Old Masters, New Perspectives
Esmée Quodbach, Assistant Director and Editor-in-Chief Center for the History of Collecting, The Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library, New York

The video of Esmée Quodbach’s lecture is not publicly available. Please contact us if you would like to see the video of her lecture privately.

Abstract

This lecture examines some of the recent developments on the international art market and in the museum world. It is often said that artistic tastes have changed over the past few decades: present-day collectors strongly prefer modern and contemporary art and are much less interested in the Old Masters. The same is often said about the tastes of museum audiences, especially about the younger generations. But do these claims hold true under closer scrutiny? And if so, what impact do they have on our field? Are the developments that we see on the market and in museums cyclical, or do they perhaps indicate more profound changes?

About Esmée Quodbach

Esmée Quodbach studied art history at Utrecht University. She is the Assistant Director of the Center for the History of Collecting at The Frick Collection, New York. Prior to coming to the Frick, in 2007, Quodbach held research positions at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Among her many publications on Old Master collecting is a history of the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of Dutch paintings (2007). She also served as the editor of a volume of essays on America’s taste for Dutch painting, Holland’s Golden Age in America: Collecting the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals (2014). A companion volume on the American collecting history of Flemish painting, also edited by Esmée Quodbach, will be published next year.

Esmée Quodbach has been a member of CODART since 2007