Online Series | The Museum and Gallery Today
From the PMC:
The Museum and Gallery Today: Paul Mellon Lectures 2021
Six Online Lectures, 20 October — 11 February 2022
Established in 1994, this lecture series was named in honour of Paul Mellon (Yale College, class of 1929), the philanthropist, collector of British art, and founder of both the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) in New Haven and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (PMC) in London. Co-organised by the two institutions, these biennial lectures have traditionally been given by a specialist in British art, first at the National Gallery, London, and again at the YCBA in New Haven.
This year’s series, entitled The Museum and Gallery Today, is exclusively online and features individual talks from some of the world’s most distinguished museum and gallery directors. The lectures are presented as free live webinars. Registration is required (for each lecture, individually).
20 October 2021
Gabriele Finaldi (Director of the National Gallery)
3 November 2021
Kaywin Feldman (Director of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)
10 November 2021
Thelma Golden (Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem)
11 November 2021
Iwona Blazwick (Director of the Whitechapel Gallery)
24 November 2021
Maria Balshaw (Director of Tate)
11 February 2022
Eve Tam (Former Director of the Hong Kong Museum of Art)
New Book | My Monticello
From Macmillan:
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, My Monticello: Fiction (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2021), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-1250807151, $27.
A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America.
Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, “My Monticello,” tells of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists. Led by Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson’s historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation.
In “Control Negro,” hailed by Roxane Gay as “one hell of story,” a university professor devotes himself to the study of racism and the development of ACMs (average American Caucasian males) by clinically observing his own son from birth in order to “painstakingly mark the route of this Black child too, one whom I could prove was so strikingly decent and true that America could not find fault in him unless we as a nation had projected it there.” Johnson’s characters all seek out home as a place and an internal state, whether in the form of a Nigerian widower who immigrates to a meager existence in the city of Alexandria, finding himself adrift; a young mixed-race woman who adopts a new tongue and name to escape the landscapes of rural Virginia and her family; or a single mother who seeks salvation through “Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse.”
United by these characters’ relentless struggles against reality and fate, My Monticello is a formidable book that bears witness to this country’s legacies and announces the arrival of a wildly original new voice in American fiction.
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s writing has appeared in Guernica, The Guardian, Kweli, Joyland, phoebe, Prime Number Magazine, and elsewhere. Her short story “Control Negro” was anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2018, guest edited by Roxane Gay, and read live by LeVar Burton as part of PRI’s Selected Shorts series. Johnson has been a fellow at Hedgebrook, Tin House Summer Workshops, and VCCA. A veteran public school art teacher, Johnson lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Lecture Series | Printing Abolition, 1783–1807
Fold-out engraving in Charles Crawford, Observations on Negro-Slavery (Philadelphia: Eleazer Oswald, 1790)
(Philadelphia: Penn Libraries, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts)
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From Penn Libraries:
Michael Suarez, Printing Abolition: How the Fight to Ban the British Slave Trade Was Won, 1783–1807
The A.S.W. Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography
Online and In-person, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 25, 26, and 28 October 2021
In this series of highly illustrated lectures (originally scheduled for March 2020), Michael Suarez offers a fresh perspective on British abolition, richly informed by political prints and personal correspondence, newspapers and pamphlets, account books and committee minutes, parliamentary reports and private diaries. Suarez’s revisionist history not only traces the production and distribution of abolitionist print, but also reveals the hidden networks that variously sustained the first humanitarian mass media campaign. Abolition forces brilliantly exploited the power of print to contend with the complex legacies of the American and French Revolutions, the slave revolt in present-day Haiti, and the Napoleonic Wars. Seeking to understand how both abolitionists and their foes exploited systems of influence through printed words and images in many forms, Suarez delineates the strategies that abolitionists devised to overcome accusations of religious fanaticism, economic malfeasance, and political sedition. Exploring the first author’s book tour in the UK, a consumer boycott fostered by the radical press, and the fashionable publisher who clandestinely worked as press agent for the pro-slavery interest, these lectures will demonstrate the power of bibliography and book history to rewrite established narratives and to recover lives and labors typically left out of conventional accounts.
These three lectures will be held in person and also livestreamed via Zoom webinar (advance registration required to receive Zoom link). In addition, the lectures will be recorded and available for viewing and as podcasts approximately several weeks after being presented.
Michael F. Suarez, S.J. has served as Director of Rare Book School, Professor of English, University Professor, and Honorary Curator of Special Collections at the University of Virginia since 2009. Professor Suarez serves as Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Scholarly Editions Online. His recent books include The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume V, 1695–1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2009), co-edited with Michael Turner, and The Oxford Companion to the Book (Oxford University Press, 2010), a million-word reference work co-edited with H. R. Woudhuysen. The Book: A Global History, also co-edited with H. R. Woudhuysen, first appeared in 2013. In 2014, Oxford University Press published his edition of The Dublin Notebook, co-edited with Lesley Higgins, in the Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. He delivered the 2015 Lyell Lectures in Bibliography at the University of Oxford.
Feeding the Machine: A Triple System of Networks
Monday, 25 October 2021, 5.30pm (EST)
Register for this lecture (attending in person or attending virtually, via Zoom webinar).
Commodity Culture and the Political Economies of Print
Tuesday, 26 October 2021, 5.30pm (EST)
Register for this lecture (attending in person or attending virtually, via Zoom webinar).
Beyond Westminster: Toward More Global Forms of Knowing
Thursday, 28 October 2021, 5.30pm (EST)
Register for this lecture (attending in person or attending virtually, via Zoom webinar).
Digital Tools for Better Understanding Jean-Henri Riesener
From Art Daily (17 October 2021) . . .
Jean-Henri Riesener, Fall-front desk with trellis marquetry and gilt-bronze mounts, 1783 (London: The Wallace Collection, F302).
Jean-Henri Riesener (1734–1806)—the German cabinetmaker who emigrated to Paris in the mid-eighteenth century and became supplier of furniture to Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and their court—has been the subject of an extensive research project undertaken by the Wallace Collection, Waddesdon Manor, and the Royal Collection. Over the past six years, the Project has investigated Riesener’s career, craft, and legacy, which has helped develop a greater understanding of his cabinetmaking materials and techniques, as well as his innovations in furniture design. Many of the Project’s discoveries were incorporated into cutting-edge 3D furniture models, the first monograph on Riesener, and a display at the Wallace Collection. This display focused on the furniture that Riesener made for Marie-Antoinette as well as his lasting influence on later cabinetmakers.
Although this display at the Wallace Collection has now drawn to a close, much of the Project’s work, as well as the pieces of furniture themselves, can still be explored through a comprehensive microsite dedicated to Riesener, in addition to the book. The detailed technical examination of the materials, structure, and condition of the objects that took place during the Project, along with scientific analysis, allowed accurate digital models to be created in SketchUp. These are hosted on Sketchfab for a fully interactive experience that allows users to gain an appreciation of the complexity of Riesener’s work and his virtuosity as a craftsman and designer. These models on the microsite are enriched by isometric drawings and catalogue entries that examine the history of the furniture and the characteristics of their production, along with essays that explore Riesener’s life, craft, patrons, and collectors.
A Riesener trail has also been created on the Royal Collection’s website. This draws together all the Riesener furniture from the three collections, along with their digital models, short catalogue entries, and an interactive timeline of Riesener’s life and key commissions, interspersed with events in French national history.
Many aspects of the Riesener Project were pioneering, from its focus on the materiality of Riesener’s furniture to his workshop processes and the business of furniture-making. However, perhaps the Project’s most ground-breaking achievement was sharing its research results with as wide an audience as possible, through multiple media, on an open-access online platform.
Rosenberg Lecture | Jessica Fripp, The French Academy in Rome
Hubert Robert, View of the Gardens at the Villa Mattei, 1761, red chalk on paper
(Dallas Museum of Art, fractional gift of Charlene and Tom Marsh, 2006.17)
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From the DMA:
Jessica Fripp, The French Academy in Rome: Adventures in Bromance
Annual Rosenberg Lecture
Online and In-Person, Dallas Museum of Art, 11 November 2021, 7.00pm
Presented by the Michael L. Rosenberg Foundation
Winning the Royal Academy’s prix de Rome was a major accomplishment for aspiring painters and sculptors in 18th-century France. The prize came with a three-year funded stay in Rome, and provided an opportunity for artists to finish their education by viewing firsthand antique, Renaissance, and Baroque works of art in the Eternal City. But, much like students who study abroad today, their time in Rome involved just as much play as work.
In this lecture, Jessica L. Fripp, Associate Professor of Art History and Undergraduate and Graduate Coordinator at Texas Christian University, will talk about works of art that provide a view into the less studious side of artists’ time in Rome: caricatures. What can these ‘silly’ drawings tell us about life in Rome as a young artist and the role of friendship and play in academic artistic training?
This talk will be livestreamed on the DMA’s YouTube channel, with limited in-person seating available. Dr. Fripp’s recent book Portraiture and Friendship in Enlightenment France will be available for purchase at the DMA Store, and a book signing will follow the event on-site.
To register (for either in-person or virtual attendance), click here»
Online Conference | Buying Art and Antiquities in 18th-Century Italy
From the conference program:
Buying Art and Antiquities in Eighteenth-Century Italy
La compra de arte y antigüedades en la Italia del siglo XVIII
Online, UNED, Madrid, 4, 11, 18, 23 November and 2 December 2021
Organized by Pilar Diez del Corral Corredoira and David Ojeda Nogales
Jean-François Sablet, In the Antiquities Shop, Rome, 1788 (Private Collection)
The third meeting of the international conference series Transnational Relations and the Arts will address the issue of art and antiquities markets in eighteenth century. With the Grand Tour at its peak, men from all over Europe and beyond flooded into the cities of Italy, mainly Rome but also Naples, Venice, and Florence. These grand tourists fed an already flourishing art market and were also active agents of the spread of ancient marbles and vases, Old Master paintings, ancient coins, and medals back to their homelands, not to mention the diffusion of an international ‘buon gusto’ among the middling and upper classes. For virtual access via Zoom, please email dojeda@geo.uned.es and diezdelcorral@geo.uned.es. The conference is also available for streaming (without registration) here.
This conference is part of the results of the I+D+i project (PID2020-117326GB-I00), FAKE- La perdurabilidad del engaño: Falsificación de Antigüedades en la Roma del siglo XVIII, and the Ramón y Cajal research Project (2017-22131), Academias artísticas, diplomacia e identidad de España y Portugal en la Roma de la primera mitad del siglo XVIII, both funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.
First Session — Agents and Art Markets
4 November 2021, 15.00 (Madrid Time)
• Sascha Kansteiner (Curator of Greek and Roman sculpture, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden), Cavaceppi: Sculptor, Restorer, Dealer, Publisher, and Forger
• Jeffrey Laird Collins (Professor of Art History and Material Culture, Bard Graduate Center, New York), The Pope, the Curator, the Milord, and his Dealer: Rome’s Red-Hot Antiquities Market in Theory and in Practice.
• Heiner Krellig (Independent Scholar, Venice and Berlin), Preliminary Notes for a History of the Art Market in Eighteenth-Century Venice
• Paola D’Alconzo (Universidad de Nápoles Federico II), Il mercato di antichità nel Regno di Napoli nel XVIII secolo: quadro normativo e alcuni casi esemplari
• Alexandre Vico Martori (Universidad de Gerona), ‘Quattro quadri dipinti per il traverso dipinti in tavola’: El redescubrimiento de Sandro Botticelli y la adquisición de las spalliere del Palazzo Pucci
Second Session — Agents and Art Markets, part 2
11 November 2021, 15.00 (Madrid Time)
• Paweł Gołyźniak (Institute of Archaeology, Jagiellonian University), Philipp von Stosch (1691–1757) and His Dominant Position in Terms of Trade, Collecting, and Research of Engraved Gems in Eighteenth-Century Italy
• Tara Zanardi (Hunter College of the City University of New York), Isabel de Farnesio, Filippo Juvarra, and the Modern Interior at La Granja
• Mercedes Simal (Unversidad de Jaén), Troiano Acquaviva y el mercado artístico romano: un agente al servicio de los reyes de España y Nápoles
• Elena Dmitrieva (Department of the Classical Antiquities, The State Hermitage Museum), Russian Buyers of Antique and Modern Gems in the Italian Art Market in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century
• Odile Boubakeur (Ecole du Louvre / Université Paris-Saclay), ‘Italy, Garden of the World’…or ‘jardin à l’anglaise’? British Supremacy on the Italian Antique Art Market through the Eighteenth Century
Third Session — Collectors and Their Collections
18 November 2021, 15.00 (Madrid Time)
• Tracy L. Ehrlich (Associate Teaching Professor, Parsons School of Design / The New School, New York), Alessandro Albani and European Practices of Collecting and Display in the Era of the Grand Tour
• Fabrizio Federici (Independent Scholar), Dispersing a Collection in Eighteenth-Century Italy: The Paintings and Statues of the Cybo Malaspina Family
• John E. Davies (FRHistS, former County Archivist Carmarthenshire Archive Service, independent scholar), An Examination of the Art Collecting of the First Baron Cawdor
• Theresa Kutasz Christensen (Exhibitions Researcher, Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, Baltimore Museum of Art), The King is Dead, Long Live the King’s Things: The Transformation of Private Pleasures into Public Propaganda in Gustav III of Sweden’s Museum of Antiquities
• Alexander V. Kruglov (Independent Scholar, New York), The Russian Grand Tour: Sculptures Purchased by Count and Countess of the North in Rome in 1782
Fourth Session — Collectors and Collections
23 November 2021, 15.00 (Madrid Time)
• Daniela Roberts (Assistant Professor, Institute of Art History, University of Würzburg), Grand Tour Pickings: Antiquities for Georgian Gothic Houses
• Maureen Cassidy-Geiger (Independent Scholar), Bringing Rome Home: Souvenirs and Gifts for Crown Prince Friedrich Christian of Saxony/Poland during His Sojourn in the Eternal City, 1738–39
• José Antonio Vigara Zafra (UNED), El Grand Tour del VI conde de Fernán Núñez: un ejemplo de cultura cortesana en la Europa de la Ilustración
• Domenico Pino (University College London), Gems Never Seen Before: William Hamilton, Vesuvius, and the Rising Taste for Precious Marble in Europe, c. 1770
• Ginevra Odone (Université de Lorraine / La Sapienza Università di Roma / Society for the History of Collecting, Italian Chapter), From Rome to London: Expertise, Dealer, and Buyer for Two Antique Hands
Fifth Session — Works of Art
2 December 2021, 15.00 (Madrid Time)
• Max Kunze (Professor at the University of Mannheim), Winckelmann and the Venus Menophantus or Emphatic Aspects of Restored Sculptures in the Eighteenth Century
• Alexis R. Culotta (Professor of Practice, Tulane University), Commemorating Italy?: The Walpole and Brand Cabinets as Grand Tour Souvenirs of Elsewhere
• David Ojeda (UNED), Forgeries in the Eighteenth Century and Classical Art: A Methodological Conundrum
• Julio C. Ruiz (Universidad Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona), Sobre un torso masculino con indumentaria militar en el Museo del Prado
• Lorenzo Ebanista (Independent Scholar), La felloplastica napoletana nel XVIII secolo tra scenografie presepiali, souvenirs del Grand Tour e rappresentazioni naturalistiche
• Eliška Petřeková (Masaryk University Brno), Between a Souvenir and Archeological Documentation: The Cork Model of the Paestum Temple in the Chancellor Metternich‘s Collection
New Book | Nicolas Party: Pastel
The catalogue for the exhibition is now available:
Nicolas Party, ed., Pastel (New York: The FLAG Art Foundation, 2021), 216 pages, ISBN: 978-1949172522, $50. Contributions by Nicolas Party and Dodie Kazanjian; conversation with artists Louis Fratino, Loie Hollowell, Billy Sullivan, Robin F. Williams, moderated by FLAG Founder Glenn Fuhrman; essay by Melissa Hyde, “‘Dust From a Butterfly’s Wing’: The Gentle Art of Pastel, A Short History.”
In 2019, Nicolas Party transformed The FLAG Art Foundation in New York into a rose-colored stage set for a suite of soft pastel, Rococo-inspired murals that serve as a foil to, and occasional backdrop for, a selection of pastels from the 18th century to the present. Pastel commemorates the exhibition, its celebration of the pastel medium, and the range of contemporary artists who are giving new energy to this uniquely fragile medium. Artists in the exhibition included Rosalba Carriera, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Louis Fratino, Marsden Hartley, Loie Hollowell, Julian Martin, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Chris Ofili, Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, Billy Sullivan, Wayne Thiebaud, and Robin F. Williams.
Nicolas Party (b. 1980, Lausanne, Switzerland) is an artist living and working in Brussels and New York. He earned a BA in Fine Art at the Lausanne School of Art in 2004 and an MA at The Glasgow School of Art in 2009. More information is available here.
Exhibition | Writing History: Voltaire and the Kings
Jean César Macret, Réception de Voltaire aux Champs Elisées par Henri Quatre.
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Now on view at the Château de Voltaire:
Ecrire l’histoire: Voltaire et les rois
Château de Voltaire à Ferney, 16 septembre 2021 — 5 janvier 2022
Organized by Andrew Brown and François Jacob
On a parlé, de manière facétieuse, du « roi Voltaire » : sans être roi, Voltaire (1694–1778) n’en a pas moins fréquenté de nombreuses têtes couronnées. On le rencontre à la cour, que ce soit celle de Louis XV ou de Frédéric II de Prusse. Il entretient avec nombre de monarques une importante correspondance. Désireux de se faire apprécier par les souverains, attendant beaucoup d’eux, il met sa plume au service de leur gloire et de leur postérité : n’est-il pas l’auteur de La Henriade ? Ne le considère-t-on pas, avec l’Histoire de Charles XII et Le Siècle de Louis XIV, comme un des fondateurs de l’historiographie moderne ? Ses ouvrages, tout autant que ses amis influents, lui permettent d’être promu « Historiographe de France » en 1744–45 et d’entrer à l’Académie française en 1746.
Château de Voltaire is located in Ferney-Voltaire (Ain) in France, close to the Swiss border and Geneva. It was Voltaire’s home between 1761 and 1778. Acquired by the French State in 1999, it came under the care of the Centre des monuments nationaux in 2007. After a series of restoration projects, including a three-year closure, the house reopened in May 2018 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, 2018).
L’exposition Écrire l’histoire : Voltaire et les rois propose de redécouvrir les relations que Voltaire entretint, tout au long du Siècle des Lumières, avec les cours européennes. Familier des princes, le philosophe utilise en effet sa plume pour servir les monarchies et sa propre renommée dans toutes les cours éclairées. À celle des rois de France, qu’il fréquenta avec les péripéties que l’on connait, sous le Régent, Louis XV et Louis XVI, il connut toutes les situations d’un courtisan, l’intérêt, l’affection, les grandes dignités, la prison, l’exil. Mais Voltaire ne se contente pas d’être conteur, poète ou philosophe : il entretient avec les souverains des relations parfois mouvementées, voire passionnelles. C’est ainsi que si Frédéric II le nomme d’abord Chambellan en récompense de son art et de ses conseils, il rompt ensuite brutalement avec lui.
Le Siècle de Louis XIV, l’Histoire de Charles XII ou l’Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations connurent des succès d’édition durables : Voltaire fut rapidement considéré comme un des principaux historiens de l’Ancien Régime, celui grâce à qui on a pu repenser l’écriture de l’histoire. Certaines de ses œuvres furent copiées, ou imitées par des opposants : il n’est que de songer à La Beaumelle et à ses Mémoires de Madame de Maintenon.
L’exposition débutera dans le circuit de visite ordinaire du château, les appartements de Voltaire et de sa nièce, Madame Denis, où sont conservés des portraits royaux ayant appartenu à Voltaire : Catherine II, Frédéric II, Marie-Thérèse. Elle se poursuivra dans les salles d’exposition du rez-de-jardin pour évoquer Stanislas, le Sultan et bien d’autres.
Exposition présentée par le Centre des monuments nationaux, en partenariat avec les Associations voltairiennes de Ferney-Voltaire.
Online Seminar | The Perth Literary and Antiquarian Society, 1784–1914
From The Wallace Collection:
Mark Hall, The Perth Literary and Antiquarian Society, 1784–1914: Collecting Scotland, Collecting the World
Wallace Collection Seminars on the History of Collections and Collecting
Online, Monday, 25 October 2021, 5.30pm
Perth Museum & Art Gallery, Scotland, is currently managed on behalf of Perth & Kinross Council by the cultural trust, Culture Perth & Kinross. The Museum’s history as a local authority service dates back just over a century, to the first decade of the twentieth century. It is part of a history of collecting spanning four centuries, beginning in the late eighteenth century. Its formative iteration, both in terms of a collection and a physical museum, was the Perth Literary and Antiquarian Society, founded in 1784.
The Museum is looking back at this history as part of its project to create a new museum in Perth. In the context of that project, this contribution will summarise the collecting significance and history of the Perth Literary and Antiquarian Society from its Enlightenment origins and including its colonial legacy. In the presentation a range of collecting case studies will be discussed to further emphasis the local and international network of collectors and donors the Society relied on and to demonstrate the rich range of the collections. The case studies will include the Cambus Bronze Age sword, collecting John Knox, and the collectors Colin Robertson (1783–1842), David Ramsay (1794–1860), and the Riach Brothers—active respectively in America, Oceania, and the Middle-East.
Dr Mark Hall is Collections Officer for Culture Perth & Kinross, Perth Museum & Art Gallery, Scotland.
Please note that this seminar will take place on Zoom and YouTube, and will not be held at the Wallace Collection. Admission is free, and registration is required. More information and details of future seminars can now be found here.
New Book | Iconotypes: A Compendium of Butterflies and Moths
From the University of California Press:
William Jones, with an introduction by Richard Vane-Wright, Iconotypes: A Compendium of Butterflies & Moths, Jones’ Icones Complete (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021), 688 pages, ISBN: 978-0520386501, $85.
William Jones’s Icones is one of the most scientifically important and visually stunning works on butterflies and moths ever created. Icones contains finely delineated paintings of more than 760 species of Lepidoptera, many of which it described for the first time, marking a critical moment in the study of natural history. Yet until now, it has never been published—the only existing manuscript copy is housed in the archives of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. With Iconotypes, Jones’s work is published for the first time, accompanied by expert commentary and contextual essays, and featuring annotated maps showing where each specimen was discovered.
Between the early 1780s and 1810, Jones, a wine merchant, painted in painstaking detail hundreds of species of Lepidoptera, drawing from his own collection and the collections of prominent amateur naturalists. For every specimen, Jones included the known species name, the collection, and the geographical location in which it was found. In this enhanced facsimile, Jones’s historical references are clarified and modern taxonomic names are provided together with notes on which paintings serve as iconotypes. Contextual commentary by specialist entomologist Richard Vane-Wright gives an account of Jones’s life, his motivation for collecting butterflies and creating the Icones, and evaluates the significance of Jones’s work. This lavish volume intersperses contemporary maps showing the locations of each specimen, expert essays on the study of lepidoptery since ancient Egyptian times, the development of taxonomy after Linnaeus, the roles of collectors and natural history artists during the late 1700s to mid-1800s, and the steep decline of butterflies and moths over the last fifty years. Iconotypes is a beautiful collector’s object for fans of natural history and illustrations of butterflies and moths, as well as artists, designers, and bibliophiles.
Richard I. Vane-Wright is an entomologist and taxonomist who has been associated with London’s Natural History Museum for nearly sixty years. A specialist on butterflies, he retired from the museum in 2004 as Keeper of the Department of Entomology. He is the author of three books, most recently Butterflies: A Complete Guide to Their Biology and Behavior. He is also involved with biodiversity conservation and local entomological projects.
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