Wallace Collection Appoints Christoph Vogtherr As New Director

Sir John Ritblat,Chairman of the Wallace Collection has announced the appointment of Dr Christoph Vogtherr as the next Director of the Collection upon the retirement of Dame Rosalind Savill DBE next October 2011.

'Having run a fully international competition, it is very satisfying to find the right balance of scholarship and leadership from within the Wallace Collection itself, and that the appointment of Dr Vogtherr has the wholehearted endorsement of the Board of Trustees' says Sir John Ritblat, Chairman of the Trustees. 

Dr Christoph Martin Vogtherr is a specialist scholar/curator in eighteenth-century French painting.  He was born in 1965 and studied Art History, Medieval History and Classical Archaeology at Berlin (Freie Universität), Heidelberg and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He received his Ph.D. from the Freie Universität in 1996 with a thesis on The Early History of the Berlin State Museums (published in 1997). After two years as a Research Assistant at the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Fine Arts), Berlin, he became Curator of French and Italian Paintings at the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten (Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens) in Potsdam and Berlin in 1997. He curated exhibitions on Chardin, Pater and on the patronage of the Prussian Royal house and initiated an interdisciplinary research project on French paintings in the collection of Frederick II sponsored by the Getty Foundation. His catalogue raisonné of the paintings by Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste Pater and Nicolas Lancret in Berlin and Potsdam appeared in December 2010. Since 2007 he has been Curator of Pictures pre-1800 at the Wallace Collection, from 2008-10 he was Acting Head of Collections, and is the curator of two exhibitions on Watteau which will open at the Wallace Collection in March 2011.  He will take up his appointment on 24 October 2011.The Wallace collection is known for their superb collection of 18th century furniture and porcelain,set in rooms  and hung with old masters like, Titian, Velázquez, and Franz Hals. They have also mounted two successful contemporary art exhibitions in the last 10 years.Their 2004 exhibition by Lucian Freud was critically acclaimed while last years Damien Hirst's 'No Love Lost' a show of still life and skull paintings, failed to engage either the press or the public.