Art Appreciation Weekend Selkirk Arms Hotel 2026      

The Selkirk Arms has been running Art Appreciation weekends for nearly two decades. Jeremy Carlisle led this hugely popular annual event but has decided to retire.  We thank him for all his entertaining and stimulating lectures and wish him well.  We are delighted that well-known art curator and lecturer Amanda Herries,  who lives locally, has been persuaded to take the course into new directions.  Please see her introduction below and some information about the new offer. 

This is primarily a residential speciality break.

Hallo and welcome to a new season of explorations in art.

I’m Amanda Herries, and I am delighted that Chris and Joanna  have invited me to continue the residential art appreciation weekend at the Selkirk Arms which have been so successful for many years.

Some of you have joined these weekends in the past, for others they will be new, and you are very welcome.  They will have a fresh approach, and, for this year, 2026, a new date in the diary. It will be a March weekend rather than November, when I am otherwise engaged lecturing in Australia and New Zealand.

My background is as an archaeologist (Cambridge University) but I would now describe myself as a decorative and social arts historian, with experience at the Museum of London, living in Japan for nearly a decade, freelance lecturing (Accredited Arts Society), curating exhibitions and writing.  I have led  and lectured on expert cultural tours in Japan and in Scotland.

In my opinion, you can’t disassociate fine art appreciation from social and decorative arts awareness and the ever-present joy and enrichment of looking at art.

I hope you will join me on our March ‘birding’ weekend.  There will be good food, interesting pictures and enjoyable company. All in comfort at the Selkirk Arms.   Together we will fly through millennia and throughout the world, returning, exhilarated, and ready to put new-found knowledge to our use and enjoyment whenever we look at art.

Amanda 

January 2026

Friday 6th March -Sunday 8th 2026

BIRDS IN ART 6 - 8 MARCH 2026 with Amanda Herries

For his final art appreciation weekend Jeremy Carlisle decided to focus on animals in art. He was right to do so – they are a source of endless fascination to artists.

For my first, I thought it would be fun to continue that approach and talk about birds in art.  My talks take place in an informal setting and I welcome questions and discussion.

Birds appear worldwide in art from prehistoric aboriginal cave paintings of huge birds prized as a source of food  to the divine messengers of the Maya, to mythological Egyptian and Classical contexts, and through Christian religious symbolism to wonderful asymmetric  and isometric Chinese and Japanese depictions or the infamous optical distorting and morphing flocks of birds created by the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher nearly 100 years ago. Sometimes they are ornithologically perfect, very often they are fantastical and bizarre. 

Sometimes, like the legendary phoenix, they reappear and reoccur through different cultures, worldwide, through the millenia.

I can’t possibly do more than give you a taster in a short weekend… but I hope I will give you some signposts to send you off art twitching on your own explorations.

Arrive Friday - check in from 2pm

Meet your host for the weekend Amanda Herries at a drinks and canapés reception in the Burns room at 6pm before your first talk and dinner and a chance to meet your fellow residents attending the Art Appreciation weekend.

First talk 6.30 and your introduction to the weekend

A 2 course dinner with tea or coffee will be served at 7.30pm

Saturday

Breakfast served from 07.15 to 09.15

First talk of the day 10am - 11am - a break for coffee and then 11.30 - 12.45 before a soup and sandwich lunch

The afternoon is free to explore Kirkcudbright and the many wonderful galleries

Pre dinner drinks and canapés at 6pm, 6.30 talk before a 2 course dinner at 7.30pm

Sunday

Breakfast served from 08.00 - 09.30

First talk of the day will start at 10am with the same format as Saturday and finishing with a soup and sandwich lunch.

Price inclusive of dinner, bed, breakfast, pre dinner drinks, talks and soup and sandwich lunches £299 Per person based on 2 people sharing a twin or double room £450pp single room / occupancy