May Morris: Art and Life, New Perspectives ed. by Lynn Hulse, and: Orchestrating Elegance: Alma-Tadema and the Marquand Music Room ed. by Kathleen M. Morris and Alexis Goodin (review)

Two recent exhibitions restaged the late-nineteenth-century fascination with the domestic interior. May Morris: Art and Life (7 October 2017 to 28 January 2018) sought to recuperate the reputation of William Morris's daughter as a significant figure in her own right. It was held at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, housed in Morris's former childhood home, and it featured more than eighty works that showcased the diversity of Morris's art, from drawing to jewelry. Orchestrating Elegance: Alma-Tadema and the Marquand Music Room (4 June-4 September 2017) at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts examined a singular domestic object, the grand piano designed by the artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema in the 1880s for the music room of Henry Gurdon Marquand's New York mansion at 68th Street and Madison Avenue, the only known furniture designed on commission by the artist. This review will consider the ways in which the concerns of these exhibitions were translated into accompanying publications in order to draw out the contributions that each makes to scholarship on Victorian art and design, as well as to explore the limitations of their respective publication models.

In 2017, the William Morris Gallery published May Morris: Art and Life, New Perspectives, edited by Lynn Hulse, a textile historian and embroiderer. She convened a conference in May 2016 at the gallery to explore topics in advance of the exhibition, and the thirteen essays stem from these presentations. They range from technical discussions of embroidery to Morris's role in furthering her father's legacy. Although it is as well designed and illustrated, it is distinct from the exhibition catalogue, published by Thames and Hudson: May Morris: Arts and Crafts Designer (2017) with essays by Anna Mason, Jan Marsh, Jenny Lister, Rowan Bain, and Hanne Faurby, who are all also New Perspectives contributors. The stated aim of both publications is to move May Morris out of the shadow of her famous father by exploring the full range of her work and her importance to the Arts and Crafts Movement, from its beginnings in the 1880s into the 1920s. The essays in May Morris: Art and Life, New Perspectives place an emphasis on archival research and begin with three biographical accounts. These are followed by five essays that examine Morris's contributions to needlework and embroidery as a maker, designer, teacher, and historian. At this point, the "May Morris and (insert topic here)" format of the volume begins to wear thin, and the biographical approach seems repetitious. The remaining five essays examine Morris's relationship to the wider art world, as in, for example, her role in the creation of the Women's Guild of Arts in London in 1907 and her role in memorializing her father.

While the volume does a wonderful job of bringing new material to light and putting May Morris in the spotlight, it does not point the way toward contextualizing her life and work; rather, it serves to reinscribe her own assessment of herself in a letter to George Bernard Shaw from the 1930s as a "remarkable woman," adding "though none of you seemed to think so" (9). It is clear from the essays that Morris was indeed a remarkable woman, and that is part of the problem. More work needs to be done to consider what broader understanding of history can be extrapolated from so remarkable a life. May Morris: Art and Life, New Perspectives will provide a firm foundation for these future studies.

Orchestrating Elegance: Alma-Tadema and the Marquand Music Room, edited by Kathleen M. Morris and Alexis Goodin, both curators at the Clark Art Institute, also begins with biography: brief outlines...