New Collecting Narratives: Birmingham Museums' Italian Renaissance and Baroque Decorative Arts Collections

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Birmingham's Italian Renaissance and Baroque decorative art collection, comprising ceramics, glass, textiles, furniture and metalwork, was among the first to be acquired for the city and was exhibited in a dedicated display when Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (BMAG) opened in 1885. Dating from the 15th-17th centuries, this material was acquired largely either by the BMAG's first director, Whitworth Wallis, during two research trips to Italy, or from the South Kensington Museum's first curator, Charles Robinson. These objects were apparently purchased from Italy's most important 19th-century dealers of Renaissance art including Stefano Bardini and Giuseppe Salvadori, who sold to major institutions across the world. Initial research suggests that material was acquired not only from Florence but from Rome, Milan, Venice, etc.Despite its obvious potential, this collection has not been studied in any depth since its purchase and its significance is little explored. In contrast, acquisitions made in the mid-20th century of Italian Baroque painting and sculpture were the focus of a project to research and redisplay the Baroque galleries at BMAG in partnership with the National Gallery through a curatorial traineeship funded by the Art Fund and the Vivmar Foundation. As BMAG prepares for a major refurbishment and redisplay, it is crucial that the related holdings of decorative art are researched in greater depth, and their significance and connections to other collections fully revealed. The project is therefore timely and original with results feeding directly into planned new displays. The collaborative arrangement will allow the PhD student to benefit from access to curators who have detailed knowledge of individual objects and of the collection itself, as well as from academic supervision by experts in Italian art (including archival research) and in 19th-century display histories and Anglo-Italian artistic relations.