Free exhibition in which photographer Garry Fabian Miller creates new work inspired by the Ashmolean's 19th-century paintings of Samuel Palmer.
Garry Fabian Miller is taking over Gallery 8 at the Ashmolean Museum from 26 November 2026 to 13 June 2027. It's the sixth exhibition in the Ashmolean NOW series, where contemporary artists create new work inspired by the museum's historical collections.
Miller, born in Bristol in 1957, has worked without a camera since the mid-1980s. He treats light as both his medium and his subject, pushing the darkroom to its limits with exposure times that can stretch across several days. The result is a set of intensely saturated colours you won't find in conventional photography.
He's long described the Romantic painter Samuel Palmer (1805–81) as a guiding presence in his work. Miller first encountered Palmer's paintings during a visit to the Ashmolean in the 1970s and was struck by what he called their 'transcendent mystery'. Palmer's pastoral paintings, drawings, and etchings of the Darent valley are held in the museum's collections, and they'll be hanging alongside Miller's photographs, split into daylight and moonlight sections.
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The show runs in Gallery 8 at the Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2PH, from 26 November 2026 through to 13 June 2027, and entry is free.
