NOTABLE CONNOISSEUR'S MUSEUMS | European and American Parallels to The Johnston Collection with William Johnston

What traits do connoisseur’s collections share? What pleasures do house museums (as distinct from major museums and English country houses) offer that larger institutions cannot? What motivates a collector to convert a house into a museum? This lecture will explore peculiarities of a dozen house-collections (assembled by aesthetes between 1850 and 1930) in the north-eastern United States, England, France, Belgium, and Italy. It will emphasize similarities to The Johnston Collection.

WILLIAM M JOHNSTON grew up near the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. As a Professor of History at the University of Massachusettts, he has written four books on the cultural history of Austria and another on art connoisseurs in Italy (In Search of Italy 1987). Since 2000 he has lived in Melbourne, where he lectures frequently on Dante.