Mark Ledbury

Biography

Mark Ledbury is Power Professor of Art History and Visual Culture and Director of the Power Institute at the University of Sydney. After undergraduate study at Cambridge University, Mark took his D.Phil at the University of Sussex under the supervision of Thomas Crow. He worked at the Universities of Portsmouth and Manchester in the UK before moving to the United States to take up the role of Associate Director of Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute. He took up his current Power role in 2011.

Mark’s research focuses on eighteenth and nineteenth century European painting and theatre. His monographs explore the works and lives of painters, both canonical and obscure, in their relations with wider theatre and literary cultures , and his work also dwells on the definition and stakes of genre in visual art and theatre. He has been the curator or co-curator of exhibitions in Sydney, New Haven and Williamstown, and he is the recipient of grants, awards and fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust, the Clark Art Institute, the Yale Centre for British Art, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, and the Australian Research Council.

Mark’s role at Power involves the fulfillment of the vision of John Power through dissemination and diffusion of ideas in visual culture in Australia and internationally, and as Director of the Power Institute Mark currently oversees a programme of research grants, collaborations, publications and events in partnership with foundations and institutions Internationally, including the Getty Foundation, the Terra Foundation and a number of Australian Foundations.