In her latest book, Private Collecting, Exhibitions, and the Shaping of Art History in London: The Burlington Fine Arts Club (Routledge, 2017), Stacey J. Pierson reveals the fascinating history of one of the most refined and influential fine art clubs in London: The Burlington Fine Arts Club. Drawing on the club’s near-complete, yet understudied archives at the National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Stacey focuses on the club’s exhibition practices. In this way, the Burlington Fine Arts Club functioned as a social space to practice, probe and participate in a connoisseurial approach to the fine arts. They included not just Old Masters but also Persian, Chinese and Indian works of art too, thus demonstrating how the ‘global turn’ in art history came about much earlier than is generally understood.
This book is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in art market studies and the interconnectedness of the public and the private, the formation of private clubs and public taste and the network of agents who manoeuvre between them.
Ricarda Brosch is a museum assistant (trainee) at the Asian Art Museum Berlin (Museum fur Asiatische Kunst Berlin Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz), which is due to reopen as part of the Humboldt Forum in 2019. Her research focuses on Ming and Qing Chinese art & material culture, transcultural interchanges, especially with Timurid and Safavid Iran, as well as provenance research & digital humanities. You can find out more about her work by following her on Twitter @RicardaBeatrix or getting in touch via ricarda.brosch@gmail.com.
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