Interview with Christina Anderson — Research Fellow

Christina Anderson (Research Fellow, November-December 2016) is the Research Fellow in the Study of Collecting at the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. She specializes in the history of the decorative and fine arts, collecting, trade, and travel, with a particular emphasis on the intersection of art, commerce, and values in the early modern period. Her first book on the Flemish merchant Daniel Nijs and his brokering of the sale of the Gonzaga art collection to Charles I of England in 1627, The Flemish Merchant of Venice (Yale, 2015), was named one of Christie’s eleven best art books of 2015. A prolific editor of scholarly books, she is responsible for no less than thirteen volumes that will be published between 2016 and 2019 on early modern merchants as collectors, on the cultural history of furniture, and on the cultural history of collecting. She holds a doctorate in art history from Oxford and has received a number of prestigious awards, most recently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. Before taking up her position at the Ashmolean, she founded an art and antiques research consultancy in London. At Bard Graduate Center, Anderson is working on her second book on the Flemish merchant diaspora 1450–1650, which explores the ways in which these merchants acted as cultural diffusers and wielded cultural influence through their patronage and collecting practices.

Tell us a bit about your background, and how you became interested in your field.

I began making craft objects when I was a small child and was always occupied with a project of one kind or another. In secondary school and as an undergraduate at university, though, I pursued my interests in math and science. Art and science are actually much more closely linked than many people realize. I switched to history during my sophomore year of university, after having worked in a biology lab for a year and seeing what working in the sciences was really like. This choice was linked to my experiences as an exchange student when I was sixteen: history offered a way of connecting to different cultures and of traveling intellectually. Not until I had a job doing research at Sotheby’s did I discover that there was an entire academic field devoted to the study of art objects/the decorative arts, bringing me full circle. Although I have worked a great deal on the nineteenth century, I also play an instrument, the carillon, that developed in the Low Countries in the late medieval period. Gaining a degree in carillon performance in Belgium meant I had to learn about the cultural background of this instrument as well. I now work on Flemish merchants in the early modern period which allows me to bring together all of these interests. It has also brought me into the field of collecting, which is still relatively young and a field in which much more theoretical work needs to be done, for example, on the ideas behind and expressed by a collection. I believe merchants were important innovators as collectors during the early modern period not only in Europe but in other parts of the world as well, hence my focus on the intersection of art, commerce, and values.

What attracted you to the Bard Graduate Center fellowship?

I had known about Bard Graduate Center for a long time because of my work in furniture history and the exhibitions on William Beckford, James ‘Athenian’ Stuart, Thomas Hope, and William Kent. I really admire BGC’s focus on ‘things’ and had always hoped there would be an opportunity to work here. I have been very lucky to have had some of the faculty, particularly Deborah Krohn, Jeffrey Collins, Elizabeth Simpson, and Andrew Morrall, as collaborators on conference and publishing projects. Having become familiar with the quality of their work, Bard Graduate Center seemed like it would provide a wonderfully stimulating environment, which it has.

What is the focus and result of your research here?

I am in the early stages of realizing an exhibition on Flemish merchant collecting in Renaissance Venice. Being here has provided the resources and mental space to be able to crystalize the exhibition concept. I have also been meeting with potential organizers and, fingers crossed, will have a New York venue for the exhibition by the time I return to London. In addition, I have been finishing the editing of a book series coming out with Bloomsbury Academic in 2018 titled A Cultural History of Furniture, to which some BGC faulty are contributing.

What are your goals after the fellowship ends?

My first goal is to put myself into purdah and finish my second book on the Flemish merchant diaspora. In the long term, however, I would like to do more work on the gem trade (which is a central feature of my second book) and on Flemish ‘cosmopolitanism’ as it developed from the medieval period through the late seventeenth century, a central feature of which was an appreciation for the mixture of commerce and culture. I am in the process of submitting a grant application for the latter. It would also be wonderful to be able to work together with Bard Graduate Center on future projects.

What would be your advice to young researchers/students deciding a career path for themselves, whether in academia or in the museum world?

I would give three pieces of advice:1. Pick up as many skills as you can, whether they be languages, IT skills, palaeography or something else. Academia and the museum world are incredibly competitive, so having a broad set of skills both gives you more options and makes you a more attractive job candidate.2. Experiment and open yourself to new ideas; take some courses that might not be directly related to your field. Both academia and the museum world thrive on new ideas and the more open-minded you are, the more likely you will be able either to capitalize on a concept that is becoming ‘popular’ or to come up with the next hot new approach/method/paradigm yourself.3. Be true to yourself: don’t choose a career path just because it seems like a good bet for finding a job. You will be most successful doing something that touches a part of yourself.