Collecting the Art of Light

Glass, Connoisseurship, and 19th-century Art Market

Organizers: Vitrocentre Romont, Université de Genève, Musée Ariana

Keynote Speaker: Virginia Raguin (Corpus Vitrearum USA)

An international conference dedicated to glass art, collectorship and the art market during the long 19th century will take place from 7 to 8 March 2025. The conference is jointly organized by the Vitrocentre Romont, the University of Geneva and the Musée Ariana. It will take place in conjunction with the exhibition “Post Tenebras Lux, les collections de vitraux du Musée Ariana” shown at the Musée Ariana from 15 November 2024 to 2nd November 2025.

The one-day conference will present the results obtained in the framework of the Corpus Vitrearum project “Les vitraux historiques des collections publiques de la Ville de Genève”, conducted by the Vitrocentre Romont in close collaboration with the Musée Ariana, which holds the majority of the approximately 380 stained glass windows studied. The core of the collection comes from the Swiss writer, art collector and patron Gustave Revilliod (1817–1890), who donated his collection to the Municipality of Geneva in 1890. The encyclopedic collection covers nearly nine centuries of the history and technique of European stained glass and testifies to the growing interest of collectors and connoisseurs in stained glass and glass art, which has led to the establishment of important private collections.

The planned conference aims to discuss Revilliod’s glass collection in a broader context and to focus on the increasingly important subject of 19th-century collectorship and art market with respect to glass art. Moreover, the results obtained at the 2010 conference of the Corpus Vitrearum International held at St. Petersburg, dedicated to stained glass collections and their history, shall be reevaluated, and extended to glass art in general by presenting current research in the field.

7–8 March 2025