I’ve been in Brighton, England since Wednesday for the Association for Art History annual conference, and I have had the BEST time. What a great city! First of all, I found a small but cute hotel on the ocean — that was priority Number One. There’s no way that a California girl like myself could be this close to the ocean and not want to wake up to it every morning.

Brighton also has incredible shopping, especially in the form of cute boutiques like Covet where I discovered the Danish brand, Masai, and my favorite UK-based tea shop, Bird and Blend Tea. There’s even a LEGO store here, making souvenir shopping a breeze. I highly recommend Brighton, even if just as a day-trip from London.

The conference as a whole was a very rewarding experience. There’s nothing quite like flying across the Atlantic to deliver a paper on plaster casts of pre-Columbian art with a wonderful colleague. The panel “From Casting to Coding” was very much aligned with things I have been thinking about in my own work, and while I didn’t get (m)any questions, it was still totally worth it. The other panels were also really interesting, and the keynote speakers (Claire Bishop and Michael Rakowitz) were some of the best keynotes I’ve seen at a conference before.

It was also nice catching up with colleagues and feeling like part of the conversation. One of the best parts of working at the Center is that there are so many opportunities to travel to the UK, and I’m definitely spending more time here than I had ever imagined. Although I’m still far from calling myself an anglophile, I’m definitely starting to appreciate England and its history in ways I had never predicted. Am very grateful to be here, and excited for the next (very short) leg of the journey to Birmingham tomorrow.