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Recently, considerable attention has been devoted to the rise of private art museums in the field of museum and cultural studies. One question which has figured prominently is if these museums are able to stand the test of time. Systematic empirical studies of this issue are so far scarce. On the basis of a new database of private museum closures worldwide, this paper explores why private museums close. By studying such closures, this article aims to advance our understanding of private museum sustainability and longevity. On the basis of statistical data and qualitative content analysis, we also examine what happens to the displayed art collections after such institutions close. Our main findings are that private museum closures are multifaceted, complex events frequently involving financial issues. Moreover, we conclude that because of their funding models and reliance on a sole founder, they are inherently fragile organizations. Indeed, we find that the median number of years private museums have been open before closing is no more than 10. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The failure to organize the defense of the Habsburg fortress of Breissach in Bavaria against the French troops, in 1703, abruptly ends the brilliant military career of the genius engineer-general, Luigi Fedinando Marsigli. If on a personal level the dishonor to which he was subjected for the rest of his life brought him a lot of sadness, for us today we can consider this fact a „happy event”. It is practically the moment when, having blocked his chance to continue his career being with the imperial army, Marsigli finds himself forced to return home to Bologna, to his family’s house and to devote himself from now on to the science, a fact otherwise requested by the great university centers of France, Holland and England. They insisted that he should publish his field research gathered on the occasion of marking the borderline between the Habsburg Empire and the Ottoman Empire, according to the provisions of the peace of Karlovitz, from the year 1699. The geographical, historical and demographic knowledge about the Balkan space of the Western Enlightenment universities was very poor and Count Marsigli, as a naturalist and oceanographer already recognized (as a result of his brilliant youthful publications), was the ideal scientist, the only relevant one who could come up with hi-quality information as a witness of the place. As president of the border commission, Marsigli documented himself extremely seriously and thoroughly, often carrying out grueling fieldwork. The Turks often accused him of espionage and abuse in the way he imposed the line demarcating the border and how inquisitive and curious he was. In the two years that the border commission was in operation, it covered more than 1,400 linear km and made many drawings and sketches on the spot, with the precision of a topographer (a science that was not at all foreign to it). He also collected samples of stones, shells, plants and antiquities from all over. Being also a passionate hunter, he collected trophies and stuffed birds from the Balkan forests where he passed. He published all this information selectively, in a very scientific and attractive manner. His large collection of objects and documents are kept in the special fund of the University of Bologna, of the Institute of Sciences in Palazzo Poggi, they still represent a valuable source of information for today researchers of various categories: naturalists, biologists, geographers, geologists, historians, ethnographers, linguists and archaeologists. However, less known to the world is his activity as an antique dealer. With a solid knowledge of ancient material culture and connections in the good world of antiquarians in Italy, Count Marsigli will be very active in the world of European collectors. A good part of what he gathered: antiquities and rare objects, collected from his peregrinations as a soldier-crusader (as it was considered) will be capitalized especially in the 20s of the 18teen century, when the near perspective of a sickly old age and the chronic lack of money will force him to start this activity.

Robert Walker was the leading portraitist of Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentarian elite. He achieved great commercial success with the replication of a simple formula of portraying his almost universally male sitters with military grandiosity. When, however, Walker was commissioned to paint a marriage portrait pair of Colonel Hutchinson and his wife, Lucy, Walker achieved greater depths of character, compositional flair and humanity than is found elsewhere in his oeuvre. Walker was perhaps inspired by the connoisseurial tastes of Colonel Hutchinson who was one of the leading buyers at the auctions of King Charles I's goods. More intriguingly, however, Walker may have been inspired by the literary talents and unvarnished decency of one of his only known female sitters – Lucy Hutchinson. The resulting marriage pair offers an intimate and unique vision into the lives of a happily married, art collecting, husband and wife. They also offer a more complex vision of an artist who has often been disregarded as a formulaic painter of men in armour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to the attribution of the original graphics of the 20th century from private collections in the collection of the Irkutsk Regional Art Museum named after V.P. Sukachev. The stages of studying a particular work of art are described in detail. Attention is paid to the research of recent years, which allows us to talk about the ongoing work with objects from museum collections. As a result of the study, based on the source studies and comparative stylistic methods, it was possible to clarify the attribution of a number of illustrations to literary works, small-format watercolors and some drawings. Such works include, for example, the works of N.V. Kuzmin, T.A. Mavrina; K.S. Petrov-Vodkin, described in the article.

The activity of Herbert Horne, an art collector, is regarded in the article due to his great significance as an italianist scolar. Hence, the emphasis is made on the Horne’s work starting from the 1880-s when he dedicated himself to studying different aspects of the Italien Renaissance art and culture. His role in the study of Trecento and Quatrocento art (his articles and his monograph on Sandro Botticelli) is shown, as well as his leadership in the art and antique sphere and his participation as an expert in the creation of new museums, while the stress is put on Horne’s figure as an outstanding art collector. The aim of the collecting was to acquire Renaissance art objects for interior decoration of the palazzo Quatrocento that he purchased in Florence and restored himself in the style of that epoch. Despite the fact that the palazzo Corsi-Horne shares common features with the Florence and Fiesole museums , founded in the same time period, the Horne Museum, that the great scholar designed and created , is particularly noted for its scientific forethought and highquality composition.

In both their wider cultural dimensions and the institutional practices they stem from, the practices of ink art in Hong Kong manifest themselves in a variety of discourses ranging from the ‘traditionalism’ of the conservative nativists to the ‘contemporaneity’ of artists and institutions often identified as being closer to ‘Western’ culture. Even though the most influential discourse about ink art in Hong Kong has clearly been produced by official institutions, like the future museum of visual culture called M+ and the already existing Museum of Art, it has also been profoundly influenced by private associations whose influence has been far reaching. The most visible of these private associations in Hong Kong is the Ink Society, whose founding members and their affiliates and friends have played a central role in the early debate about the nature of ink art in the history of local arts. Through an analysis of a failed attempt by the Ink Society to bid for the right to manage a historical site, this paper attempts to unravel some of the ideas that support the notion of ink art in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a significant number of books and over 100 publications, as well as numerous academic achievements, including the "Emil Racoviță Award" of the Romanian Academy certifying the quality of her work, Dr. Zoe Apostolache Stoicescu can easily be regarded as a prominent figure in Romanian science and culture. Between 1978 and 1983 she develops a unique project for Romanian museography, a museum of man, inaugurated in Ploiești in 1984 as the Museum of Human Biology. Spiritual and patrimonial heir of the painter Rudolf Schweitzer-Cumpăna, as his niece, she ventures for two decades in a complex of activities such as seminars, exhibits and monographs, in order to underline the role and place of Schweitzer-Cumpăna in the Romanian fine arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]