Marie Conte-Helm

BIOGRAPHY

Professor Conte-Helm is a long-established Lecturer of The Arts Society with a BA in History of Art and an MA in Asian Art. She has most recently served as Executive Director of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, as Visiting Professor at Northumbria University, and as a Member of the Board of Governors of the University for the Creative Arts. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was Director General of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation from 1999-2011 and has held senior academic positions at various UK universities.

She is widely published and has lectured throughout the UK and abroad. She is also an experienced cruise speaker and a Resident Historian with Viking Cruises, lecturing on many aspects of Asian Art and East-West Encounters. She was awarded an OBE in the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to UK-Japan educational and cultural relations, and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette by the Government of Japan in 2019.

TALKS
1. Dressed to Thrill: The Art of the Japanese Kimono
2. The Art of the Japanese Garden: From Tradition to Modernity
3. The Great Age of the Shogun: Art and Culture in Edo Period Japan
4. The Arts of Japan: Highlights of Japanese Art and Culture
5. Captain Cook’s Voyages: The Art and Science of Exploration
6. Travellers Among Mountains and Streams: Masterpieces of Chinese Landscape Painting
7. Around the World with Isabella Bird: Victorian Lady Traveller