FEATURE
BMT conservator Ben cleaning a monstrance designed by John Francis Bentley and attributed to Hart & Son, London (c.1863) ‘Victorian Radicals’ at Seattle Museum of Art
Visitors to ‘Victorian Radicals’ at Vero Beach Museum of Art, Florida
Victorian Radicals: Birmingham´s Pre-Raphaelites on tour In summer 2018, many of the city’s most famous paintings, drawings and decorative art objects went on tour to the United States with the touring exhibition ‘Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement’. Now, after two and a half years, seven venues, tens of thousands of visitors, and one international award, the works of art have made their way back to the UK. Organised in partnership with the American Federation of Arts
between artists and makers working across a wide range of media,
(AFA), ‘Victorian Radicals’ was the largest and most complex touring
and to draw out the many interconnections between fine and
exhibition ever staged from Birmingham’s collection. It showcased
decorative art objects. Highlights included being able to display
the city’s outstanding holdings of Victorian and Edwardian fine and
paintings such as Arthur Hughes’s ‘The Long Engagement’ and
decorative art, and celebrated Birmingham’s historic importance
Henry Wallis’s ‘Chatterton’ alongside vibrant day dresses in purple
as a centre for the Arts and Crafts. The exhibition explored three
and green, showing the use of new synthetic dyes in contemporary
generations of radical British artists working between 1840 and
fashion and drawing parallels with the jewel-like colours of Pre-
1910: the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their circle; the second
Raphaelite art.
wave of Pre-Raphaelite artists who gathered around Rossetti from the late 1850s, including William Morris and Birmingham-born Edward Burne-Jones; and a third generation of designers and makers associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, working from the turn of the century to just before the First World War.
The exhibition was made possible by the skills and dedication of a large team of staff from across Birmingham Museums over four years of preparation. All the objects underwent conservation assessment and over a hundred were cleaned and treated by BMT conservators, while volunteers from local group the Arts Society
‘Victorian Radicals’ contained over 200 objects (with over 140
Arden beautifully mounted six dresses on mannequins for the
exhibited at each venue) spanning the full range of fine and
tour. BMT also funded the external conservation of Burne-Jones’s
decorative art production during the period 1840-1910, including
early stained-glass design ‘The Annunciation’ (1859), revealing
paintings, drawings, printed books, ceramics, stained glass,
bright colours and detail beneath the decades-old layers of dirt
jewellery, metalwork, medals and textiles. This rich variety of
and discoloured varnish. At the same time, BMT’s partnership
material allowed the exhibition’s curators – Martin Ellis (whom
with the AFA allowed us to mount an international exhibition of
many Friends will remember as Curator of Applied Art at BMAG
a scale and ambition that would not have been possible with our
for many years, and later head of the curatorial team), Professor
own resources alone. The AFA brought vital funding, staff, and
Tim Barringer of Yale University, and me – to explore relationships
its own network of US museum partners to the project, as well as
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ARTEFACTS
SUMMER 2022 • Issue 69
