Nigel Ip is a London-based visual arts blogger and art historian.
As a small child, I often found myself dragging my parents to the National Gallery whenever we were in London. I don’t know why but something about the paintings in those hallowed spaces prompted me to go back, and back, and back again. It wasn’t until I was 14 years old – on 29th July 2009 – that I saw my first National Gallery exhibition and started taking an active interest in the visual arts.
For as long as I have been attending exhibitions in London and internationally, I have wanted to increase accessibility to the arts through the preservation, digitisation, and sharing of museum collections to a wider audience. This blog was fully-inspired by that vision.
After gaining a First in History & Philosophy of Art at the University of Kent in 2015, I received a Distinction from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2016, where I studied Italian Renaissance art.
My artistic and academic interests are multifarious and oftentimes quirky. A curious desire to fully understand the emerging selfie phenomenon prompted my undergraduate dissertation on selfies and self-portraiture. On the more historical side, my obsession with the Renaissance painter Raphael paved the way for my award-winning MA dissertation on Raphael’s re-use practice during his short but highly influential career.
I have previously worked as an exhibitions research assistant and collections cataloguer for Royal Museums Greenwich, a visitor assistant at the Natural History Museum, and a gallery assistant at 18 Davies Street Gallery.
Currently, I divide my time as an Editorial Intern for Print Quarterly and Education Intern at The Arts Society. Occasionally, I review publications for Museum Bookstore and provide research for The Fusilier Museum London.
You can follow me on Instagram too, where I regularly post mini-reviews and nuggets of art-historical knowledge!
