2016 Berger Prize for British Art History
Giles Waterfield’s book The People’s Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions in Britain, 1800–1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press for The Paul Mellon Centre, 2015), is the winner of the 2016 William MB Berger Prize for Art History. Alex Kidson’s catalogue raisonné of George Romney’s paintings was included on the ‘short list’. The ‘long list’ of 45 books includes 20 titles relevant for eighteenth-century studies. From The British Art Journal:
• Adriano Aymonino and Anne Varick Lauder, Drawn From the Antique: Artists and the Classical Ideal (London: Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2015), 231 pages, ISBN: 978-0-957339897, £35.
• Christopher Baker, Duncan Bull, William Hauptman, Neil Jeffares, Aileen Ribeiro, MaryAnne Stevens, Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702–1789) (London: The Royal Academy of Arts and National Gallery of Scotland, 2015), 232 pages, ISBN: 978-1910350201, £27.
• Layla Bloom, Nicholas Grindle, et al., George Morland: Art, Traffic and Society in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Leeds: The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, 2015), 99 pages, ISBN: 978-1874331544, £12.
• Oliver Bradbury, Sir John Soane’s Influence on Architecture from 1791: A Continuing Legacy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 480 pages, ISBN: 978-1472409102, £95.
• Mary Clark, The Dublin Civic Portrait Collection: Patronage, Politics and Patriotism, 1603–2013 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-1846825842, £35.
• Tim Clayton and Sheila O’Connell, Bonaparte and the British: Prints and Propaganda in the Age of Napoleon (London: British Museum Press, 2015), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0714126937, £25.
• Joan Coutu, Then and Now: Collecting and Classicism in Eighteenth-Century England (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-0773545434, £72.
• Lucy Davies and Mark Hallett, Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint (London: Paul Holberton Publishing for The Wallace Collection, 2015), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-0900785757, £30.
• Loyd Grossman, Benjamin West and the Struggle To Be Modern (London: Merrell Publishers, 2015), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1858946412, £35.
• E. Geoffrey Hancock, Nick Pearce, and Mungo Campbell, eds., William Hunter’s World: The Art and Science of Eighteenth-Century Collecting (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 424 pages, ISBN: 978-1409447740, £80.
• Simon Swynfen Jervis and Dudley Dodd, Roman Splendour / English Arcadia: The English Taste for Pietre Dure and the Sixtus Cabinet at Stourhead (London: Philip Wilson Publishing, 2015), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-1781300244, £45.
• Alex Kidson, George Romney: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (New Haven: Yale University Press for The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2015), 960 pages, ISBN: 978-0300209693, £180.
• William Laffan and Christopher Monkhouse, with the assistance of Leslie Fitzpatrick, Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design, 1690–1840 (New Haven: Yale University Press for the Art Institute of Chicago, 2015), ISBN: 978-0300210606, £30.
• Stephen Lloyd, ed., Art, Animals and Politics: Knowsley and the Earls of Derby (Unicorn Press, 2015), 822 pages, ISBN: 978-1910065, £60.
• Arthur MacGregor, ed., The Cobbe Cabinet of Curiosities: An Anglo-Irish Country House Museum (New Haven: Yale University Press for The Paul Mellon Centre, 2015), 495 pages, ISBN: 978-0300204353, £75.
• John Richard Moores, Representations of France in English Satirical Prints, 1740–1832 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer, 2015), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-0230545328, £60.
• Steven Parissien, ed., Celebrating Britain: Canaletto, Hogarth and Patriotism (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2015), 128 pages, ISBN: 978-1907372780, £25.
• Alison Smith, David Blayney Brown, Carol Jacobi, Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past (London: Tate, 2015), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1849763431, £40.
• David Solkin, Art in Britain, 1660–1815 (New Haven: Yale University Press / Pelican History of Art, 2015), 378 pages, ISBN: 978-0300215564, £55.
• Sheila White and Philip Sheail, eds and trans., Lord Fordwich’s Grand Tour, 1756–60 (Hertford: Hertfordshire Record Publications, 2015), 401 pages, ISBN: 978-0956511140, £22.
Michael Hall Appointed Editor of The Burlington Magazine
Press release (1 December 2016) from The Burlington Magazine:
Michael Hall has been appointed Editor of The Burlington Magazine, it was announced today. He will take up his new position on 2 May 2017. He succeeds Frances Spalding C.B.E., who left in August 2016. Michael Hall was editor of Apollo from 2004 to 2010, during which time he oversaw the editorial transformation of the magazine. A former architectural editor and deputy editor of Country Life, he is an art historian who is known in particular for his work on the Gothic revival. His book George Frederick Bodley and the Later Gothic Revival in Britain and America was awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain for the best book of architectural history published in 2014. Since leaving Apollo he has been a freelance author and editor, writing, among other books, Treasures of the Portland Collection, published in March this year to accompany the opening of a new gallery for the collection at Welbeck Abbey. He is currently working on a history of the Royal Collection, due be published in December 2017. A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, he is chair of trustees of the Emery Walker Trust, which opens to the public Walker’s Arts and Crafts house in Hammersmith. He is also a trustee of the Marc Fitch Fund and the William Morris Society.
Michael Hall said: “The Burlington Magazine is one of the art world’s most revered institutions, with a reputation that is second to none for publishing new research. I greatly admire its empirical, object-based outlook, which is bracingly based on facts rather than theory, and much enjoy its sharp and wide-ranging reviews. I’m looking forward to working with its distinguished trustees and highly experienced editorial and commercial team to enhance and develop its content, both in print and online, in a way that will reach out to new audiences while preserving the Burlington’s impressive traditions.”
Timothy Llewellyn, O.B.E., Chairman of the Trustees of the Burlington Magazine Foundation said: “The Board of The Burlington Magazine is pleased to appoint Michael Hall as its editor. He is a distinguished scholar, an award-winning author and a very experienced editor of both printed and digital publications. We look forward to welcoming Michael to the role in May 2017. We believe he will help The Burlington enhance its position within the international art history community, especially with a new generation of art historians.”
The Burlington Magazine is the world’s leading monthly publication in the English language devoted to the fine and decorative arts. It publishes concise, well-written articles based on original research, presenting new works, art-historical discoveries and fresh interpretations. Founded in 1903 by a group of art historians and connoisseurs that included Roger Fry, Bernard Berenson, and Herbert Horne, The Burlington Magazine has appeared monthly without interruption ever since. Its aim is to cover all aspects of the fine and decorative arts, to combine rigorous scholarship with critical insight, and to treat the art of the present with the same seriousness as the art of the past. With recent innovative developments such as its highly acclaimed online index, contemporary art writing prize and informative website, the Burlington faces an exciting future.
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Jack Malvern in his article, “Editor Quits Oldest Art Magazine after Brush with Staff,” The Times (7 October 2016) suggests conflicts between Hall’s predecessor, Frances Spalding, and the magazine’s staff became too difficult, in part, over questions of innovation.
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