Art Talks.
Apart from researching and presenting tours on Dublin’s history, art and architecture, Arran’s other great love is the art of western Europe, especially from the 13th to the 18th century and especially Italy. (Arran has degrees and diplomas in Fine Art and Art History from several Universities, used to live in Italy, and used to teach and tutor Art History at A-Level)
Accordingly, since early in 2021 we have offered annual online art courses each year, introducing some aspect or area of western art history. 2021 saw our first course, the wide-ranging an introduction to Western Art History. 2022: the Art of North-east Italy (featuring the great art cities of Verona, Vicenza, Padua and Mantua); 2023 saw our 8-week course on the Art of Venice; 2024 was the Art of Florence; and in 2025: the Art of Rome. (You can see notes on our Rome course, here)
Recorded Art Talk Videos.
Since 2024, the recordings of the two most recent courses are also available to buy (at a slight discount) after the course has completed: so the Art of Florence from 2024; and the Art of Rome are both available to buy. To purchase these detailed, yet accessible, and lavishly illustrated art talks, you can simply press the green, onscreen button, select art talks, and then – when you see the selection of options pictured below- select the course you want. Please note that the Florence and Rome talks are both 8 talks each and that each course has been divided into two blocks of 4 (talks). Each block is €25, for all 4 talks. For information on our Overseas Art Tours, please see further below.
Our Overseas Art Tours.
Finally, we are now beginning to offer a small amount of small-group, high-end overseas art tours. Our first tour was for 4 days in October and November of 2025, to the miraculous city of Venice, with a party of 12 guests. The tour was a huge success. It is envisaged we shall offer more tours in future, most likely just one tour per year, for the foreseeable future, or two pr year at most. Over the next few years, we plan to offer small group excursions to Rome; then another, separate excursion to Florence, as well as a trip to Rouen in Normandy, France; and to return to Venice again (likely in 2027 or 2028) We are also investigating a trip, at some stage, to the wonderful cities of North-east Italy that featured in our course back in 2022: the cities of Verona, Vicenza, Padua and Mantua.
Italy has quite strict rules about who can lead tours where. So to on trips to Italy, Arran tends to act as group-leader, who designs the itinerary. and organizes the trip, and we then usually employ a highly-recommended, and highly-referenced local guide who acts as tour-leader, and leads a large part of our itinerary, with specialized contributions from Arran (or from other experts) at key locations. In Venice in the autumn of 2025 our local guide was Francesca di Stefania and by universal acclaim, Francesca was superb.
Interest in all our planed overseas art trips tends to be high, and places are very limited. For that reason, and to be fair to everyone, we do not enter into any private email correspondence about dates, or advance notification, or holding places, or anything like that. If you are subscribed to the Dublin Decoded newsletter you will see notification of ever new tour at the same time as everyone else on the newsletters, and as each trip becomes available. The only way to secure a place is to fill out the form and to place the holding deposit. (Again, this is simply to be scrupulously fair to everyone). Many of our overseas trips are run in partnership with the luxury firm Adams and Butler and they will handle the administration of each tour.
We look forward to seeing some of you on one of our friendly, accessible online art courses one day, either live in-person or recorded. And who knows? Perhaps yon will join us for one of our overseas art trips as well.
Arran Henderson.
Art and architecture talks and tours.
images above: some of my guests on our Venice trip, autumn 2025; and my guests in Basilica San Marco on the same recent Venice trip; the Bellini altarpiece in Frari church, one of the many highlights of our time in Venice; Arran standing in front of some of the world-class art in the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence; a detail from Botticelli’s Primavera, one of the countless treasures in the Uffizi galleries in Florence; Arran standing at the Basilica Palladio in Vicenza, in Northern Italy; and finally, just above, the promotional film for our 2025 Rome Art Talks
Our 2024 Florence talks and our 2025 Rome talks are both available to buy in recorded, video form. To investigate, please press the green onscreen button and follow the menu prompts.