Paul Mellon Centre Conference: Art in the British Country House: Collecting and Display
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, UK
7 October 2016
This conference is the first in a series associated with the Paul Mellon Centre’s flagship research project Art in the British Country House: Collecting and Display, which investigates the collection and display of works of art in the country house in Britain from the sixteenth century to the present day.
The crucial importance of the country house to understanding the history of art-collection and display in Britain is indisputable and of long-standing interest to historians of British art. This project, in turning a fresh eye on the collections of art associated with the country house, builds on exciting new developments within this area of scholarship, which shed new light on the wide range of motivations and circumstances that have shaped such collections. The project extends to the country house a growing scholarly interest in modes of pictorial display, which has hitherto tended to focus on the display of paintings, sculpture and prints within more urban and public environments, and on the exhibition space in particular.
Emily Burns (University of Nottingham), The Grand Designs of Sir Justinian Isham: Investigating the Patronage, Collecting and Display at Lamport Hall during the Interregnum
Amelia Smith (Birkbeck College, University of London), “The most capital masters dispers’d all over the house”: Displays of Art at Longford Castle in the Late Eighteenth Century
Susan Gordon (University of Leicester), ‘Bronzo Mad’: The Choice, Order and Location of General James Dormer’s Sculpture, Collection at Rousham, Oxfordshire
Joan Coutu (University of Waterloo), The Future of the Past: Copies of Antique Statues at Wentworth Woodhouse
Peter Björn Kerber (J. Paul Getty Museum), The Audio- Visual Charles Jennens
Andrew Loukes (Petworth House, National Trust) ‘Solid, liberal, rich and English’: Patronage and Patriotism at Petworth in the Early 19th Century
Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth (University of Leeds) Forming Hierarchies and Creating Dialogues: Ferdinand de Rothschild’s Display of Sèvres Porcelain at Waddesdon Manor
Nicola Pickering (London Transport Museum), Mayer Amschel de Rothschild and Mentmore Towers: Displaying le goût Rothschild
Keynote Speaker: Adriano Aymonino (University of Buckingham)