Carola Hicks

{{Short description|British art historian}}{{Infobox academic

| name = Carola Hicks

| occupation = Art Historian

| alma_mater = University of Edinburgh

| discipline = Art History

| workplaces = Newnham College, Cambridge

}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2016}}

{{Use British English|date=October 2016}}

Carola Hicks (7 November 1941 – 23 June 2010) was a British art historian. She was a pioneer in the field of biographies of objects, which is the exploration of the history of objects and the ways in which their reception has changed throughout time.{{Cite web |date=2025-01-30 |title=Carola Hicks |url=https://www.thetimes.com/article/carola-hicks-djhc82bf29v |access-date=2025-01-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250130132517/https://www.thetimes.com/article/carola-hicks-djhc82bf29v |archive-date=30 January 2025 }}

She was born Carola Brown in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, and educated at the Lady Eleanor Holles School and the University of Edinburgh, where she took a first in archaeology in 1964. Carola returned to Edinburgh and gained her PhD, in 1967, on "Origins of the animal style in English Romanesque art".{{Cite thesis |last=Brown |first=Carola |date=1968 |title=Origins of the animal style in English Romanesque art |language=en |publisher=University of Edinburgh|hdl=1842/23751 }} Hicks worked at the British Museum researching the Sutton Hoo ship burial, before becoming a research fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and then curator of the Stained Glass Museum at Ely Cathedral. She became a fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she taught until her early death.

File:Bayeux Tapestry scene57 Harold death.jpg

In 2006, her book on the history of the Bayeux Tapestry proposed a new theory on its origins, that it was commissioned in England by Edith Godwinson, the sister of King Harold and widow of Edward the Confessor.

Angela Thirlwell describes Hicks as a "glamorous academic and a serious populariser of art", who "swept the dust off old masterpieces, explained their cultural contexts and infused them with life for a new public".{{cite news|last1=Thirlwell|first1=Angela|title=Carola Hicks obituary|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jul/27/carola-hicks-obituary|accessdate=25 October 2015|work=The Guardian|date=27 July 2010}} Her book on the stained glass of King’s College Chapel at Cambridge, was serialized as the Christmas book of the week on Radio 4 in 2007, by the BBC.