Smartphones, jeans, pens, coffee mugs; when future generations find the things that make up our contemporary living they’ll imagine stories of the utility and meanings they might have had.
That is the premise of a collector’s fascination with objects and the historic curiosity that led Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839-1898), along with his father, Baron Anselm von Rothschild (1803-1874), to put together the Waddesdon Bequest.
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The Rothschild Renaissance exhibition at the British Museum displays the collection put together by these two generations of bankers.
The bequest was originally held at Waddesdon Manor, their country house in Buckinghamshire. Following Baron Ferdinand’s death in 1898, it was donated to the British Museum as part of its permanent collection. From now on, however, it will be displayed in a new space: a former reading room redesigned by the architects of Stanton Williams, aiming to evoke the same Kunstkammer (cabinets of wonders of the Renaissance era) that in the 19th century inspired Baron Ferdinand to create his own…. READ MORE
