Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte and the shaping of the modern world’: The value of the exhibition to the research network

Lecture – Joanna Marschner

17 May 2017
6:00 – 8:00 pm
Lecture Room, Paul Mellon Centre

‘Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte and the shaping of the modern world’ is an exhibition based in an academic partnership between a university museum, the Yale Center for British Art, and a heritage organisation, Historic Royal Palaces. It explores, for the first time, the instrumental roles of the Hanoverian princesses, Caroline of Ansbach (1683-1737), Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719-1772), and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744-1818) - all of whom married into the British royal family - and how they shaped British society and culture during a time of significant political and social transformation. Court dress, jewels, musical manuscripts, botanical and anatomical illustrations, architectural drawings and garden designs, royal children’s art work, as well as the princesses’ own scientific instruments have been drawn together to bring to light the princesses’ promotion of the arts, sciences, trade and industry, and underline their dedication to education and charity, which supported intellectual exchange and social transformation which continues to have significance today. Research and discussion to inform the compiling of the content of the exhibition, and which gives powerful focus to the display, intellectually and experientially, was garnered and honed in academic communities, intellectual societies, museums and galleries, each making important and distinctive contribution. This seminar will explore the value of interdisciplinary working, across a rich variety of intellectual communities to make the most effective exhibition.

About the speaker

Dr Joanna Marschner studied at London and Manchester universities, and is now Senior Curator at Historic Royal Palaces. Based at Kensington Palace, she has been responsible for many research, exhibition, publication and presentation projects, which have touched on dress history, architectural history, art history and the history of the decorative arts as well as museology, and the matter of presenting such subjects to a museum going, as well as academic audience, in a powerful and compelling way, using buildings and collections. Her PhD was published in 2014 by Yale University Press as ‘Queen Caroline: Cultural Politics at the Early Eighteenth Century Court’. Dr Marschner is curator of ‘Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte and the shaping of the modern world’, the exhibition recently opened at the Yale Center for British Art, which transfers to London in June, 2017. She is editor of the accompanying publication published by Yale University Press.