Philippe Halbert Named Associate Curator at the Wadsworth Atheneum
From the press release, via Art Daily:
The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut has named Dr. Philippe Halbert as Richard Koopman Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts. A graduate of the College of William and Mary and the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, Halbert earned his PhD in the history of art from Yale University, where he studied the intersections of art, empire, race, and self-fashioning in the Atlantic world. His academic work centers American decorative arts and material culture broadly, from its Indigenous roots to interconnected phenomena of diaspora, creolization, and settler-colonialism. Halbert has served as Interim Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Wadsworth since November 2022.
“I am committed to telling dynamic, object-centered stories of people and place that transcend geographic, ethnic, linguistic, and temporal bounds,” Halbert said, explaining that his academic interdisciplinary research and professional endeavors are grounded in a desire to encourage appreciation of American decorative arts by specialists and general audiences of all ages.
Proficient in French and Spanish, Halbert has been involved in the development of numerous exhibitions and special installations at the Wadsworth. Oversight responsibilities include over 3,000 decorative arts objects (circa 1650–2020) at the Wadsworth, with duties ranging from daily care of the collection and related research to overseeing rotations in the permanent collection galleries, developing special exhibits, volunteer training, and building partnerships with other institutions and constituents in Hartford and beyond.
Special projects underway and upcoming include New Nation, Many Hands, a special exhibition of federal-era decorative arts and material culture drawn from the permanent collection (on view from June 2023 until September 2024); reinterpretation of the Wetmore parlor, a painted and paneled room from a circa 1746 Middletown, Connecticut, house; and reevaluation of the Wadsworth’s American decorative arts holdings in anticipation of their reinstallation in 2025.
“Philippe is an outstanding scholar and curator of the Atlantic world, especially the interaction between France and North America. His passion for the material culture of vast early America is infectious and his love of curatorial work, breadth of knowledge, and extensive scholarship are incredible assets for the Wadsworth,” said Matthew Hargraves, Director of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. “We are delighted that he has assumed this new role and look forward to his continued stewardship of our remarkable American Decorative Arts collection.”
Previously in his career, Halbert served as a curatorial intern at various museums, including at the Yale University Art Gallery, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Colonial Williamsburg. He has earned numerous awards and fellowships and been an adjunct lecturer and consultant for various institutions, including at the Embassy of the United States in Paris. He is a resident of West Hartford, CT.
Conference | Visualizing Antiquity, Part II
From ArtHist.net:
Visualizing Antiquity: On the Episteme of Early Modern Drawings and Prints — Part II: Find and Display / Fragment and Whole
Bildwerdung der Antike: Zur Episteme von Zeichnungen und Druckgrafiken der Frühen Neuzeit — II. Fund und Aufstellung / Fragment und Ganzes
Online and in-person, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte Munich, 31 January 2024
Organized by Ulrich Pfisterer, Cristina Ruggero, and Timo Strauch
The academy project Antiquitatum Thesaurus: Antiquities in European Visual Sources from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, hosted at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (thesaurus.bbaw.de), and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte Munich (zikg.eu) are organizing a series of colloquia in 2023–2025 on the topic Visualizing Antiquity: On the Episteme of Drawings and Prints in the Early Modern Period. The significance of drawings and prints for ideas, research, and the circulation of knowledge about ancient artifacts, architecture, and images in Europe and neighboring areas from the late Middle Ages to the advent of photography in the mid-19th century will be examined. The second colloquium will explore how the various states and contexts of ancient objects, in the broadest sense, between their discovery and their ‘final’ display, were captured and documented in images. Later study days will focus on Collectors, Artists, Scholars: Knowledge and Will in Collection Catalogs and Fake News? Fantasy Antiquities. Participation in the event is free of charge, and the talks will also be broadcast via Zoom (Meeting-ID: 856 5934 5839 | Password: 148258).
p r o g r a m
11.00 Begrüßung & Einführung
11.15 Dokumentation
Moderation: Arnold Nesselrath (Rom)
• Francesco Benelli (Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna), ‘Che no sia tondo e che abia dello aovato’: Uffizi U1132A, a stratification of meanings and strategies within the Sangallo’s workshop
• Barbara Sielhorst (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Pars pro toto. Zur visuellen Dokumentation des Palatins in Rom vom Beginn des 18. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts
• Alessia Zambon (UVSQ-University Paris-Saclay), Thomas Burgon’s Excavations in Athens in 1813: Fieldwork and Finds’ Recording
13.00 Mittagspause
14.00 Restaurierung – Rekonstruktion
Moderation: Elena Vaiani (ZIKG München)
• Elena Efimova (Lomonossow-Universität Moskau), Dessins des détails d’ordres: entre un livre de modèles et une collection antiquaire
• Lena Demary (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Transparenz und Verschleierung – Ambivalenzen früher restauratorischer Dokumentationen in Katalogen antiker Bildwerke
• Annie Maloney (Oberlin College), Reconstructing the Fragments of Pietro Santi Bartoli’s Reproductive Corpus
• Koenraad Vos (University of Cambridge), Restorations of Ancient Sculpture as Epistemic Images: Filippo Aurelio Visconti on the Benefits of Intervention
16.20 Kurze Pause
16.30 Aufstelling
Moderation: Henri de Riedmatten (Université de Genève)
• Anna Degler (Freie Universität Berlin), Auf unsicherem Grund. Der sog. Torso Belvedere und die Körperdiskurse in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts
• Daniela Picchi (Museo Civico Archeologico di Bologna), Giovanni Nardi and Ancient Egypt at the Medici Court
• Sophie Kleveman (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen), Kommissarisches Antikenwissen und die Regulation des Antikenmarktes im 17. Jahrhundert
• Henri de Riedmatten (Université de Genève), Zusammenfassung und Leitung Abschlussdiskussion
Enfilade 
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