New Book | Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State
From: Rizzoli:
Virginia Hart, ed., Views of America: The Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State (New York: Rizzoli Electa, 2026), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-0847876532, $65. With contributions by Bri Brophy, Laaren Brown, and Mark Alan Hewitt. Principal photography by Durston Saylor and Bruce White.
A book to honor the 250th anniversary of America, uncovering the history of the United States through works of art dating from America’s revolutionary period, from the collection of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the US Department of State.
Published as a follow-up to Rizzoli’s America’s Collection, with a new array of objects and original scholarship, this book celebrates the unparalleled collection of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, one of America’s most astonishing yet little-known treasures, located in the US Department of State’s Harry S. Truman Building in Washington, DC, now in a more accessible price and format. The collection is home to more than 5,000 fine and decorative art objects, mostly from 1740 to 1840, which tell stories from the nation’s founding era and formative decades.
This survey of 100 key works brims with historical provenances: porcelain from the personal collection of George Washington, silverwork by Paul Revere, side chairs that descended through the family of Francis Scott Key, and the tambour writing table upon which the Treaty of Paris was signed and is still used for signing of diplomatic papers today. The book showcases the important paintings by John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Moran, Childe Hassam, and others, as well as examples of fine furniture and porcelain. The collection reflects the craftsmanship and spirit of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century America and forms a vital link between the past and today’s endeavors to represent the American character through the art of diplomacy.
Virginia B. Hart is director and curator of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, and Bri Brophy is deputy chief curator. Laaren Brown is a writer and editor for art and natural history topics. Mark Alan Hewitt is an architect and architectural historian.
New Book | Arms and Armour from The Wallace Collection
From Bloomsbury:
Thom Richardson and Paula Turner, eds., with photographs by Cassandra Parsons, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Arms and Armour from Asia, Africa, and the Ottoman World (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2026), 560 pages, ISBN: 978-1781301203, $195.
Brimming with bejewelled and enamelled dagger hilts, swords, and scabbards, and with delicately gilded spears, helmets, shields, and breastplates, the Wallace Collection is home to one of the finest assemblages of arms and armour in the world. The pieces within the collection provide an expansive view of three key areas—Asia, Africa, and the Ottoman world—and span the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, with star objects dating from as early as the 15th century. Being both functional weapons and prestigious luxury items, objects in this area of the collection are fascinating and awe-inspiring both for their technical achievements and artistic virtuosity.
This richly illustrated catalogue, compiled by leading specialists in the field, is a landmark achievement and shines a light on a previously overlooked part of the Wallace Collection. It provides detailed photographs of almost every object, each accompanied by a description of its provenance, materials, inscriptions, and construction. Also included is an introduction to the subject and a history of the collecting of non-European arms and armour by the 4th Marquess of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace.
Call for Papers | The Public of the Monument, 1789–2026
From ArtHist.net:
The Public of the Monument, 1789–2026: Collective Celebration in Question
Le Public du monument, 1789–2026: La célébration collective en question
13th Symposium for Young Researchers in Sculpture
Online and in-person, Musée Rodin, Paris, 9 October 2026
Organized by Thierry Laugée
Proposals due by 31 May 2026
“This is how the Republic knew how to impress the masses, by involving them in these great national performances.” –Pierre-Jean David d’Angers, “Fêtes nationales,” Dictionnaire politique: Encyclopédie du langage et de la science politiques (Paris, Pagnerre, 1842), pp. 400–01.
Through these words, published by Pagnerre in 1842 in the Dictionnaire politique, Pierre-Jean David d’Angers elevated the revolutionary festivals of Year II of the Republic to the status of exemplary models, considering them to be authentically popular in nature. The Festival of the Supreme Being in particular—staging the participation of the people in the celebration of temporary statues—aroused an enthusiasm conducive to moral elevation and reminded the sculptor of the emancipatory function of the sculpted monument. David’s attentiveness to the collective dimension of the monument must be situated within the broader history of public statuary. For shared celebration—whether marking an inauguration or assuming a more symbolic form—constitutes one of the necessary conditions for a monument to be genuinely perceived as public, that is, as belonging to those who encounter it in their daily lives. Whether an association commemorates the anniversary of a great man before his statue, a spontaneous gathering assembles around an effigy in defense of a political cause, or supporters climb the statue of the Republic to celebrate a club’s victory, such gestures represent as many ways of celebrating a monument—or of celebrating with it.
Incidentally, the popular gatherings of 1899 around the sculpted monument Le Triomphe de la République by Jules Dalou are said to have inspired him with the idea of his Monument aux ouvriers, attesting to the political and artistic emulation generated by the public appropriation of the monument.
Public statuary, by inscribing itself within urban space, exists in daily proximity to pedestrians. Although the statue is intended to convey a message to them, to shape their memory, or to signal the values upheld by the locality, the role of the passerby cannot be confined to passive reception. Beyond potential financial participation through taxation or public subscription, it is the passerby who ultimately accepts—or rejects—the monument and integrates it into local social life.
To recount the history of a public monument entails reconstructing, through archival sources, the genealogy of debates and the administrative and financial decisions that led to its erection, followed by an examination of the artist’s successive projects culminating in its execution in its definitive material, and possibly its inauguration. Yet one of the fundamental stakes of public statuary lies in its inscription within the future of a locality. Every episode occurring on or around the monument, up to its potential dismantling, forms part of the long-term history of the public monument. This urban history generally escapes the artist’s control; it is composed of ceremonies and festivities that focus on the statue or incorporate it into a spatial framework defined either by deliberate choice or by necessity. This symposium therefore seeks to examine the modalities and paradoxes of celebrating statuary within the city, as well as the multiple actors involved in these collective forms of celebration. It aims to observe the statue’s “fellow citizens,” those for whom it is intended, in order to better understand their role, their practices, and the attachment they may gradually develop toward an effigy over time.
One of the proposed research perspectives concerns the study of the ways public monuments are inaugurated. As Bertrand Tillier notes, “these collective uses of the monument at the moment of its inauguration, as it enters the public sphere, generate a shared emotional experience” (La Disgrâce des statues, 2022). This emotion may surface in speeches, poems, concerts, or songs—forms whose study has, until now, remained largely peripheral. Yet a rich and varied corpus of artistic and literary works, whether published or unpublished, accompanies these ceremonies. Yet there exists a rich body of artistic and literary productions, published or unpublished, that mark the rhythm of the ceremonial proceedings and contribute to the staging of the collective.
The ways in which a monument is celebrated prove to be remarkably varied, and in some cases, they overlap significantly with religious ceremonial practices, particularly through processional forms. These points of permeability between civic and sacred spaces, far from being incidental, invite a deeper examination of the circulation of practices, symbols, and ritual registers through which individuals express attachment to—or acknowledgment of—a secular figure.
Beyond the moment of inauguration alone, it becomes clear that public statuary functions as a form of spectacle. Another research perspective during this study day will therefore be to examine the forms and uses of this spectacularization, understood as a mode of collective engagement within public space. Particular attention may be given to the most ephemeral expressions of statuary, a transitory character that appears at first glance to contradict the ideal of permanence. From the First Republic to the most recent Olympic Games, the display of temporary statues—in plaster, cardboard, paper, fabric, or resin—during civic celebrations attests to the structuring role of statuary in shaping urban discourse. Contributions addressing the use of pyrotechnics, illumination, or sound design in relation to monuments are especially encouraged, since these devices play a significant part in the festive appropriation of public monuments.
This study day is explicitly interdisciplinary in scope and is intended for scholars across all fields of the humanities and social sciences, with the aim of fostering dialogue, methodological exchange, and the enrichment of historical knowledge concerning sculpted monuments. Particular attention will be given to contributions that offer a fresh perspective on groups of monuments, civic celebrations, or related practices.
Proposals for papers may be submitted in French or English. They must include a title, an abstract (between 1500 and 2000 characters), and a brief biographical note (between 500 and 1000 characters). They should be sent before 31 May 2026 to colloques@musee-rodin.fr.
Research and Organizing Committee
Amélie Simier, Director of the Musée Rodin
Thierry Laugée, Professor of Contemporary Art History, Nantes Université, CReAAH-LARA
Emilia Philippot, Senior Curator, Head of Curatorial Affairs, Musée Rodin
Véronique Mattiussi, Head of the Research department, Musée Rodin
Franck Joubin, Researcher, Conference Coordinator, Musée Rodin
Call for Papers | Painting and Genre
From the Call for Papers:
Painting and Genre
St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, 6 August 2026
Organized by Sofya Dmitrieva
Proposals due by 31 May 2026
Painting genres structure artistic practice, shape reception, and inform institutional frameworks. Yet as an analytical category, genre has long occupied a marginal position within art history.
This is not to suggest that the discipline has produced no genre theory. Influential studies, such as Wayne Franits’s Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution (Yale University Press, 2004), have addressed genre explicitly, and scholarship on individual genres, particularly portraiture and landscape, is vast. Questions related to genre, most notably the academic hierarchy of genres, have received sustained scholarly attention, from Jean Locquin to Christian Michel, Mark Ledbury, and Paul Duro. Indeed, one of the discipline’s foundational texts—Alois Riegl’s The Group Portraiture of Holland (1902)—is a genre study.
Art-historical approaches to genre have likewise been varied and innovative. To cite just a small selection of recent examples, Amy Freund has examined the hunting portrait from a sociohistorical perspective, linking it to the changing status of the sword nobility in the early eighteenth century (Art History, 2019); Susanna Caviglia has revisited history painting under Louis XV, relating it to contemporary political and cultural discourses on pleasure (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2020); and Stephanie O’Rourke has explored how late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century landscape painting registered practices of resource extraction (University of Chicago Press, 2025).
Still, despite this substantial body of scholarship, the study of genre has remained largely overshadowed by iconographic and formalist approaches. In contrast to literary and film studies, where genre theory occupies a central methodological position, art history has yet to develop a comparably sustained theoretical framework for the analysis of genre.
This one-day conference invites contributions that place genre at the centre of the analysis of painting. It seeks to foreground genre not merely as a classificatory device but as a critical category through which artistic production, reception, and historiography can be re-examined. While certain periods, such as the Dutch Golden Age, readily lend themselves to genre-based analysis, the conference is not limited chronologically or geographically. Case studies of genres from all periods and regions are welcome, as are experimental theoretical contributions and historiographical papers that reflect on the role genre has played within art history, theory, and criticism.
Possible questions include, but are not limited to:
• What formally defines a painting genre?
• What mechanisms govern the formation, stabilisation, and transformation of genres?
• How do hybrid genres emerge and operate?
• How do generic expectations shape viewer perception and interpretation?
• How do genres reflect their historical contexts, including political ideologies, class relations, and gender roles?
• How do genres articulate sociocultural practices?
• What role have genres played within institutions (academies, museums, auction houses) and the art market?
• How has the notion of genre developed within the history, theory, and criticism of art?
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be provided at the venue. The organiser intends for the conference to result in a publication. Please submit a 300-word abstract for a 20-minute presentations and a 100-word biography to Sofya Dmitrieva (sofya.k.dmitrieva@gmail.com) by May 31.
Conference | Revolutions, Art, and the Market
From ArtHist.net and Eventbrite:
Revolutions, Art, and the Market
Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, 4–5 June 2026
Art market trends and practices—whether historical or contemporary—are affected by networks of complex and often competing forces. As moments of political, economic, intellectual, or technological rupture, revolutions have significantly shaped art market systems and fortunes, refracting and redirecting collecting ambitions, displacing existing markets and creating new ones, and promoting novel modes of commercialisation of art. Embracing wide chronological and geographical spans, this conference considers how revolutions have inflected the circulation and consumption of art and facilitated the emergence of new art market practices and collecting paradigms.
Tickets range from £10 to £60—depending on whether attendance is online or in-person and whether there is a student rate. Registration is now open here.
t h u r s d a y , 4 j u n e
9.15 Coffee and Registration
9.45 Welcome
10.00 Session 1 | Revolutions in the Age of Enlightenment
Chair: Barbara Lasic
• Catherine Dossin (Associate Professor, Purdue University) — Franklinmania: The French Art Market and the Making of the American Revolution
• Gabriel Wick (Assistant Professor, American University in Paris) — Marketing Gardens: The Duc d’Orléans, Palais Royal, Le Raincy, and the Parisian Public, 1785–1793
• Jan Dirk Baetens (Assistant Professor, Radboud University) and Evelien De Visser (Curator, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History) — Art for All: The Emergence of a Mass Market for Cheap Paintings in the Age of Revolutions
12.30 Lunch Break
13.30 Session 2 | The 1917 Russian Revolutions and Their Aftermath</span
Chair: Lis Bogdan
• Natalia Murray (Lecturer, Courtauld Institute) — All the Empty Palaces: The Fate of Private Collections in Russia after the 1917 Revolutions
• Daniel Bulatov (PhD Candidate, University of Münster) — Beyond the Market: Soviet Patronage and the Economics of Western Revolutionary Art, 1920s–30s
14.45 Tea Break
15.15 Session 3 | Modernist Revolutions and Cross-border Networks
Chair: Bernard Vere
• Lara Virginie Pitteloud (PhD Candidate, University of Neuchâtel) — Exhibiting Modernism in Revolutionary Odesa: Izdebsky’s Salons and the Formation of Transnational Art Market Networks, 1909–1911
• Lucia Colombari (Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma) — The Afterlife of Italian Futurism: Postwar Art Markets and Transatlantic Networks
• Annie Wong (Independent Art Historian) — After the Cultural Revolution: Wu Guanzhong and the Making of a Transregional Chinese Modernist Market
17.15 Keynote
• Adrian Locke (Curator Emeritus, The Royal Academy of Arts) — Frida Kahlo and the Mexican Revolution
18.15 Drinks Reception
f r i d a y , 5 j u n e
10.00 Session 4 | Revolutions, Representations, and Structural Transformations
Chair: David Bellingham
• Maxence Garde (Curator, Gulbenkian Museum) — Building on a Revolution: A Transformative Economical Approach of Egyptian Antiquities after 1952
• Iris Gilad (University of Tel-Aviv) — Revolution and Recognition: War, Canon Formation, and the Israeli-Palestinian Art Market
• Aurella Yussuf (PhD Candidate, University of Birmingham) — Revolutionary Rhetoric and Market Continuity: Black Political Rupture and the Art Market after 2020
12.30 Lunch Break
13.30 Session 5 | Cultural Revolutions and New Market Practices in Asia
Chair: Ivy Chan
• Vivian Tong (Lecturer, Hong Kong Baptist University) — Shaping Taste in an Evolving Market: Historical Chinese Works of Art and their Auction Market in Hong Kong, 1970s–2020s
• Katie Hill (Senior Lecturer, SIA London) — The Cultural Bond of Maoism: Political Memory and (Cultural) Value in Contemporary Art from China
14.45 Tea Break
15.15 Session 6 | Digital Revolutions
Chair: Melanie Fasche
• Georgia Gerson (PhD Candidate, University of York) — NFTs and the Art Market: Revolution or Continuity?
• Giulia Taurino (Getty Research Institute) — Beyond Network Centrality: Machine Intelligence and the Recovery of Invisible Markets
• Jonathan Adeyemi (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Loughborough University) — Political Revolution and Digital Mediation: A Sustainable Increasing Stake of African Art in the Global Market?
17.15 Concluding Remarks
On Tour in the UK | Mignard’s Portrait of Marquise de Seignelay
From the press release:
Pierre Mignard, The Marquise de Seignelay, 1691, oil on canvas, 195 × 154 cm (London: National Gallery).
The National Gallery announced the second painting for the National Gallery Masterpiece Tour, 2025–27. Pierre Mignard’s portrait of the Marquise de Seignelay (1691) will travel to our four partners between 2026 and 2027: South Shields Museum and Art Gallery (29 August 2026 – 8 November 2026); The Cooper Gallery, Barnsley (13 November 2026 – 20 February 2027); Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool (27 February 2027 – 5 June 2027), and Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (11 June 2027 – 5 September 2027).
In this striking portrait, Mignard depicts the recently widowed Catherine-Thérèse de Goyon de Matignon-Thorigny, Marquise de Seignelay (1662–1699), as a woman of cultural and international importance. She is portrayed as the sea-goddess Thetis, while her eldest son Marie-Jean Baptiste (1683–1712) is dressed as the Greek hero Achilles, Thetis’s son by the mortal Peleus. Her sumptuous robe is painted using ultramarine, a highly expensive blue pigment, as a show of her wealth and status. The extensive marine imagery references her late husband, the Marquis de Seignelay’s position as head of the French Navy. The landscape in the background likely represents the shores of Martinique, an island in the West Indian ocean which was purchased for the French crown by the Marquise’s late father-in-law in 1664.
The exhibition programme plans to highlight the unique strengths of the partner venues, with three located on the coast—an ideal context for exploring the maritime themes of the painting and deepening its resonance with their surrounding landscapes and local collections.
At South Shields, the exhibition will be enriched through co-created elements developed with New Writing North’s Young Writers programme, students from South Tyneside College, and members of Our Voice Counts. The Cooper Gallery, Barnsley will co-produce its iteration of the exhibition with Next Big Thing, Barnsley Museums youth group, ensuring strong local engagement and creative collaboration. Grundy Art Gallery will shape its presentation by working for a 2nd year with Blackpool’s Young People’s charity The Magic Club. Grundy is working for all three years of The Masterpiece Touring Project with The Magic Club providing the opportunity for deep engagement over time. Ferens Art Gallery will further shape their presentation by working closely with community groups, drawing on local insights to inform and animate each exhibition, whilst providing a perspective which enriches our understanding of this painting.
Claude Monet, The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil 1872, oil on canvas, 53 × 72 cm (London: National Gallery).
The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour: Monet was recently on display at South Shields Gallery (until 25 March). Monet’s The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil was presented with works from the South Shields, Laing and Shipley art collections, and artworks co-created by EBSA (Emotionally Based School Avoidant) young people, teachers, and local organisations. At Grundy Art Gallery (28 March – 13 June), the painting will be displayed alongside a new sonic art work produced by participants of Blackpool’s Young People’s charity, The Magic Club. Working with artist Kelly Jayne Jones, Blackpool’s young people have produced a sound-based response to their experience of Monet’s painting. The first round of the tour will then finish at Ferens Art Gallery (19 June – 13 September), where the picture will be part of an exhibition co-curated with Flourish, Ferens Art Gallery’s creative group for children and young people. Organised with and for disabled and neurodivergent visitors, the show will present select works from the Ferens’s vast collection alongside contemporary responses from Flourish.
Since its inception in 2014, The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour has reached 401,000 people across the UK. Our National Touring programme, including The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour and other travelling exhibitions, has now reached 1,467,618 people since 2014. As part of our ongoing commitment to sharing the collection, this exhibition partnership, made possible by the generous support from Hiscox, offers four UK museums and galleries outside of London the opportunity to work with the National Gallery for three years and display three major artworks from the collection.
For the second edition of the Masterpiece Tour, partners will each connect with a local community organisation to support the exhibition or public programme related to the selected painting each year. Each partner will develop their own display to explore and draw out themes most relevant to them and their communities.
National Gallery Director Sir Gabriele Finaldi said: “The National Gallery’s collection belongs to all of us. It is part of our duty and our honour to look after these paintings and to bring them to where people are, not just expect them to come to us. Partnering on touring exhibitions does so much more than bring beloved paintings from the collection to other places in the UK—it supports the whole country’s cultural ecosystem, connects people with paintings that belong to us all, and allows us to learn and expand our own practices and interpretations through the creativity of our partner organisations and their communities. That over one million people have visited these exhibitions in the last decade proves the desire to engage with our collection is growing, and we look forward to welcoming the next million visitors across the UK.”
North East Museums Director, Keith Merrin said: “We’re delighted to be part of the next chapter of the Masterpiece Tour and to welcome this extraordinary painting to South Shields Museum & Art Gallery. Bringing a work of this significance to our communities reflects the shared commitment between partners to making world-class art accessible, relevant and inspiring. Since the launch of the Masterpiece Tour on 17 January, when the museum welcomed Monet’s The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil (1872), footfall to the museum has increased by over 70%, highlighting the strong appetite for high-quality art experiences amongst our community.”
Exhibition | Canaletto & Bellotto
Bernardo Bellotto, Vienna Viewed from the Belvedere Palace, 1759/60, oil on canvas, 135 × 213 cm
(Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum)
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From the press release for the exhibition:
Canaletto & Bellotto
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 24 March 2026 – 6 September 2026
Curated by Mateusz Mayer
In the 18th century, painted cityscapes (in Italian, vedute: ‘views’) became much sought-after souvenirs. Particularly so among young British aristocrats who bought these paintings on their so-called ‘Grand Tour’, an educational journey across Europe, as a sign of their newly acquired worldly finesse and as a keepsake of their travel experiences. Two of the most eminent exponents of veduta painting are in the center of the new exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The Venetian painters Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto (1697–1768), and his nephew and pupil Bernardo Bellotto (1721–1780) have continued to inform our imagination of several European cities to this day. With their delicate feel for light, atmosphere, and architectural precision, Canaletto and Bellotto transformed these places into stages on which everyday life played out—and in the views of them, into places of longing.
“Canaletto’s and Bellotto’s works show Europe as a space of cultural encounter, long before the concept of a European public ever gained currency. Their vedute connect cities such as Venice, Dresden, London, and Vienna through the perspective of 18th- century travelers and collectors. The exhibition illustrates how art became the visual language of a shared European experiential environment—an empowering culture of exchange, inspiration, and curiosity about other cities and societies,” says Jonathan Fine, Director General of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
In the 1730s, Canaletto’s vedute fetched record prices in Venice. With the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), however, the market slumped: international travel came to a halt, and deep-pocketed patrons stayed away. Uncle and nephew first responded by turning to new subject matter in their work, but soon realized that prospects for their careers were better outside Italy. The exhibition starts out in Venice and then moves on to Canaletto’s time in England as well as to Bellotto’s places of work in Vienna and Dresden, with the main focus on exploring the veduta as a painterly genre.
“City views from the 18th century, which are often perceived as immediate, almost photographic depictions of reality, are in fact carefully constructed pictorial creations that afford telltale insights into the social and political contexts of the time they were created,” adds Mateusz Mayer, curator of the exhibition.
Canaletto’s and Bellotto’s paintings unfold a multifaceted panorama of the Europe of their time. By showing a selection of particularly significant works and placing them within the scientific currents of the period, the exhibition demonstrates that the veduta is not an objective documentation. Rather, it is a deliberately designed image of a city—informed by artistic choices, socio-political conditions, and the expectations of the patrons commissioning them— manifesting a concept that is particularly relevant in light of present-day debates about visual media, urban development, and the cultural memory.
Canaletto—One Name, Two Artists
The name ‘Canaletto’ has come to be almost synonymous with the ‘veduta’ genre, and not infrequently has caused some confusion, as Bernardo Bellotto also added ‘called Canaletto’ to his signature in some works. He did this not only to underscore his artistic connection with his famous relative and teacher, but also to bolster up his own market value. In this exhibition, though, only the uncle is referred to as ‘Canaletto’. While the latter, throughout his lifetime, led the precarious existence of a freelance veduta painter, dependent on a changing clientele of patrons, Bellotto was eventually granted the honor of a permanent position at the court of the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland.
High-Caliber Loans
The exhibition features 32 outstanding paintings—comprising works from the Kunsthistorisches Museum as well as high-caliber loans. One of the highlights is Canaletto’s spectacular view Venice: The Bacino di San Marco from San Giorgio Maggiore (1735/44) from the holdings of the Wallace Collection. The son of a stage painter, Canaletto was familiar with perspective construction and geometry as they were employed in the theater. That theatrical quality becomes particularly evident in this painting in his subtle handling of spatial illusion.
Also of unique quality are Canaletto’s London paintings, such as London: The Thames on Lord Mayor’s Day (c. 1748) from the Lobkowicz Collection and Westminster Abbey with a Procession of the Knights of the Order of the Bath (1749) from the collection of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. On view for the general public in Austria for the first time here, they afford rare insights into Canaletto’s artistic engagement with the English capital city.
Another main emphasis is on Bellotto’s two-year stay in Vienna, an extremely productive creative period. His large-size views of Vienna’s inner city, such as View of Vienna from the Belvedere (1759/60), and of palaces around the city from the holdings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum have been cleaned especially for the exhibition. Complemented by prominent loans from the collection of the Princes of Liechtenstein, such as The Liechtenstein Garden Palace in Vienna, Seen from the Belvedere (1759/60), these vedute can now be presented together, almost in their entirety, for the first time in more than 20 years.
In order to further elucidate the intellectual and artistic context of the epoch, the show is supplemented with additional paintings, art prints, and scientific instruments on loan from numerous European museums. Lenders include: Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; Albertina, Vienna; Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation supported by Tate; Compton Verney; Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Museo Correr, Venice; Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; Royal Castle in Warsaw – Museum; Leica Microsystems GmbH; Liechtenstein. The Princely Collections, Vaduz–Vienna; Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Troyes; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Museu National d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; Austrian National Library, Vienna; Saxon State Archives, Central State Archives Dresden; Schottenstift, Vienna; Vienna Museum of Science and Technology; The British Museum, London; The Dean and Chapter of Westminster, London; The Lobkowicz Collections, Lobkowicz Palace, Prague Castle, Czech Republic; The Wallace Collection, London; Wien Museum, Vienna.
The exhibition was curated by Mateusz Mayer, curator of the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Serenella Zoppolat (architettura21) and Tilo Perkmann (Artvis) did the exhibition design.
The catalogue is distributed by The University of Chicago Press:
Mateusz Mayer, Canaletto & Bellotto: Observation and Invention in Venice, London, and Vienna (Munich: Hirmer, 2026), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-3777447551, $50 / Canaletto & Bellotto: Beobachtung und Erfindung in Venedig, London und Wien, ISBN: 978-3777447544, €40.
Strawberry Hill Launches Appeal to Acquire Early View of the Villa
Johann Heinrich Müntz, South-East View of Strawberry Hill House, ca. 1755–58,
oil on canvas, 25 × 30 inches.
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From the press release:
Strawberry Hill House & Garden has launched an appeal to raise £85,000 to acquire South East View of Strawberry Hill House by Johann Heinrich Müntz (c.1755–58), a rare contemporary painting that captures Horace Walpole’s Gothic villa at the very moment the Gothic Revival was being born. Commissioned by Walpole himself, the painting offers an extraordinary glimpse of Strawberry Hill before its dramatic transformation of 1759, when the Gallery and Round Tower were added to create the iconic silhouette we recognise today. It is one of only two known oil paintings of the house by Müntz, whose companion view is now held at the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.
More than a record, the painting reveals Strawberry Hill in the process of invention. At the time it was made, the Swiss artist Johann Heinrich Müntz (1727–1798) was living and working at the house as Walpole’s artist in residence, contributing directly to its evolving architectural vision. What he depicts is not a finished monument, but a creative experiment taking shape—house and garden emerging together as a new kind of Gothic design.
The painting is currently on short-term loan and will be on display in the Red Bedchamber at Strawberry Hill House from 30 March 2026, where it can be viewed free with general admission.
Painted for Walpole and long kept at his London residence on Berkeley Street, this view of Strawberry Hill has never hung in the house it was created to record. Acquiring it now would bring the painting home for the first time, reuniting a formative moment in Strawberry Hill’s history with the place that inspired it.
Two generous supporters have pledged to match donations to the appeal pound-for-pound, meaning every contribution will go twice as far until the £85,000 target is reached.
Dr Silvia Davoli, Senior Curator, said: “Strawberry Hill was conceived as a complete work of art, where architecture, interiors, landscape and collections were designed to speak to one another. This painting is central to that vision. It is not simply a depiction of the house, but part of the creative process that shaped it. Bringing it back would restore a missing piece of that story—returning it, for the first time, to the place it was made to record.”
More information about the painting is available from Thomas Coulborn & Sons.
Strawberry Hill Launches Appeal to Recreate Shell Seat
Jean-Henri Müntz, View of the Shell Seat and Bridge at Strawberry Hill, 1755, ink drawing
(Yale University, Lewis Walpole Library)
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From the press release (March 2026) . . .
Strawberry Hill House & Garden is launching an appeal to raise £30,000 to recreate the Shell Seat, one of the most visually arresting and evocative features of Horace Walpole’s eighteenth-century garden. Designed as a place for rest, conversation and delight, the Shell Seat formed part of Walpole’s celebrated ‘land of beauties’—a landscape shaped by imagination, sociability and theatrical effect. This ambitious project will employ cutting-edge digital mapping technology from Factum Arte to design and create a faithful, weather-resistant replica based on the original eighteenth-century drawings, ensuring the seat endures for future generations.
The Shell Seat was designed in 1754 by Richard Bentley, Horace Walpole’s close collaborator and later a member of his celebrated ‘Committee of Taste’. Constructed under the direction of architect William Robinson, it took the form of a monumental half-clam shell—a striking example of eighteenth-century fascination with natural forms transformed into architectural ornament. Positioned on Walpole’s ‘sweet walk’ in the south-west corner of the garden, the bench was carefully oriented to frame a breathtaking view of the River Thames. It was both a visual spectacle and a place of sociable retreat, designed to contrast the house’s Gothic ‘gloomth’ with an enlivening garden experience. Its impact was immediate. Writing to George Montagu in 1759, Walpole delighted in the sight of the Duchesses of Hamilton and Richmond and Lady Ailesbury seated together: “There never was so pretty a sight as to see all three of them sitting in the shell.”
The current bench, photographed in December 2025.
The original Shell Seat was lost, likely long before the dispersal of Walpole’s collection in the great sale of 1842. A full-scale replica, constructed in oak using laminated techniques, was installed during the major restoration of Strawberry Hill between 2007 and 2010. After fifteen years exposed to the elements, this replica is now in a serious state of disrepair. Without intervention, the Shell Seat—once a centrepiece of Walpole’s garden design—risks being lost once again.
To secure the future of the Shell Seat, we are working with Factum Arte, internationally renowned specialists in digital heritage documentation and historically informed reconstruction. Using advanced 3D digital mapping, they will create an exact digital record of Bentley’s original eighteenth-century design. This will allow us to produce a new seat that is: faithful to the original, constructed using durable, weather-resistant materials, and designed to endure in the garden for generations to come.
Strawberry Hill House has worked closely with Factum Arte and its sister organisation, the Factum Foundation, a not-for-profit dedicated to digital preservation, for over a decade. Over this time, they have created numerous facsimiles for Strawberry Hill, helping to restore Horace Walpole’s dispersed collection to the house. These include major works such as Joshua Reynolds’s The Ladies Waldegrave, portraits of Horace Walpole and his family, and a wide range of miniatures, drawings, and decorative objects recorded from collections including the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University, the Scottish National Gallery, and the British Museum. The Shell Seat restoration builds naturally on this long-standing collaboration and shared commitment to research-led, imaginative reconstruction.
This restoration will also stand as a lasting memorial to Derek Purnell, who served as Director of Strawberry Hill House from 2020 to 2024, and tragically died last year. Derek believed deeply that Strawberry Hill was not a static monument, but a living, imaginative place where house and garden work together to tell a story. He spoke often of the Shell Seat, recognising it as one of those rare objects that instantly captures the imagination and opens a doorway into Horace Walpole’s creative genius. Restoring the Shell Seat is a fitting tribute to Derek’s vision: not a plaque or a monument, but a living, functional part of Strawberry Hill’s continuing story.
New Book | Spontaneous Objects
From Penn State UP:
Rebecca Zorach, Spontaneous Objects: A Natural History of Art and Its Others (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2026), 286 pages, ISBN: 978-0271100432, $85.
In the late medieval and early modern periods, European artists, theorists, and natural philosophers imagined Nature not simply as a force of reproduction but as an artist in its own right—a creative power capable of generating images, artifacts, and objects of beauty. Tracing this idea from the fifteenth through early nineteenth centuries, Rebecca Zorach challenges assumptions about human artistic genius and intention that have long dominated histories of art and science.
With inspiration from new materialist theory, Zorach reclaims a largely disregarded undercurrent of historical thought about the powers of nature. Through case studies ranging from Renaissance centaurs and snails to Adam Smith’s beaver hat and Kant’s travelers’ tales, Zorach investigates how ideas about nature’s generative power unsettled conventional definitions of image, artifact, and artistic intention. At the same time, Zorach also confronts the violent legacies of a different vision of nature’s power: as European empires expanded, emerging natural philosophies contributed to global colonial imaginaries and racial hierarchies, reframing nature as a force to be classified, controlled, and exploited. In seeking to understand whether and how these views of nature cohere, Zorach excavates how the historical formation of the ‘human’ and the ‘natural’ depends on ideas about artistic production and artistic intention.
A significant contribution to art history, visual culture, and environmental humanities, Spontaneous Objects will engage scholars interested in the intersections of art, science, theology, and colonial modernity.
Rebecca Zorach is Mary Jane Crowe Professor of Art and Art History at Northwestern University. Her books include Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance; The Passionate Triangle; Art for People’s Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965–1975; and Temporary Monuments: Art, Land, and America’s Racial Enterprise.
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