“The Power & Prestige Of Collecting: Looking At Private & Museum Collections And Their Survival”
Haughton International Lecture Series At SCI / Society of Chemical Industry, 14-15 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PS on Wednesday, 28th and Thursday, 29th June 2023
We would like to thank B. Michael Andressen for his generous donation for this year's lecture programme in memory of his beloved partner for over 30 years Dr. Alfred Ziffer; author, formerly curator of the Bauml Collection, curator of several important exhibitions and editor of Keramos . He was a dedicated supporter of Haughton International Seminars.
Private and Public Museums in China
Rose Kerr, Honorary Associate of the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, previously Keeper of the Far Eastern Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum from 1978-2003
Throughout the history of the People’s Republic of China (1949-) museums have presented no political threat to its government. Indeed, they have been employed to frame and present history and culture in a manner that the authorities approve. For that reason, museums kept their doors open through the dark days of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and continue to be generously supported by cities and state. In recent years, many old museum buildings have been replaced, renovated or renewed. Since the 1990s, the growing wealth of China has led to the opening of many private museums. The enormous affluence of certain individuals has ensured that most private museums contain rich, diverse collections of art objects.
One Family’s legacy, the Treasures of Burghley House
Miranda Rock, Executive Chair of the Burghley House Preservation Trust
Burghley House still stands largely unchanged as a proud legacy to the ambitions of its creator William Cecil, Lord Treasurer to Elizabeth I. This extraordinary sixteenth century ‘prodigy’ house is a rare survival intended to establish the Cecil family as a powerful dynasty long into the future. Stepping inside the house today, it is clear that many generations have left their mark and what remains is a fascinating history of taste and collecting over the last 400 years.
While very little remains of the Elizabethan interiors, the principle apartments remain lavishly furnished in the seventeenth and eighteenth century styles and display some of the most intact Grand Tour collections of any English country house. Perhaps the most interesting survival at Burghley is the remarkable archive documenting the history of the purchases, gifts and commissions over the last four centuries. Understanding these layers of collecting, connoisseurship and the characters involved has been the key to understanding the history and importance of Burghley, and to ensuring its preservation for the future.
The Royal Collection in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth II
Caroline de Guitaut, Deputy Surveyor of The King’s Works of Art
The Royal Collection, one of the greatest European dynastic art collections still in royal ownership, represents over 500 hundred years of collecting by successive monarchs. Through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the Royal Collection has become more publicly accessible than ever before. Focussing primarily on decorative art, this paper will reflect upon how change and innovation in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II has shaped the collection now and for the future.
Medici porcelain
Professor Timothy Wilson, Honorary Curator, Department of Western Art, Ashmolean Museum
Medici porcelain is the first European porcelain of which examples have been identified. Their beauty and rarity make the 60-odd known intact pieces among the most iconic works of European ceramics.
Various attempts in Renaissance Italy to imitate Chinese porcelain, precious and seeming almost magical, are recorded. In Ferrara Duke Alfonso II d’Este employed two brothers, Camillo and Battista Gatti of Castel Durante; at his death Camillo was described as “the modern rediscoverer of porcelain”. No examples of this Ferrarese porcelain have yet been identified.
At the same time, in Florence, experiments were taking place under the aegis of Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici; success was achieved by 1575. Porcelain-makers worked alongside goldsmiths and hardstone workers and the designs reflect Mannerist shapes as well as Chinese prototypes. Production depended on granducal patronage and tailed off after Francesco’s death; there is no continuity with later European porcelain.
‘… Let no man put asunder’: how much do collections matter?
Dr Timothy Schroder, FSA, Former Curator, Lecturer and Author
Collections are clearly important. Related objects when seen together have more to tell us than when seen alone and a good collection is always more than the sum of its parts. But objects are promiscuous and they move thoughtlessly on from one collection to another without losing their identity or significance. A quite different question is whether old collections, just by virtue of having been together for a long time, should stay that way. This lecture looks at different collections, in different media and from different times, and asks whether the very fact of their longevity as collections matters too, or whether we are confusing substance with sentimentality.
“Has collecting really died or just changed direction?”
Anna Somers Cocks OBE, Founder editor of The Art Newspaper and journalist
My introduction to collecting was, aged seven, in my late grandmother’s Venetian palazzo, which had six, big 17th-century, Spanish chests, vargueños, down the great central sala, their little drawers full of endlessly exciting things: fans, coins, mosaic tesserae, shells, Spanish silver reliquaries, African talismans and so on. She was definitely in the category of true collectors and although I met her once because she was born long before the turn of the century, those objects literally put me in touch with her. They passed from her hands directly into mine. I was planning to be a doctor, but some how I ended up as an Assistant Keeper (when that title still existed) at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Granny had intervened.
Then, in my 13 years at the V&A, I got to know the collectors of the past whose enthusiasms had built up the museum, but also those of my counterparts, such as Gillian Wilson at the Getty, who were true collectors themselves, the ones with the personal, passionate urge to acquire for their institutions, while others were happier just studying or teaching.
I have spent time with major collectors including Heini Thyssen, Jayne Wrightsman, and Sir Paul Ruddock. I have observed the way in which collecting knowledge and collecting objects goes together.
When I first joined the V&A in the 1970s, we were told that one of the reasons for our collections was for outside collectors to be able to come and compare their pieces. That synergy sounds quaint now, but it bound the museum and collectors together in a mutually beneficial way, so what happened to weaken this bond? Was it the V&A’s own diminished interest in collecting, or the decline in collecting outside the museum?
I shall try to answer this question by analysing some true collectors I have known and also looking at the economic, social and intellectual forces that have been at play. I will even attempt to suggest what lies ahead.
The Corning Museum of Glass: Nearly 75 years of Collecting, Research, and Inspiration
Karol B. Wight, Ph.D., President & Executive Director, The Corning Museum of Glass
Since it first opened in 1951, The Corning Museum of Glass has aspired to be the international leader in transforming the world’s understanding of the art, history, and science of glass. Through its comprehensive collection development; exhibitions and publications; grants and commissions; teaching the art of glassmaking at The Studio; and creating the library of record on glass at the Rakow Research Library, this museum strives to inspire all to see glass in a new light. The museum staff collaborates with many communities - of scholars, collectors and makers from around the world, and delights its visitors by sharing the story of more than 35 centuries of man-made glass. Created as a gift to the American people as part of the celebration of the Corning Glass Works’ 100th anniversary, the museum has grown to become a centerpiece of its community and region, attracting nearly 300,000 visitors per year. It was just named one of the ‘7 Wonders of the Glass World’ by the international steering committee for the U.N. International Year of Glass.
Heaven on Earth. The phenomenon of Baroque Austrian monasteries
Dr. phil. Claudia Lehner-Jobst, Art historian and director of the Augarten Porcelain Museum, Vienna
At the height of the Counter-Reformation, the cultural landscape of Austrian monasteries developed into a network of Baroque architectural extravagancies and flamboyant art collections. The unfailingly successful connection between heaven and earth engaged architects, sculptors, painters, musicians, porcelain and silk makers, and a stage designer, in creating perfect universes of glorification. The Gesamtkunstwerk of an Austrian monastery is made of a grand architectural structure, often at imposing positions in the countryside, and magnificent interiors which visually dissolve physical boundaries. Representing the hierarchy of the heavens, as well as the relations with the Imperial house, monastic collections grew with important commissions and inheritances, including all things rare and divine, from Kunstkammer treasures to porcelain for the dessert table, exhilarating celestial frescoes and calyxes adorned with the empress´ jewellery.
You that way; we this way: Whither the Future of Public Collections in the United States?
Dr Matthew Hargraves, Director, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
The concept of a public collection of art has existed in the United States since 1842 when the Wadsworth Atheneum was incorporated in Hartford, Connecticut. Today, after 180 years there are somewhere in the region of 1,000 art museums depending on definitions. The majority are defined as public collections, formed by visions of philanthropy and public spiritedness that face such challenges at present that it is reasonable to ask whether they can long endure. What lessons might the past contain to suggest the future direction of public collections in the United States?
Kings & Queens and Soup Tureens: The evolution of the Campbell Collection
Patricia Halfpenny, Vice President Northern Ceramic Society, Curator Emerita Ceramics & Glass, Winterthur Museum
Chartered as a non-profit educational institution in 1966, the Campbell Museum was housed at the headquarters of the Campbell Soup Company in Camden New Jersey. The focus of the museum’s collection was soup tureens with an emphasis on great European silver and ceramic examples of the 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1969 the museum published its first catalogue detailing 82 items in full colour and highlighting some impressive provenances. The collection continued to grow, more catalogues were published, and a selection of objects travelled to major American art museums and to a few prestigious English venues. What Power & Prestige did this collection project? Who was responsible for the creating the collection; why was it formed; what remarkable objects did it included, and why was it dispersed 30 years after it was established? These are some of the questions explored in this presentation.
A Prince’s Treasure: From Buckingham Palace to the Royal Pavilion. The Return of the Royal Collection to Brighton
David Beevers, FSA, Former Keeper Royal Pavilion, Brighton
Nicola Turner Inman, Curator of Decorative Arts at Royal Collection Trust
In September 2019 over 120 magnificent objects, commissioned or acquired by George IV for the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and removed by Queen Victoria in 1847-8, were returned on loan by Queen Elizabeth II. This lecture will examine the stripping of the Royal Pavilion in the 1840s and the subsequent installation of these objects in other royal palaces, most notably Buckingham Palace, where three rooms were created in the new east wing especially to house works of art once at Brighton. Here, under Prince Albert’s direction, a serious attempt was made to recreate in London the lost splendours of the Royal Pavilion.
The Reservicing Programme at Buckingham Palace, a project to overhaul the building’s essential services, began in the east wing and required the decanting of all the contents including all those once at Brighton. This presented a once in a lifetime opportunity for the return of some of the most spectacular objects back to the rooms at the Royal Pavilion where they were originally displayed.
The transfer and movement of objects between buildings is a complex matter and the lecturers will discuss the logistics of the loan and the benefits both to Brighton and the Royal Collection Trust.
Hungry for the Past - Baroque Buffets, Ducal Desserts and Rococo Suppers
Ivan Day, Food Historian, Museums and Country House Consultant
Ivan Day will share some of the highlights of a thirty-year career working with museum collections in the recreation of period table settings using silver, porcelain and glass, but most of all reuniting these wonderful objects with the extraordinary food for which they were originally designed. Above - a recreation of an English dessert in the ‘intimate’ rococo style, with Chelsea, Derby and Worcester porcelain. (Bowes Museum 1994). The panelling is from Chesterfield House, the London home of Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, who employed the French chef de cuisine Vincent de Chapelle, author of The Modern Cook (1733). La Chapelle went on to cook for John V of Portugal and Marie Leczinska.
The Soane Museum and what is to come of it?
Dr Bruce Boucher, Director, Sir John Soane's Museum
My title comes from an article published in The Builder in 1859, which summed up the puzzlement of the general public as to the purpose of Sir John Soane’s Museum. Sir John conceived of his house and museum as an academy for the enlightenment of the general public as well as a catalyst for the creation of new art by future generations, and he took the controversial step of promoting a private bill in Parliament to establish it as a new national museum in 1833. In so doing, Soane created challenges that successive trustees, curators, and the public have grappled with for almost two centuries. My talk will focus upon how these challenges were met as well as the synchronicity of between the rehabilitation of Soane’s Museum with the rehabilitation of his reputation as an architect.
A manufactury‘s past, present and future: the collection of Museum Schloss Fürstenberg
Dr Christian Lechelt, Director, Museum Fürstenberg
Dating back to 1747 Fürstenberg as one of Germany‘s oldest porcelain manufacturies produced figurines, tableware and all kinds of fashionable items as well as utilitarian porcelain over the ups and downs of a 275 years period. Dramatic changes in taste and habits evolved, transformed and shaped a distinctive range from the beginning in the courtly rococo era until the present day’s idea of modern luxury.
The collection of Museum Schloss Fürstenberg was begun in the 1950s, when planning started to create a coporate museum. The objective was to introduce visitors of the historic site to the company’s long and lively tradition by displaying magnificent pieces from the past alongside contemporary, newly created porcelain. Over seven decades a unique collection with an encyclopaedic character developed, which offers not only a view through a looking glass into the past, but also serves as a vade mecum for the future.