- Until 29 October 2026
- This display celebrates the acquisition of the Deanna Petherbridge Archive, donated to the Paul Mellon Centre in 2022.
DSP/7/32, Photograph of Petherbridge wearing her Critic’s Mask in front of The Concrete Armada. Taken in her studio whilst Manchester City Art Gallery’s Artist in Residence, 1982, Deanna Petherbridge Archive, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Image courtesy of Tim Farrington.
This display celebrates the acquisition of the Deanna Petherbridge Archive, donated to the Paul Mellon Centre in 2022.
Deanna Petherbridge (1939–2024) was an accomplished, internationally recognised artist. Widely exhibited, she also curated major exhibitions and authored the highly influential publication, The Primacy of Drawing (2010; rev. edn. 2026). As a visiting artist and academic, she undertook numerous residencies and lecture tours, including in New Delhi, Lahore and Melbourne. Her distinguished career included serving as Professor of Drawing at the Royal College of Art in London (1995–2001), and she was awarded a CBE in 1996.
By the later stages of her career, Petherbridge had achieved many of the conventional markers of success. She had served on boards and panels, judged competitions, held various academic positions and her artwork was held by numerous national museums and galleries. Yet this institutional and public recognition did not ever dispel her sense of remaining fundamentally adjacent to, rather than fully embedded within the British art world. This display will explore the origins and nature of her feelings of marginalisation.
Petherbridge’s sense of herself as an outsider cannot be attributed to any single cause. Rather, it was the cumulative effect of multiple intersecting factors: her commitment to drawing; her politically and intellectually engaged practice; her South African heritage; her temperament; her gender; and her complex relationship with institutions. Taken together, these elements shaped a career that remained persistently outside, rather than fully integrated within the mainstream.
Just on the Edge is curated by Hannah Jones. The display brings together material from the Deanna Petherbridge Archive, accompanied by a selection of original drawings kindly lent by the Artistic Estate of Deanna Petherbridge and the Katrin Bellinger Collection.
The Deanna Petherbridge Archive is in the process of being catalogued and is open to all. If you are interested in consulting material, please visit our website for more information.
Display Pamphlet
This document is available to download below.