Examine the cultures and practices of collecting, collectors and objects on display in Sir John Soane's Museum’s exhibition Mrs Delaney and her Circle and at the V & A’s Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill.

Focusing on the extraordinary acquisitions of Walpole and the English bluestocking, Mary Delaney, papers will discuss collections, collectors and their circles; objects remarkable for their curious modes of production; crafts of collecting such as Delaney's 'paper mosaic' collages and Walpole's extra-illustrations; what Walpole called 'the genealogy of objects of virtu', including the lives of the copy and the fake in Enlightenment collections; intersections and tensions between antiquarian, aesthetic and scientific cultures of collecting and between the collection and the museum.

Speakers include:—
Adriano Aymonino, Stephen  Bann, Craig  Hanson, Janice  Neri, Lucy Peltz, Alicia Weisberg  Roberts, Stacey  Sloboda and Michael Snodin.