Enfilade

Press release from Sue Bond Public Relations:

Through World Monuments Fund (WMF), The Paul Mellon Estate has announced a pledge of $250,000 towards the restoration of the State Music Room at Stowe House, the magnificent Grade I listed Neo-Classical palace set in 400 acres of landscaped park in Buckinghamshire. The funding means that the work will begin this year and should be completed by 2012-13.

WMF Britain’s Chief Executive Dr Jonathan Foyle said “The generous gift of The Paul Mellon Estate, along with donations from our members, trusts and foundations and others who responded to our recent Music Room Challenge, will allow one of the principal rooms of Stowe to be restored for everyone to enjoy. This magnificent response brings WMF’s £10 million fundraising challenge for Stowe to within £410,000 of its target – wonderfully positive news in these economically challenged times.” Completion of the State Music
Room will allow the core of historic spaces at Stowe to be presented as they
were at the turn of the 19th century, following the recent restoration of the
Marble Saloon and the Large Library.

World Monuments Fund Britain (WMF) included Stowe in its 2002 Watch List of endangered sites and began to support the project by substantially funding the restoration of the astonishing Marble Saloon with its 57-foot-high dome which was completed in 2005. One of the largest and most spectacular spaces to be found in any British country house, the Saloon is an oval version of the Pantheon in Rome. WMF in partnership with Stowe House Preservation Trust (SHPT) has undertaken the daunting challenge of restoring this great mansion with its 400 rooms and 1/6 mile-wide façade.

Situated between the Marble Saloon and the Large Library, the State Music Room is one of the finest late 18th century spaces in Britain, showcasing Italian artistry in the heart of England. Whilst begun in 1676, it was only after a century of ceaseless building and landscape gardening that Richard Grenville-Temple (1711-79), 2nd Earl Temple to some, largely completed
Stowe House, including the south front, the Temple Room and the Music
Room in the 1770s. (more…)

The last time I was in Paris (January 2010), I was especially struck by the city’s churches. Apart from Notre Dame, these seem to be largely overlooked by both travelers and (all too often) scholars. Apparently, those in charge of preserving the city’s historic sites may also be neglecting them; at least this is the contention of Didier Rykner.

Didier Rykner, “The State of Churches in Paris (1): Saint-Philippe-du-Roule,” The Art Tribune (18 December 2010).

Jean-François Chalgrin, Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, 1774-84 (Photo by Vincent Babilotte, Wikimedia Commons)

This article inaugurates a new series devoted to Parisian churches. Although we often point out endangered religious sites, those here in the capital have escaped our attention thus far as we tend to assume that they are well protected. Unfortunately, this is not at all the case. The department in charge of preserving and restoring art works and mural paintings (the COARC) works diligently on important projects, certain restorations of major sections of buildings have also been carried out in the past few years by the Bureau des Edifices Cultuels & Historiques (BECH), but the need is so great and some churches are so deteriorated that it is now time to admit that this is not enough. . . .

To show our good faith and thus also more positive points, some of the articles in our series will highlight churches which have been restored, or where work is underway. We begin today, however, with a building which is in extremely grave danger, though not visible to visitors who enter: the church of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule. It was built in the late 18th century, designed by Jean-François Chalgrin who submitted his plans in 1764 although construction did not begin until 1774 and the blessing of the church took place only in 1784. . . .

The full article on Saint-Philippe-du-Roule and its deteriorating condition is available here»

As reported by Martin Bailey in The Art Newspaper (18 August 2010) . . .

An 18th-century wooden block mould, © Wedgwood Museum

A fundraising campaign may be launched to save the Wedgwood Museum outside Stoke on Trent, if courts rule that its collection can be sold to pay the pensions liability of the Waterford Wedgwood company, which went into administration in January 2009.

Through a legal quirk, the Wedgwood Pension Fund trustees, who face a deficit of £134m for employees, may be able to claim against the museum. The museum had only six staff in the scheme, whose pension interest represented £60,000, but it could be liable for all of the fund’s 7,000 claimants.

Because of the pensions issue, the Wedgwood Museum Trust was itself put under administration in January, and it is temporarily run by insolvency practitioner Begbies Traynor. The next stage is for the courts to decide whether the museum’s assets could be seized. This is a complex legal matter and is likely to require a detailed hearing to resolve this autumn. In the meantime, the museum remains open to visitors, as normal.. . . .

The full story can be found here»

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Back in July, Lucy Ingliss provided a thoughtful response to the uncertain future of the Wedgwood Museum at Georgian London. Ironically, the Wedgwood Museum was awarded the Art Fund Prize in 2009, just after the completion of an extensive construction project. As noted on the museum’s website:

It’s official! The Wedgwood Museum is Britain’s best museum. The news that the independent Stoke on Trent museum has won the £100,000 Art Fund Prize 2009  – the UK’s largest single arts prize – was announced last night (18 June) at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. The Art Fund Prize honours the most imaginative and original museum or gallery of the year and is a huge accolade for the museum, which only opened last October after the charitable Wedgwood Museum Trust spent nearly a decade raising funds to build it. . .