Abstracts from the Speakers’ Corner held on Tuesday 18 June at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. If you wish to contact one of the speakers, please find their contact information by clicking on their names.

Stories Old and New: Collector Histories and Reinstalling European Art at the BMA

Lara Yeager Crasselt, Curator of European Painting and Sculpture and Department Head, Baltimore Museum of Art,

The Baltimore Museum of Art is currently planning the reinstallation of its permanent collection of early modern European art (1400-1800), scheduled to open in late 2026. The reinstallation project will mark the first major change in the Jacobs Wing in more than twenty years, presenting opportunities for new narratives in the galleries, both those that reflect changes in the field and scholarship, as well as new perspectives on the BMA’s history and mission as a civic art museum. The Jacobs galleries are named after one of the museum’s founding donors, Mary Frick Jacobs, whose collection, alongside the collector Jacob Epstein, constitute the core of the European collection, including many of the museum’s most important works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, and Anthony van Dyck. 

Historically, Mary Frick Jacobs and Jacob Epstein have been featured in the BMA’s galleries either through their representation in portraits or descriptive text panels. These displays have been celebratory in nature, though often static, speaking little to the significance of these Baltimore collectors in the context of the museum and American collecting more broadly. The institutional mission to present local and global stories, alongside calls to be more self-critical of our collecting histories, bring various challenges for a modern-day reinstallation. Yet seeking the ‘new’ also prompts a reconsideration of the ‘old’: how can both be brought together to allow for more robust and inclusive storytelling? Yeager Crasselt is interested in what role institutional histories should play in galleries of European art and if audiences care about this aspect of collection history. She is wondering what the curator’s responsibility in sharing these stories is. 

Christina of Sweden and her Art Collection Seen from a Queer Perspective

Marleen Ram, Curator of Art Collections, Teylers Museum, Haarlem

In 2027, Christina of Sweden is the subject of an exhibition at Teylers Museum, which holds a large part of her collection of drawings, including works by Michelangelo, Rafael and Goltzius. It focuses on how art played a major role in her self-presentation as (queer) queen without a country, with a special focus on her gender fluidity and sexuality.

The idea is to partially reconstruct the Palazzo Riario in Rome, which she had mostly decorated with paintings from the Italian Renaissance. She had a clear taste for mythological scenes about love, passion and beauty, mostly female, and especially a lot of nudity. Did these paintings have a sensual meaning to Christina? Did she take on a ‘male’ perspective? Did she view and desire ‘like a man’ or even ‘as a man’?

Also on display will be a selection of her many portraits, including the famous portraits by David Beck and Justus van Egmont, both in Stockholm, but also later portrait prints mostly by Dutch and Flemish printmakers. They show the many faces of Christina, both feminine and masculine. Ram is interested in hearing from anyone who has experience in addressing themes like gender fluidity, queerness and sexuality in the context of Old Masters.

Master I.S.

Tomi Moisio, Curator, Serlachius Museum Gösta, Mänttä, and Janneke van Asperen, Curator of Old Masters, Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden

Very little is known about the artist commonly referred to as ‘Monogrammist I.S.’. The consensus is that he was active between 1633 and 1659. It is likely that he worked in Leiden in the Netherlands in the 1630s, as suggested by the many distinctive features that his paintings have in common with the early work of Rembrandt and Jan Lievens. However, many details in clothing and interiors in the paintings refer to Scandinavia and/or Eastern Europe, so one of the open questions is if the artist traveled to and worked in these regions.

Serlachius Museums in Mänttä and Museum de Lakenhal in Leiden have a joint research and exhibition project, which aims at gaining more information about this mysterious Master and his oeuvre. Only around 20-30 paintings have been attributed to this enigmatic artist. The whereabouts of many paintings are unknown, since there are several works in private collections. There must also be a lot works that are misattributed to some other artist, because so little is known about the origins of the Master I.S. One of the main goals of Moisio and Van Asperens’ research project is to learn more about Master I.S. and hopefully locate and/or attribute more works to him. Therefore, they are looking for information on the whereabouts of some of the paintings attributed to Master I.S. in private (or public) collections.

Taming the Wild West: Are Formalized Attribution Expert Consensus Meetings a Way Forward?

Charlotte Rulkens, Research Associate, Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam

On 16 January 2024, the Dutch NRC newspaper article titled ‘Wild west scenes in Rembrandt land: who determines what a Rembrandt is?’ painted a picture of the current state of affairs of Rembrandt attributions. It explained how different fields of force can be at play in attributions, and that it often remains unclear how an attribution is substantiated exactly. At the time when this article was published, the research group Rulkens is part of, was in the midst of exploring opportunities for improvement as part of the Replication a Rembrandt Study project. Might it be time to critically question how we go about attributions these days and can we improve on common practices by adopting formal consensus methods, used in other fields of research?

A formalized attribution expert consensus method was introduced, including a pre-set protocol, consensus threshold, certainty scales and systemized argument analysis. The aim for this setup was to prevent bias in attributions and make the related expert meetings as transparent and replicable as possible, in line with recent developments in Open Science. In her presentation, Rulkens presented the newly developed methodology for attributions. She would like to hear ideas and advice from her peers, but would also like to inquire whether they see opportunities for applying this in a museum context.

How to Involve the Public in Making Old Collections Attractive Again

Wout De Vuyst, Curator, STAM – Ghent City Museum

The former archaeological museum of Ghent was transformed into a new city museum, the STAM. This resulted in a complete makeover of the museum display. The often overloaded thematic presentation made way for a chronological trail with a focus on the history of the city. As a result a large part of the collection is no longer exhibited. Part of it was given in long term loan to other institutions and the rest moved to a storage facility. Every now and then, objects are taken out of storage for temporary exhibitions.

An exhibition in 2026 will bring this old collection back to life. One of the challenges is to create an attractive presentation for a broad audience. This heterogeneous collection contains a lot of objects that are not immediately appealing to a modern audience. An idea is to ask members of the public to participate in the preparation of this exhibition. The museum does not want this to be just a communication strategy or an educational activity. The museum’s goal is to integrate this in the broader museum policy and to create a display that has links to the permanent and other temporary exhibitions. They would like to create a team of professional museum curators and members of the public in such a way that it becomes an enriching experience for both parties. Therefore, Devuyst is interested in hearing if other museums have had similar projects and how their curators experienced this cooperation.

Amsterdam Group Portraits on the Move

Norbert Middelkoop, Senior Curator of Paintings, Prints and Drawings, Amsterdam Museum

From 2010 to 2011, a selection of the Amsterdam Museum’s seventeenth-century group portraits were on show in Vienna and Munich, followed by a tour of St Petersburg and Moscow in 2013. Now that the Amsterdam Museum will be (largely) closed for renovation until at least 2028, with most of the collection in storage, there is a rare possibility to let these large paintings travel once again, including those that would normally never leave Amsterdam.

Apart from focusing on their obvious artistic qualities (Rembrandt, Bol, Flinck, Van der Helst, etc.), an exhibition of group portraits also provides the opportunity to showcase Dutch civic society in the seventeenth century – and relate it to topical issues. The Amsterdam Museum is looking for two or three partners to realize a traveling exhibition before 2028, so it wonders which fellow institutions might want to organize, together with the Amsterdam Museum, a show of spectacular artworks that are hardly represented in museums outside the Netherlands.