Penn & Yale Clubs of London Networking Evening at the Foundling Museum

The Penn/Yale networking evening at the Foundling Museum, which explores the history of the Foundling Hospital, the UK’s first children’s charity and first public art gallery, is an opportunity to meet old friends, make new connections, enjoy a private view of the Museum's autumn exhibition, Basic Instincts, and hear from the Museum’s Curator, Kathleen Palmer. Drinks and nibbles provided.

The Foundling Hospital was established in 1739 by the philanthropist Thomas Coram to care for babies at risk of abandonment. Instrumental in helping Coram realise his vision were the artist William Hogarth and the composer George Frideric Handel. Their creative generosity set the template for the ways in which the arts can support philanthropy.

The Foundling Museum is a history and art museum, which through a dynamic programme of exhibitions and events, celebrates the ways in which artists of all disciplines have helped improve children’s lives for over 275 years.

Basic Instincts, the autumn exhibition, explores Georgian attitudes to love, desire and female respectability through the radical paintings of Joseph Highmore. The evening is also a celebration of the loan by Yale to the Museum of a painting by Joseph Highmore called The Angel of Mercy. The topic of the painting is the desperation of destitute mothers in the 18th century, a social ill that the Foundling Hospital was established to resolve. The history of these social trends and the role that artists played to highlight them is fascinating.