The Wedgwood Collection of the British Museum, Past, Present and Future
Speaker: Aileen Dawson
Ms. Dawson (M.A. Oxford University) is a curator in the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities at the British Museum. She has worked for the National Trust at Waddesdon Manor and at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and has been a Getty Scholar. Amongst her numerous publications are French Porcelain, A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection (1994) and Masterpieces of Wedgwood (1984, revised edition 1995). Her catalog of the Portrait Sculpture in the British Museum c. 1675-1975 will be published in November/December 1999. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
In her lecture Aileen Dawson will illustrate and discuss pieces in the British Museum collections which have a special connection with the Museum, such as the well -known Pegasus Base, presented by Josiah Wedgwood I himself in 1786 and the Portland Vase, based on a classical cameo-glass vase in the British Museum. She will look at some of the classical connections and cast a glance at the fashions of the day reflected in Wedgwood's eighteenth-century productions.
The lecture will not be confined to pieces made in the eighteenth century, but will show how both nineteenth- and twentieth-century Wedgwood has found a place in the oldest public collection of Wedgwood in the world. The talk will conclude with ideas on how the collection may continue to grow.
Place: The Lighthouse, 111 East 59th Street, between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue, New York, NY
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 1999
Time: 8:00 PM Lecture