Scholarship in trust

This month's issue is APOLLO'S latest collaboration with the National Trust. In the following pages, we near important new research about its holdings, together with of recent origins of its recent acquisitions. Nobody could doubt that the National Trust is single of the greatest ornaments of British life, however this issue demonstrates something else: its extraordinary internationalism. Here are articles upon Indian textiles; Italian paintings; a Haggadah illuminated by the agency of a German artist in what is now the Czech Republic; and a spectacular bed made in Paris. The account of of recent origin acquisitions ranges from an Italian renaissance devotional painting to a rococo French portrait, and the Trust is about to launch a campaign to assured a huqqa made in Lucknow for Clive of India (see page 77)

Notably, none of these bring under rules can seriously attract opprobrium from historians of colonialism. level the huqqa is an fact that pays tribute to native crafts, and may have been commissioned by dint of Clive to raise his standing in the organ of visions of Indian princes. Instead, this international aspect of the Trust's holdings reveals the curiosity and discrimination--and, of course, acquisitiveness--with which English men and women have studied and explored the world. These thing perceiveds represent the values not of imperialism on the other hand of scholarship and connoisseurship, qualities that the National Trust exemplifies.

It has upheld those values simply by dint of executing so well its basic function to acquire and save landscape and architecture of beauty and historic importance. In in like manner far as its country houses are concerned--the setting for virtually all its significant art--only three or with equal reason years ago they appeared largely to be frozen with the Trust's acquisitive energies directed simply to retrieving existences that had left them in the past. It strike one as beinged unlikely that further major houses would be acquired--none had tend hitherward to the Trust since Chastleton, Oxfordshire, in 1991 That perception has now changed, thanks to the acquisitions in 2002 (both by the agency of purchase, not gift) of Tyntesfield, somersault and William Morris's Red House, Bexleyheath. This had a remarkably vitalising impact upon public perceptions of the Trust, as its curators were widely seen to be campaigning and forcefully articulate about their mission.

That change has been particularly welcome, as the National Trust is for a like reason often criticised for presiding above a snobbish, 'elitist' heritage agriculture In part that has arisen without of misunderstanding about its changing part as a custodian of art and architecture. When it first began to acquire geographical division houses in a systematic way, in the late 1930 it did indeed diocese its role as preserving their holders in them, to maintain a way of life that was below threat. Over seventy years later that view of its aims is no longer tenable. The rise of standards of conservation and curatorship has l to the National Trust having to treat its houses as museums, however a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of earlier generations of its staff hated the word. Indeed, 149 of its properties are now registered museums.

completely through the world, the National Trust is recognised as setting a gold standard in the display and conservation of historic houses and their collections. If a criticism is to be made, it is that scholarship has not figured abundant in the Trust's statements of its aims, although it is (or ought to be) fundamental to its drifts At Waddesdon Manor, alone of the Trust's houses, there is a lively programme of publications, prelections and seminars, but there Lord Rothschild, not the National Trust, is in charge. Nobody doubts that the Trust can when required publish its collections to the highest standards--look, for example, at the catalogue of its centenary exhibition of paintings at the National Gallery, London, in 1995 on the contrary there is no systematic programme of adult academic education or of scholarly publishing.

In part that may be because the form of like publishing needs further debate. The National Trust has more [i]or[/i] less coherent collections--such as the silver at Dunham Massey, the textiles at Hardwick, or the architectural drawings at Wimpole--that be worthy of traditional museum-type catalogues (and these three are now being given them). on the other hand arguably there ought to be catalogues of houses--publications that move beyond the existing guidebooks to draw together research upon architecture and gardens as well as works of art, to obey the ever-growing recognition that these houses are above all historic ensembles

In pioneering a novel sort of scholarly publication the National Trust could lead the world. on the other hand it will not do for a like reason until it budgets adequately for research and publication, as at not absent it does not. At the second its resources are stretched, like all organisations which rely upon investment income. Yet if it were to establish as a separate charitable capital a Foundation for Scholarship then it present the appearances highly likely that it would win enthusiastic support--financial as well as academic--from that wide, international community whose interests and values are for a like reason well represented in this issue of APOLLO.

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