Hon) ARAM. In 2009 he was awarded the Prix Ars Electronica Media.Art.Research Award for his interdisciplinary research on art and music and for the manuscript of his book ''Eye hEar''. He was visiting research fellow at Merton College, University of Oxford, Michaelmas 2019/20.

Family

Shaw-Miller is married to Lindsey Shaw-Miller, an art historian who has held among other posts the Edward Speelman Fellowship in Dutch and Flemish Art at Wolfson College, Cambridge (1996–2000). They have one daughter, Aniella. On marriage they changed their surname from Simon Miller and Lindsey Shaw to Shaw-Miller.

Selected publications

*''Improvision: Orphic Art in the Age of Jazz.'' Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. (pbk. published 2023) *''Eye hEar The Visual in Music.'' Ashgate, 2013. (2nd ed. published by Routledge, 2016 pbk), *''Samual Palmer Revisited'' ed. with Sam Smiles, Ashgate, 2010. *''Eye-Music: Kandinsky, Klee and All that Jazz'' with F. Guy and M. Tucker, Pallant House Press, Chichester, 2007. *''Visible Deeds of Music: Art and Music from Wagner to Cage''. Yale University Press, 2002 (reprint pbk. 2004) *''Image:Music:Text'' eds. with M. Pointon, P. Binski. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, USA: Blackwell, 1996. *''The Last Post: Music after Modernism'' ed. Manchester University Press and St.Martin's Press, 1993.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shaw-Miller, Simon British art historians Living people Academics of Birkbeck, University of London Academics of the Royal Academy of Music Academics of the University of Bristol 1960 births People from Pembury