To celebrate 800 years of Magna Carta, Royal Holloway, University of London are holding an exhibition of 12 exceptional paintings from their world-class art collection.

Featuring works such as The Princes in the Tower, The Railway Station and The Babylonian Marriage Market, the exhibition will explore Victorian attitudes towards contemporary social injustices as well as reflecting on human rights today.

Adult and family trails will be available to guide you through the exhibition. You will have the chance to explore your own thoughts on modern day liberties in the ‘Write to Rights’ postcard project, and discover more about the exhibition though a series of fascinating talks by academics and curators.

Contemporary attitudes to human rights will also be explored by Royal Holloway’s Media Arts students who are producing films inspired by the paintings. As well as enhancing access to the collection, the exhibition and the accompanying activities will shed new light on Magna Carta, and its relevance across the centuries in a range of artistic and digital formats.

Related talks, tours and other events 

2 June 12-1pm Grim and Desperate: Living in Poverty in Victorian Britain
Looking at three paintings in the exhibition College Curator Dr Laura MacCulloch explores the reality of poverty in Victorian Britain.

4 June 3-4pm Exhibition Tour
Join the team for a tour of the exhibition and find out how the Victorians used art to explore the idea of human rights.

5 June 1-2pm Magna Carta and the Victorians
In this lecture leading expert Professor Miles Taylor, University of York, explores attitudes to Magna Carta in the 19th-century and how its principles were manipulated to suit a variety of political campaigns.

9 June 12.30-1.30pm ‘Unsettled Neighbourhoods: Magna Carta and the Movement of People in Nineteenth-Century Britain’
William Powell Frith’s The Railway Station will be the starting point of this talk by Royal Holloway’s Dr Ruth Livesey exploring how the development of roads and railways in nineteenth-century Britain tangled with customary ideas about dwelling and freedom of movement.

12, 13 and 18 June 1-2pm Exhibition Tour
Join the Art Collections team for a tour of the exhibition and find out how the Victorians used art to explore the idea of human rights.

14 June 10am-5pm The Great Charter Festival and Gallery Family Open Day
As part of the Great Charter Festival the gallery is holding a family open day with Art Alive performances, a children’s trail and art activities.

16 June 1-2pm Innocence and doom: Millais Portraits of incarcerated Royal Children
Art Collections Intern and the exhibition’s co-curator Michaela Jones explores Millais’ fascination with doomed royal children including the two princes in the tower. Imprisoned without trial, the Victorians believed they had been murdered by their uncle Richard III. Millais depictions of unfortunate Royal children were part of a wider debate in Victorian society surrounding the rights of children and their need to be protected.