Flemish Tapestry in European and American Collections

Flemish Tapestry in European and American Collections
Author: Koenraad Brosens
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2003
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Professor Dr Guy Delmarcel was Curator of Textiles at the Brussels Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis (1975-1990) and Professor of History of Art at the Catholic University of Leuven (1981-2002). He passionately devoted his career to the study of Flemish tapestry. His intensive research on the 'Mobile Frescoes of the North' resulted in numerous articles, books, lectures, and exhibitions, thereby unlocking tapestry to both scholars and the general public. Guy Delmarcel has now been given emeritus status. The Department of Archaeology, History of Art and Musicology decided to honour its former chairman by offering him a Festschrift entirely dedicated to his beloved field of research. Fourteen renowned tapestry scholars from all over the world willingly accepted the invitation to celebrate their esteemed colleague. Throughout the centuries Flemish tapestry has eagerly been collected. In the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times the European elite spent fortunes on these lavish works of art. A number of essays compiled in the present volume focus on the patronage and collections of European kings and noblemen. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries European and American museums became important collectors of Flemish tapestry, as is demonstrated by some museological studies presented in Studies in Honour of Guy Delmarcel. This penetration by Flemish tapestry of the public realm has obviously necessitated iconographic and stylistic studies. A number of new analyses are gathered in the Festschrift.

Collecting and Displaying China's “Summer Palace” in the West

Collecting and Displaying China's “Summer Palace” in the West
Author: Louise Tythacott
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2017-10-25
Genre: Art
ISBN: 135162489X

In October 1860, at the culmination of the Second Opium War, British and French troops looted and destroyed one of the most important palace complexes in imperial China—the Yuanmingyuan. Known in the West as the "Summer Palace," this site consisted of thousands of buildings housing a vast art collection. It is estimated that over a million objects may have been taken from the palaces in the Yuanmingyuan—and many of these are now scattered around the world, in private collections and public museums. With contributions from leading specialists, this is the first book to focus on the collecting and display of "Summer Palace" material over the past 150 years in museums in Britain and France. It examines the way museums placed their own cultural, political and aesthetic concerns upon Yuanmingyuan material, and how displays—especially those at the Royal Engineers Museum in Kent, the National Museum of Scotland and the Musée Chinois at the Château of Fontainebleau—tell us more about European representations and images of China, than they do about the Yuanmingyuan itself.