Tag Archives: History of Collecting
Updated Programme: COLLECTING SPAIN: SPANISH DECORATIVE ARTS IN BRITAIN AND SPAIN, Hochhauser Auditorium, Victoria and Albert Museum, 8 and 9 June 2018
Leave a reply
Coordinators: Ana Cabrera and Lesley Miller
This conference explores collecting practices, attitudes to and perceptions of Spanish decorative arts in Britain and Spain from the 19thcentury onwards, and how these attitudes influenced the development of museums and museum collections in both countries. The case studies aredrawnfrom the British and Spanish museum collections.
The conference is organisedin joint sessions dealing with the same subject from British and then Spanish perspectives. The first day considers the collecting of particular media while the second day focuses on the dissemination, display and conservation of these collections. The conference includes poster sessions during the coffee breaks.
Click here to buy tickets
Programme
Friday, 8thJune 2008: Collecting Spanish Decorative Arts
10.00 Registration and collecting of conference packs; displaying of posters
10.20 Introduction
Ana Cabrera, V&A
10:30 Collecting, Display & Dissemination: The Changing Face of the Decorative Arts Collection at South Kensington, 1852-1873
Susanna Avery-Quash, National Gallery, London
Lustreware and Furniture
Chair: Holly Trusted, V&A
11.00 Collecting Spanish Lustreware at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Mariam Rosser-Owen, Asian Department, V&A
11:30 A Survey and History of the Collecting of Spanish Decorative Arts: Lustreware
Jaume Coll, Museo Nacional de Cerámica, Valencia
12.00-12.30. COFFEE BREAK
12:30 Collecting Spanish Furniture, Woodwork and Leatherwork, 1850-1950
Nick Humphrey, Furniture, Textiles and Fashion department, V&A
13:00 Collecting Spanish Furniture in Madrid, 1880-1920
Sofía Rodríguez, Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid
13.30-14.30 LUNCH
Textiles and Fashion
Chair: Sonnet Stanfill, V&A
14:30 Following the Thread: Collecting Spanish Textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Ana Cabrera, Marie S.-Curie Fellow, V&A
15:30 Textile Collecting in Catalonia
Silvia Carbonell, Centre de Documentació i Museu Tèxtil, Terrasa
16:00 Fashion and Spain at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Oriole Cullen, Furniture, Textiles and Fashion Department, V&A
16:30 From Dress to Fashion: The Collection of The Museo del Traje
Helena López del Hierro, Museo del Traje, Madrid
16.30-17.00 TEA BREAK
Sculpture and Plaster Casts
Chair: Edward Payne, Auckland Castle Project
17.00 A Vogue for St Francis
Xavier Bray, Wallace Collection, London
17:30 Spanish Monuments Displayed at South Kensington: Raising the Profile of Spanish Art through Plaster Casts
Holly Trusted, Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics and Glass Department, V&A
18:00 Electrical Treasuries: The Decorative Arts Collection from Antiquity at the Museo Nacional de Reproducciones, 1881-1915
María Bolaños, Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid
18.30-19.00 DISCUSSION
Saturday, 9thJune 2008: Collecting Spanish decorative arts continued
Silver
Chair: Antonia Boström, V&A
10:15 The Scholar, the Scoundrel and the Skater: How the V&A Collections of Hispanic Silver were formed
Kirstin Kennedy, Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics and Glass Department, V&A
10:45 Collecting Spanish Silver
Jesús Rivas, Universidad de Murcia
11.15-11.45COFFEE BREAK
Displaying, Interpreting and Conserving Spanish Decorative Arts
Chair: Christopher Wilk, V&A
11.45 Displaying Decorative Arts in Britain and Spain. A Comparative Analysis
Isabel Rodríguez, Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid
12.15 Spain in the Europe 1600-1815 Galleries at the V&A
Lesley Miller, Furniture, Textiles and Fashion Department, V&A
12.45 The20th-century Galleries at the V&A
Corinna Gardner and Johanna Agerman Ross, Design, Architecture and Digital Department, V&A
13.15-14.15LUNCH
Displaying, Interpreting and conserving Spanish decorative arts
Chair: Joanna Norman, V&A
14.15 The Conservationof the Cast Courts. New Discoveries from Spanish Casts
Victor Borges, Conservation Department, V&A
14:45 Collecting in Action: Building a Spanish Gallery in Bishop Auckland
Edward Payne, The Auckland Project
15.15 Closing remarks
Joanna Norman, Head of the Victoria and Albert Research Institute (VARI)
Miguel González Suela, Directorate of the State Museum, Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports
Conference: Collecting Spain: Spanish decorative arts in Britain and Spain, V&A, London, 8th–9th June 2018
Spanish art has been collected in the UK since the 17th century. This conference will explore collecting practices, attitudes to and perceptions of Spanish decorative arts in Britain and Spain, and how these attitudes influenced the development of museums and museum collections in both countries. The case studies will be drawn from the V&A and Spanish museum collections.
The conference is organized in joint sessions dealing with the same subject from Spanish and then British perspectives. The first day considers the collecting of particular media, while the second day focuses on the dissemination, display and conservation of these collections. The conference will include poster session during the coffee breaks.
Opening remarks on the history of collecting Spanish Decorative Arts by medium: Collecting, Display & Dissemination: the changing face of the decorative arts collection at South Kensington (1852-1873), Dr Susanna Avery-Quash (Senior Research Curator, History of Collecting, National Gallery)
- Ceramics: Lusterware:
M. Rosser-Owen (Asian Department, V&A): Collecting Spanish lustreware by the Victoria and Albert MuseumJaume Coll (Museo Nacional de Cerámica, Valencia): A survey and history of collecting Spanish Decorative Arts: Lusterware - Textiles:
Ana Cabrera (Marie S.-Curie Fellow, V&A): Following the thread: collecting Spanish textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum Spanish case
Silvia Carbonell (Centro de Documentación Museo Textil, Tarrasa): Textile collecting in Catalonia - Silver:
Kirstin Kennedy (Metalwork Department, V&A): The Scholar, the scoundrel and the skater: How the V&A collections of Hispanic silver were formed
Jesús Rivas (Universidad de Murcia): Collecting Spanish silverwork - Furniture:
Nick Humphrey (Furniture, Textiles and Fashion department, V&A): Collecting Spanish Furniture, Woodwork and Leatherwork, 1850-1950
Sofía Rodríguez (Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid): Collecting Spanish Furniture in Madrid (1880-1920) - Sculpture and Plaster Cast:
Xavier Bray (Wallace Collection): A Vogue for St FrancisHolly Trusted (Sculpture Department, V&A): Spanish Monuments Displayed at South Kensington: Raising the profile of Spanish Art through Plaster CastsMaria Bolaños (Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid): Electrical treasuries: the Decorative Arts collection from Antiquity at the Museo Nacional de Reproducciones (1881-1915)
- Fashion:
Oriole Cullen (Furniture, Textiles and Fashion Department, V&A): Fashion and Spain at the Victoria and Albert MuseumHelena López del Hierro (Museo del Traje, Madrid): From Dress to Fashion:the collection of The Museo del Traje
- Displaying, interpreting and conserving collections of Spanish decorative arts:
Isabel Rodríguez (Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid): Displaying Decorative Arts in Britain and Spain. A Comparative AnalysisCorinna Gardner and
Johanna Agerman Ross (Design, Architecture and Digital, V&A): 20th century Galleries at the V&A Lesley Miller (Furniture, Textiles and Fashion, V&A): Spain in the Europe 1600-1815 GalleriesVictor Borges (Conservation Department, V&A): The Conservation of the Cast Courts. New discoveries on the Spanish Casts
- Closing speaker: Dr Edward Payne (Head Curator: Spanish Art, Auckland Castle): Collecting in Action: Building a Spanish Gallery in Bishop Auckland
- Closing remarks: Joanna Norman, Head of the Victoria and Albert Research Institute (VARI)
Booking required: click here
Call for Posters: Collecting Spain: Spanish Decorative Arts in Britain and Spain, V&A, London, 8th and 9th June 2018
Call for posters
On 8th and 9th June 2018, the Victoria and Albert Museum is hosting a conference with the aim of studying the collecting history and practices in the Spanish Decorative Arts in Britain and in Spain, from 1850 to the mid-20th century. Research on collectors, art dealers, type of collections, and the development of the Decorative Arts museums in Britain and Spain is the focus of discussion at the conference. The speakers are scholars from English and Spanish museum and universities who will present papers on the collecting of different material from Iberia, such as ceramics, furniture, metalwork, sculpture and casts textiles and fashion, as well as on displaying, conserving and interpreting these artworks.
Call for Posters
This call for poster presentations invites the participation of students studying for Masters or PhD and young researchers who would like to present a poster dealing with one of the Conference topics.
The proposal should be provided in the form of an abstract of 400 words, accompanied by a short CV (an A4 page). It should outline the aims and objectives of the research, the methods, and findings to date. All posters will be peer-reviewed. The poster format will A0
Contact
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. All correspondence, including your proposals for papers or posters and your CV as well as further questions, should be addressed to a.cabrera@vam.ac.uk and tao.chang@vam.ac.uk
Deadline 15 November: The Courtauld Institute of Art’s 23rd Annual Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium: Collecting (in) the Middle Ages (6th-16th century), 16 February 2018
Call for papers: The Courtauld Institute of Art’s 23rd Annual Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium: Collecting (in) the Middle Ages, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 16 February 2017
Deadline: 15 November 2017
The Courtauld Institute of Art’s 23rd Annual Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium invites speakers to consider the nature of medieval collections, the context of their creation and fruition, and their legacy — or disappearance — in the present.
Inspired by objects such as a cedar box chest once kept in the Holy of Holies of the Lateran, this colloquium seeks to explore a diverse set of topics surrounding medieval practices of collecting. This wooden box may seem simple, but once opened it reveals a priceless collection: fragments of rock and wood from the Holy Land, each labelled with its precise place of origin by a sixth-century hand. Here and there, stones have fallen out, leaving imprints in the soil. The wooden relic chest is an object of small size and almost no material value, but has nevertheless been treasured for centuries by one of the largest and most powerful institutions of the medieval world.
The study of medieval collecting raises a variety of questions. How and why were objects collected, practically and conceptually? What was their expected time-span and what enabled their survival? How have medieval collections impacted modern scholarship, and how do modern collecting and display practices influence our interpretation of the past?
Applicants to the colloquium are encouraged to explore these issues from a diverse range of methodologies, analysing objects from the 6th to the 16th century and from a wide-ranging geographical span. Possible areas of discussion might include:
- Collecting through time: How do we define the medieval collection/collector? How did medieval objects take on new meanings in medieval collections, ie. in the case of spolia? How has scholarship on medieval art been influenced by varying collecting practices and curatorial strategies across time?
- Collecting in space: can the idea of the ‘collection’ be expanded to include objects, places and spaces spread across different geographical locales? Could objects or spaces communicate their commonality across a distance? How did pilgrimage routes, travel narratives and travel guides conceptualize their surroundings and weave a thread through geographical and historical difference?
- Collectors, intermediaries, and craftsmen: how did institutions and single collectors acquire and expand their collections? For example, did they rely on a merchant network to acquire foreign objects or new relics? Did they collect newly commissioned objects, and display them in purpose-built spaces?
- Collections and Legacies: how did inheritance impact the notion of collecting, looking forwards as well backwards? How did the meaning of objects change as they were passed down through families and dynasties? What happened to collections when familial lines ended? How did individuals link themselves to courts or dynasties through collections?
- Accessibility: When, how and why were collections visible? Were there different levels of accessibility and interaction and who was allowed to ‘access all areas’? How were restricted collections advertised and open collections protected? And did objects themselves interact with each other, for example in specific displays or assemblages?
- Organising Collections: What were the systems for assembling a collection, and for how they were curated? How did purpose-built spaces impact the growth of collections, and vice-versa? What were the roles of documents in collections, and how have medieval recording practices influenced modern views of the medieval collection?
The Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium offers an opportunity for research students at all levels from universities across the UK and abroad to present, discuss and promote their research. To apply, please send a proposal of up to 250 words for a 20 minute paper, together with a CV, to costanza.beltrami@courtauld.ac.uk and maggie.crosland@courtauld.ac.uk no later than 15 November 2017.
Exhibition: Ceán Bermúdez, Art Historian & Collector
Ceán Bermúdez (1749-1829), historiador de arte y coleccionista ilustrado
Biblioteca Nacional de España in association with the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica
Madrid, 20 May – 11 September
Survey of the life and works of this Enlightenment art historian and collector, uniting158 items mainly drawn from the collections of the BNE, but also including paintings, drawings and manuscripts from other collections. Among the artworks shown are Goya’s portraits of Ceán Bermúdez of c.1786 and 1798-99, Goya’s unpublished illustrations for the art historian’s Diccionario of Spanish artists, and Rembrandt’s Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael of 1637, from his collection.
Lecture: The Ceramics Collection of the Portuguese Royal Family (Wallace Collection, London)
Lecture
The Ceramics Collection of the Portuguese Royal Family: the King Consort’s Collection
By Maria de Jesus Monge, Director of the Museu-Biblioteca da Casa de Bragança, Vila Viço
Wallace Collection, London
Monday, 28 September, 5:30 – 6:30PM
Admission free.
