Collecting and Material Culture

Led by Silvia Davoli and Tom Stammers

Jewish country houses embodied a certain vision of the world and the place of Jews within it; this vision was expressed through architecture, through interiors and especially through art collections, assembled by Jewish and non-Jewish intermediaries. Differing considerably in scale and style, all these houses articulated notions of civilisation, cultural identity and nationhood through visual and material culture. 

In this research strand we explored what these houses revealed about pan-European networks of collectors, antiques dealers and taste-makers. What, if anything, was distinctive about Jewish forms of collecting as expressed in the country house? Which periods and styles did Jewish patrons favour, and in which areas did they innovate? What does the formation of country house collections reveal about how Jews conceived of their relationship to national communities, fabled pasts and the wider history of art?

Starting from these questions, we explored the relationship between Jews and collections in two key areas. In an edited collection with Bloomsbury, we analyse the networks of Jewish art dealers across Europe in the period c.1860-1930. We reflect on how the profession was a motor for social mobility in this period, how it led to the formation of new expertise, and how it gave Jews a visible and contentious place within the cultural sphere. In a second edited volume, with Harvey Miller (Brepols), the different chapters reflect on what different forms of collecting and cultural philanthropy across Europe reveal about Jews’ integration into nation-states, as well as their openness to transnational currents.

We continue to be very interested in exploring Jewish histories and heritage within the museum sector more broadly (as seen through collaborations with the National Gallery and the V&A Museum). In a new research theme we will investigate Jewish engagements with antiquity and antiquities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bringing together the history of scholarship and the formation of academic disciplines with practices of excavation, collecting and institution-building in a time of intense geopolitical competition.