Free admission

As part of the MIDIS PARTAGE lecture series, you are cordially invited by the Fashion, Jewelry and Accessory Design Department of HEAD – Genève to attend the lecture by Angela Benza, which will take place on Monday, November 30, 2026, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Trained as an art historian, Angela Benza specializes in British art from the 16th to the 19th century. Her research interests include landscape and garden art; her master’s thesis focused on country-house portraits, depictions of country houses in English painting from the 17th to the 19th century. In her doctoral research, she then turned to the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods (16th–17th century) and to the portrait as social and theatrical performance, with a particular interest in the material, performative, transactional and symbolic dimensions of the portrait miniature. After three years in London, first as a Visiting Student at the Courtauld Institute and then as a scholar of the Attingham Trust’s “The Royal Collection Studies”, she returned to Switzerland and began her museum career as a project assistant, then research associate at the Swiss National Museum – Château de Prangins (2018–2020). She then became curator and exhibition project manager at the Château de La Sarraz (VD) as well as research associate at the Musée cantonal d’archéologie et d’histoire in Lausanne (2020–2022). She subsequently served as deputy director of the Master’s in Museum Studies at the University of Neuchâtel (2022–2026). Since late 2021, she has been curator in charge of exhibitions, collections and outreach at the Espace Horloger de la Vallée, a position she has held full-time since October 2026.

From the Elizabethan miniature to Swiss haute horlogerie, from London to the Vallée de Joux: had anyone told me that my professional career would unfold between these fields and these places, I would have been the first to wonder how I had arrived at such an unusual crossroads. A taste for all things miniature, meticulous or curious, a fascination with the artistic gesture and the crafts, an interest in island talents – at sea as on land –, a passion for people who are passionate about their craft and who still marvel at the beautiful things human hands can make: these are all part of the explanation, along with a healthy dose of serendipity.