Sir Richard Wallace and His Age: Connoisseurs, Collectors and Philanthropists
A two-day international conference exploring Sir Richard Wallace and his collection.
This year the Wallace Collection is celebrating the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sir Richard Wallace. Taking Sir Richard Wallace and his collection as its starting point, the conference will look at aspects of collecting and collections in London and Paris in the wake of the upheavals of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune in 1870-71, considering essentially the period between 1870 and 1900.
The first day of the conference will consider the impact on the Anglo-French art market of the political and social upheavals in France in 1870-71, including the dispersal of collections and the movement of collectors, as well as the curatorship of private art collections. The second day will focus on two themes: the subject of the morning session will be loans to exhibitions from distinguished collections and the motivations that drove them; the afternoon will showcase works of art in the Wallace Collection acquired by Sir Richard Wallace.
Thursday speakers include:
- Olivier Hurstel (Curatorial Fellow, European Decorative Arts and Sculpture – Philadelphia Museum of Art)
- Professor Robert Tombs (Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge),
- Dr Thomas Stammers (Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Durham)
- Professor Anthony Geraghty (Department of History of Art, University of York)
- Dr Mathieu Deldicque (Conservateur du Patrimoine, Musée Condé, Chantilly)
- Joseph Friedman (Honorary Visiting Fellow of the Department of History of Art, University of York, and Senior Research Fellow in the History of Art and Architecture, University of Buckingham)
- Dr Silvia Davoli (Research Curator Strawberry Hill, The Horace Walpole Collection)
- Suzanne Higgott (Curator, The Wallace Collection)
- Helen Jones (Research Librarian, Wallace Collection Library)
- Natalie Zimmer (Curatorial Assistant, The Wallace Collection)
Friday speakers include:
- Lindsay Macnaughton (PhD researcher, Durham University/The Bowes Museum)
- Kathryn Jones (Senior Curator of Decorative Arts, Royal Collection Trust)
- Eloise Donelly (AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Candidate, University of Cambridge and the British Museum)
- Stephen Duffy (formerly Senior Curator, The Wallace Collection)
- Dr Jeremy Warren (Honorary Curator of Sculpture, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and Sculpture Research Curator, The National Trust)
- From the Wallace Collection’s Curatorial department, Dr Tobias Capwell, Suzanne Higgott, Dr Helen Jacobsen, Dr Yuriko Jackall, and Ada de Wit.
The conference will be followed directly by a round table chaired by the Wallace Collection’s Director, Dr Xavier Bray, in conversation with special guest speakers Olivier Gabet (Director, Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris), Dr Emilie E.S. Gordenker (Director, Mauritshuis, The Hague), Christian Levett (Private Collector), Jacob van der Beugel (Artist in Residence, The Wallace Collection), Ian Wardropper (Director, The Frick Collection, New York) to explore what the future holds for institutions founded by bequests similar to that of the Wallace Collection and how they are adapting to changes that could not have been foreseen by the original donors.
The ticket price includes coffee and tea breaks and a drinks reception on Friday 16 November from 18:30 to 19:45.
