Enfilade

Press release (July 2013) from Stockholm’s Nationalmuseum:

Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller, Henri Bertholet-Campan at Age Two, exhibited at the Salon of 1787 (Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, NM 7133)

Nationalmuseum’s collection of Swedish-French paintings from the 18th century now includes a portrait of the two-year-old Henri Bertholet-Campan (1784–1821), painted by Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller. The boy was the son of Marie Antoinette’s First Lady of the Bedchamber Henriette Genet-Campan. The portrait depicts him with his dog Aline in the English landscape garden at the family’s summer house in Croissy outside Paris. The painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1787, but under the rather anonymous title of A Child Playing with a Dog.

Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller (1751–1811) trained under his second cousin Alexander Roslin in Paris and studied at the French Academy in Rome. When Wertmüller returned to the French capital in spring 1781, he found it difficult to obtain work as a portraitist and instead earned his keep as a copyist at Roslin’s studio. Here he was discovered by the Swedish Ambassador Gustaf Filip Creutz, who made several important commissions. This in turn resulted in Gustav III convincing France’s Queen Marie Antoinette, during his stay in Paris in the summer of 1784, to let Wertmüller paint her portrait as a gift to the Swedish King. The portrait is currently held in the collections of Nationalmuseum.

King Gustav III had intended this to be Wertmüller’s ticket to a successful career in Paris, but jealousies abounded. When the portrait of Marie Antoinette was exhibited in August 1785, it was attacked by the critics. The Queen was also unimpressed. The artist fell into a deep depression, but recovered enough to make the necessary changes before the portrait was dispatched to Sweden the following year. It was Wertmüller’s friend Henriette Genet-Campan who came to his aid. The fact that Wertmüller even got paid was largely down to Mme Campan, since she managed the Queen’s purse and was intimately involved in the royal finances. For security reasons a mutual friend, Gabriel Lindblom, acted as a go-between in contact between the two. Lindblom had been governor to Mme Campan’s younger brother Edmond Genet and served as an interpreter at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Versailles. This explains why Wertmüller was so well informed and why he came to paint almost a dozen portraits of various members of the Genet-Campan family.

Tim Knox stepped into his new role at the Fitzwilliam Museum earlier this spring. Press release (7 December 2012) from the Soane’s Museum:

After nearly eight highly successful years as Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum, Tim Knox has been appointed to succeed Timothy Potts as Director and Marlay Curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

During his time at the Soane Museum Tim Knox masterminded the restoration of the two houses, Nos. 12 and 14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which flank Soane’s original Museum at No. 13. The ambitious OUTS (Opening up the Soane) project, which has involved raising over £7 million, is now fully planned and financed, and ready to move into its second phase, the first having provided a new exhibition gallery, new conservation studios and a new museum shop. At the same time many of Sir John Soane’s original arrangements have been meticulously restored, notably his Picture Room The reinstatement of Soane’s lost private apartments, including his Model Room, is planned and fully funded for 2013.

There has also been notable progress in cataloguing the Museum’s collections and making them available on the Soane’s website; in education; in outreach and access, including disabled access; and in building up support for the Museum among its many generous friends, old and new, here and in the United States.

The Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum are, naturally, saddened at the prospect of Tim’s departure, but will set about the task of finding a worthy replacement, confident that the Museum is in very good heart, with plans for the future fully in place and all its systems in excellent order. Simon Swynfen Jervis, Chairman of the Trustees, commented: “Working with Tim has been an exciting and rewarding experience, and we shall greatly miss him, while wishing him the very best in his new role at the Fitzwilliam Museum.”

Knox studied History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He was appointed Assistant Curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects Drawings Collection in 1989. In 1995 he moved to the National Trust as its Architectural Historian, becoming Head Curator in 2002. He was much involved with the restoration of the gardens at Stowe in Buckinghamshire, and championed the acquisition of the Workhouse in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, Tyntesfield in Somerset, and the restoration of the Darnley Mausoleum in Cobham Park, Kent.

He was appointed Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum in London in 2005, and has since striven to restore Sir John Soane’s glittering architectural treasury to its appearance in 1837, just as its founder wished. In 2009 the next door house, No 14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, was restored to provide Education facilities, a Research Library and offices for the Museum. In July 2012, the first phase of the £7 million Opening up the Soane project was unveiled, with a new Gallery for temporary exhibitions, a Shop, Conservation Studios and a lift. The next phase of the project, the restoration of Soane’s private apartments, began in April 2013, and the Opening up the Soane project will be fully complete in 2015.

Knox is Historic Buildings Adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office – advising on the presentation of historic ambassadorial residences abroad – and is Chairman of the Government’s Acceptance in Lieu Committee, He sits on the Royal Mint Advisory Committee on the Design of Coins, Medals, Seals and Decorations. He is a Trustee of the Pilgrim Trust and is Patron of the Mausolea and Monuments Trust, which he helped found and Chaired 2000-2005. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Member of the Society of Dilettanti. His Publications include Sir John Soane’s Museum London (Merrell, 2009) and The British Ambassador’s Residence in Paris (Flammarion, 2011).

The Fitzwilliam press release is available here»

From English Heritage (26 June 2013) . . .

The Government has announced that it will work with English Heritage to consult on establishing a charity to care for the historic properties in the National Heritage Collection on a self-financing basis, supported by Government investment of £80 million. English Heritage will be awarded this one-off lump sum to invest in the National Heritage Collection of 420 historic sites, monuments and collections in its care. This will support its plan to transfer management of the Collection to a charity, licensed by English Heritage’s governing body, The Commission. This investment in historic properties across the entire country will create jobs and boost local economies.

The National Heritage Collection, which includes Stonehenge, Kenwood, Audley End, Dover Castle and Charles Darwin’s home Down House in Kent, will remain in public ownership. However, the new charity will have more freedom to generate greater commercial and philanthropic income to safeguard and present to the public what is arguably England’s most vulnerable and important collection of cultural treasures.

Under current plans, the new charity will be set up by March 2015. It will retain the name English Heritage and in due course, will be completely self-financing and no longer need tax-payer support. (more…)

Press release (25 June 2013) from The Speed Art Museum in Louisville:

The Board of Trustees of The Speed Art Museum announced today that Ghislain d’Humières has been appointed as the new Director of the Museum. d’Humières, who is currently serving as the Director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, succeeds Charles Venable, who served as Director from 2007 to 2012. d’Humières will assume his role at the Speed on September 3, 2013.

A native of France, Ghislain d’Humieres studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he received his DEA in History and License of Art History. He became a specialist in 18th-century furniture for Sotheby’s London, and later transferred to Sotheby’s in New York. To further his education, he studied at the Gemological Institute of America, and became the Director of the jewelry department at Christie’s of Los Angeles, overseeing the West Coast and South America. During his employment, he gained extensive business knowledge, expanded his expertise, and traveled extensively around the World. In 2001, he transferred to Christie’s in Geneva and was in charge of international clients from Europe and South America.

A compassionate leader, d’Humières took an eighteen-month sabbatical in Guatemala, during which time he worked with street children involved in drugs and prostitution. After his sabbatical, he founded the Alix Donation Fund (ADF) for underprivileged children in Guatemala.

Shortly thereafter, he was hired by the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco as Assistant Director in charge of the opening of the new de Young Museum, located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

In 2007, Ghislain joined the University of Oklahoma as the Bill and Wylodean Saxon Director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. During his six-year tenure at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, d’Humières has doubled attendance, led a successful $15 million capital campaign, and spearheaded the development and management of the Museum’s new 20,000 square-foot Stuart wing, which doubled the Museum’s exhibition space.

D’Humièresalso created a privately funded program to implement new educational and outreach initiatives which included underprivileged visitors. He supervised more than 40 exhibitions and oversaw the production of numerous exhibition catalogs and museum publications while also expanding the Museum’s educational programs and collaborations with other museums, communities and national and international organizations.

Press release (11 June 2013) from The Frick Collection:

On Monday, June 10, Ian Wardropper, Director of The Frick Collection, received the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in a private ceremony held during a reception at the museum. Antonin Baudry, Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy, officiated at the ceremony. The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) was created in 1957 to recognize eminent artists and writers, as well as individuals who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world. The Order is given out twice annually to only a few hundred people worldwide. Among the Americans who have received this award in the past are Paul Auster, Ornette Coleman, Agnes Gund, Marilyn Horne, Judith Jamison, Jim Jarmusch, Richard Meier, Robert Paxton, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Uma Thurman.

A specialist in European sculpture, decorative arts, and twentieth-century design and decorative arts, Ian Wardropper held key positions first at the Art Institute of Chicago and then at The Metropolitan Museum of Art before being named Director of The Frick Collection in 2011. At The Frick Collection, Wardropper co-curated last year’s Gold, Jasper, and Carnelian: Johann Cristian Neuber at the Saxon Court, the first exhibition on the work of a remarkable eighteenth-century court goldsmith. On view now at the Frick is an exhibition featuring drawing and prints from French masters spanning the entire second half of the nineteenth century: The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec: Drawings and Prints from the Clark. These works represent the diverse interests of Realist, Impressionist, and Post-Impressionist artists in a rapidly changing world. (more…)

Press release (June 2013) from the Ashmolean:

The Ashmolean has announced that Professor Brown will retire from his post as Director of the Ashmolean on 30 September 2014 after serving in that position for sixteen years. Following a sabbatical year, he will take up a position as a Research Professor in the University for three years until 2018. His work will be on Van Dyck and Rembrandt with the latter to be the focus of an exhibition in the Ashmolean in 2016. He took up the post of Director of the Ashmolean Museum in 1998 and the years of his Directorship have transformed the museum. Visitor figures have risen from 100,000 to over a million during these years. The museum will launch a campaign to create The Professor Christopher Brown Fund which will be used to establish curatorial fellowships at the Ashmolean. The process of finding Professor Brown’s successor will now begin so that his successor will be available to take up the position when he steps down.

Bernard Taylor, Chairman of the Visitors of the Ashmolean has said: “Christopher’s tenure as Director has involved huge positive development for the Ashmolean and he has overseen change on a grand scale with the implementation of architect the late Rick Mather’s wonderful design to transform the museum’s building. Visitor numbers have increased four fold since the opening of the remodelled building, the museum’s scholarly programme has been reemphasised and an ambitious temporary exhibition programme launched. Christopher has been tireless in successfully seeking financial support for the Ashmolean on an international scale. I am delighted that following his retirement, he will remain in Oxford doing his research.” (more…)

As noted at Art Daily (4 June 2013) . . .

The two leading decorative arts institutions in the South are embarking on a new level of collaboration between their organizations. The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg [in Virginia] and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) at Old Salem Museums & Gardens [in North Carolina] have entered a five-year agreement between the museums for reciprocal extended loans. The museums have already collaborated on the recently opened exhibition, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South at the Arts Museums of Colonial Williamsburg. With nine major paintings MESDA is the largest single lender to the exhibition, while select objects from the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg are already on display at MESDA.

In total, 40 objects from MESDA are on loan to the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg and, conversely, 30 objects from the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg to MESDA. These objects range from clocks and high chests to paintings and silver coffee pots. The collaboration is part of a five-year agreement between the museums for reciprocal extended loans. Many of the MESDA objects on loan to Colonial Williamsburg will be featured in a new, long-term exhibition opening at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, in January 2014. A Rich and Varied Culture: The Material World of the Early South will feature furniture, silver, ceramics, textiles and costumes, tools, machines, architectural elements and other materials made in or imported to the South before 1840. (more…)