A Passion for Porcelain: A Symposium in Honour of Meredith Chilton

Join us for an international symposium celebrating the career and scholarship of Meredith Chilton, former Chief Curator at the Gardiner Museum.

Friday September 21, 9 am – 7 pm
Saturday September 22: 9:30 am – 5 pm

From ice cream to elephants, this two-day event will feature a broad range of talks by leading scholars on porcelain from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Registration includes two days of lectures, special collection tours (registration on site), refreshments throughout the day (lunch is not provided), and a reception on September 21.

Conference Program

Click here to download the full conference program.

Friday, September 21

9:00 – 9:45 am
Registration and light breakfast

9:45 – 10:00 am
Welcome Remarks

10:00 – 10:45 am
Flights of Imagination: Claudius Innocentius du Paquier and the Tastes of his Patrons
Dr. Claudia Lehner-Jobst, Independent Art Historian and Curator, Vienna

10:45 – 11:30 am
Porcelaine à la mode: The Eighteenth-Century Collections of the Baden Princesses
Sebastian Kuhn, Bonhams, London

10:30 – 11:45 am
Tea and coffee break

11:45 am – 12:30 pm
Always Up to Date: Porcelain at the Munich Court
Dr. Katharina Hantschmann, Senior Curator for Ceramics, Bayerisches National Museum, Munich

12:30 – 2:00 pm
Break and collection tours (registration on site)

2:00 – 2:45 pm
Precious Beggars: Ivory and Porcelain Sculpture at the Dresden Court
Dr. Vanessa Sigalas, Independent Scholar, Hartford

2:45 – 3:30 pm
Frozen Treats: The Development of the Ice-Cream Cooler
Ivan Day, Food Historian, Museums and Country House Consultant, Cumbria

3:30 – 3:45 pm
Tea and coffee break

3:45 – 4:30 pm
The Elephant in the Boudoir: Modelling the Exotic in Eighteenth-Century France
Dr. Karine Tsoumis, Curator, Gardiner Museum

5:30 – 7:00 pm
Reception
With a special presentation by Meredith Chilton on the upcoming Gardiner exhibition Dining with Casanova: The Love Affair with Food in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Opens October 2019)

Saturday, September 22

9:30 – 10:00 am
Light breakfast

10:00 – 10:45 am
A Most Formidable Assembly: The Katz Collection of English Porcelain at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Thomas Michie, Russell B. and Andrée Beauchamp Stearns Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

10:45 – 11:30 am
A Refined Taste: Porcelain Collecting in Canada
Dr. Peter Kaellgren, Curator Emeritus, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

11:30 – 11:45 am
Tea and coffee break

11:45 am – 12:30 pm
Gifts Worthy of the Shogun: Nabeshima Porcelain in the Macdonald Collection
Daniel Chen, Adjunct Curator, Gardiner Museum, Toronto

12:30 – 2:00 pm
Break and collection tours (registration on site)

2:00 – 2:45 pm
Honoring the Past: Sèvres and Bernard Palissy
Jeffrey Munger, Former Curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

2:45 – 3:30 pm
Taxile Doat: From Sèvres to Saint Louis and Back
Linda Roth, Senior Curator and Charles C. and Eleanor Lamont Cunningham Curator of European Decorative Arts, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford

3:30 – 3:45 pm
Tea and coffee break

3:45 – 4:30 pm
The Ingenuity of Sèvres: Porcelain Made for Luxury Objects and Interior Furnishings
Dame Rosalind Savill DBE, FBA, FSA, Former Director of the Wallace Collection, London

4:30 – 5:00 pm
Closing remarks by Meredith Chilton

Header image: Wall Vase (Detail), Claudius Innocentius du Paquier Factory, Austria, Vienna, Vienna, c.1730, Gift of George and Helen Gardiner, G83.1.1220.1-2