Decorative Arts Trust

STUDY TRIP ABROAD, FALL, 2003
Berlin, Worlitz, Dessau and Prague

Trust members in front of the Altes Museum, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, which leads to the Museum Island in Berlin.

This joint Study Trip of the Decorative Arts Trust and the Center for Palladian Studies in America, took place totally behind the Berlin Wall and in the old Soviet Union. On the way from the airport to our hotel, I asked the cab driver how combining the two Germanys was going? At first he didn’t understand the question but then said, rubbing his fingers together in the air, “It is very much money, but it is good for the heart,” and he patted his chest. Our Study Trip was good for the heart, too. We saw the great energy of the East Germans and the Czechs in reclaiming their cities, towns and countryside. Historic building restoration was everywhere. Granted, there is lots to do after so little care for so many years, but they want their cultural heritage to be saved, restored and displayed. And the energy and intelligence they are putting to this task is incredible.

Trust members on stage at the legendary Bauhaus school in Germany.

Highlights:

Berlin – The neoclassical buildings by Schinkel. The newly restored ballroom at Schloss Charlottenburg was incredibly beautiful with walls of teal green scagliola with little vermilion lines in it. The extensive decorative arts collection at the Kunstegewerbes Museum where Helen Scott Reed’s intelligent tour put everything in perspective for us, and across the courtyard to the Berlin Gemäldegalerie with the most extraordinary collection of old masters. The Reichstag with Norman Foster’s great new double helix dome was breathtaking to walk up.

Worlitz – The Gardens of Prince Leopold III, Frederick Franz of Anhalt-Dessau created from 1765 to 1800 on over 112 hectares by the leading gardeners of the time includes a miniature Mt. Vesuvius.

Betty di Valmarana of Charlottesville, VA, and Kelly Schrimsher of Huntsville, AL, overlooking Prague.

Dessau –Schloss Luisium designed by Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmanndorff in 1774 for Princess Luise Henriette Wilhelmine of Anhalt-Dessau as a garden retreat, the house is a 12 meter cube with a pyramid roof. There is one room filled with paintings by Angela Kauffman (we were reminded that Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Powell of Philadelphia hung her paintings in their houses) and beautiful animal paintings on the ceiling by Johann Fisher.

First night dinner for the Study Trip Abroad group in Berlin.

Dresden – the Grünes Gewolbe or the Green Vaults, in the Albertium, contain the royal jewels and treasures of kings. The Zwinger, the immense Baroque home of Augustus the Strong and its porcelain collection was wonderful.

Prague – The Strahov Libraries on top of the hill within the monastery were wonderful and halfway down the hill, the interior of St. Nicholas Church was beautiful, again with colorful scagliola and white figures of saints down the aisle.

It was an extraordinary study trip. Many thanks to Helen Scott Reed, Secretary of the Trust Board of Governors, for planning it.