Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Salvaging the Past: Georges Hoentschel and French Decorative Arts from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on view at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery from April 4 through August 11, 2013, this international symposium brings together scholars and conservators to examine the Hoentschel collection in the context of the history of collecting in France and America. In April 1906, the celebrated Parisian decorator Georges Hoentschel (1855-1915) sold his French eighteenth-century panelling, seat furniture, painted overdoors, assorted objects, and medieval art to the powerful New York financier and collector J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913). Morgan, then president of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, presented the eighteenth-century objects immediately to the Museum but initially only offered to lend the earlier artworks. These were later donated by his son Jack Morgan in 1916. Hoentschel was also involved in the contemporary art world of his day, designing an Art Nouveau pavilion for the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1900, as well as intriguing stoneware vessels. The Hoentschel material constitutes one of the most significant collections from the early period of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center presents an unprecedented opportunity to explore its important role in disseminating the taste for eighteenth-century and Medieval French art in the United States.

April 18, 6–8 pm

Peter N. Miller
Dean and Professor, Bard Graduate Center
Welcome

KEYNOTE LECTURE
Flaminia Gennari-Santori
Consulting Curator, Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Miami, Florida
“There Was Money in the Air”: John Pierpont Morgan and the European Collecting Tradition

Ulrich Leben
Bard Graduate Center
Moderator

April 19, 9:30 am–5 pm

Jeffrey L. Collins
Professor and Chair of Academic Programs, Bard Graduate Center
Welcome

MORNING SESSION
Moderator: Deborah Krohn, Bard Graduate Center

Thomas Stammers
Lecturer in the Cultural History of Modern Europe, University of Durham
Reinventing the Old Regime: Collectors and Scavengers in Nineteenth-Century Paris

Anne Forray-Carlier
Chief Curator, Department of 17th and 18th Centuries, Musée des Arts Décoratifs
Émile Peyre: The Unknown Collector

Evelyne Possémé
Chief Curator, Department of Art Nouveau, Art Déco, and Jewelry, Musée des Arts Décoratifs
Hoentschel’s Pavilion for the Exposition Universelle of 1900, Then and Now

Charlotte Vignon
Associate Curator of Decorative Arts, The Frick Collection
French Style in Early Twentieth-Century America: The Roles of Art Dealers and Interior Decorators

Vincent Bouvet
Head of the Publication Department, École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris
Hoentschel and his Contemporaries: Parisian Interior Design Firms (1880-1920)

Christina Hagelskamp, Mecka Baumeister, Nancy Britton, Beth Edelstein, Pascale Patris
Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Conservator’s Perspective: Case Studies from the Furniture and Furnishings in the Hoentschel Collection