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Walter Leo Hildburgh (1876-1955) was an American art collector, sportsman, traveller, scientist and philanthropist.
| This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia.(December 2020) |
Walter Leo Hildburgh (1876-1955) was an American art collector, sportsman, traveller, scientist and philanthropist.
Hildburgh was born in New York in 1876 into a family that had arrived in America earlier in the nineteenth century. He attended Columbia University, gaining a Ph.D. with a thesis on alternating current. [1]
Of independent means, Hildburgh was able to continue his scientific studies without the need to earn a profit from his research. It also allowed him to pursue other interests: he was a first-rate swimmer and a figure-skater of international repute. [2]
Hildburgh was also an active sportsman: he become an international-level figure-skater and swimmer and, later in life, served as a judge at the 1931 World Figure Skating Championships. [3]
Hildburgh undertook his first trip abroad in 1900, taking a long trip through Japan, China and India. He also travelled extensively to Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Through his travels he began collecting: not only metalwork, decorative arts and sculpture but also folkloric objects such as amulets, which he bought up in "vast numbers". [4] In 1902 he began keeping notebooks with his own ideas as well as literary quotations and information from art dealers. He mainly based himself in London from 1912 onwards and only briefly returned to America after that date. [2]
By the time he was based in London, Hildburgh had begun to publish articles on his interests, particularly around the history of the applied arts. [2] He would contribute to a wide variety of different journals, authoring over 300 articles and reviews. [5]
Hildburgh was elected a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1906 [6] and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1915. He was awarded a D.Litt in the History of Art from the University of London in 1937. [7]
Hildburgh joined the Folklore Society in 1906, [8] becoming one of its council members in 1909 and later its president from 1948 to 1951. [9] In 1950, he presented incomplete set of copies of his articles to the Society's library, with a list of them in its journal Folklore later the same year.
In 1952 Hildburgh was awarded the Folklore Society's Coote Lake Medal "for his long and valuable service to folklore, notably in the field of amulets throughout the world". [8]
He has been seen as a key figure at the Folklore Society in the immediate post-war period: "an excellent man of business; as long as he was about, the affairs of the Society, although always precarious, were kept in good order". [4]
Hildburgh was a major donor to museums.
Hildburgh gave (or bequeathed) over 5,000 objects to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), including the Hildburgh Madonna, Hercules and Antaeus , and one of the Aldobrandini Tazze, and examples of German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish silver- and gold-working [7] In 1946, to mark his 70th birthday, Hildburgh presented to the V&A 300 examples of English alabaster reliefs. [7] [10]
A plaque in Hildburgh's memory was installed inside the main entrance (Room 60) of the V&A in 1957. [11]
To the British Museum Hildburgh gave the Cordoba Treasure as well as many other objects. [12]
Hildburgh left his large collection of amulets to the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum. [13] In 1985 this collection was transferred to the Pitt Rivers Museum. [14]
Hildburgh also gave objects to other museums and collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, [15] the Cooper Hewitt [9] and the UCL Institute of Archaeology,
Jacqueline Simpson is a prolific, award-winning British researcher and author on folklore.
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The Folklore Society (FLS) is a registered charity under English law based in London, England for the study of folklore. It shares premises with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
Carmen Blacker OBE FBA was a British Japonologist. She was a lecturer in Japanese at the University of Cambridge.
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Leonard Halford Dudley Buxton FSA (1889–1939) was a British anthropologist. He was educated at Radley and Exeter College, Oxford, and he was Reader in Physical Anthropology at the University of Oxford between 1928 and 1939. He conducted field work in Sudan, India, Malta, the United States, China and Mesopotamia, and in 1913 he excavated Lapithos in Cyprus under the direction of professor John Myres and Cyprus Museum curator Menelaos Markides. During his extensive travels he documented his work through photography; the pictures are currently in the Pitt Rivers Museum. In the 1930s he carried research in Oxford with anthropologist Beatrice Blackwood. He collected textiles that are currently in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, the Bankfield Museum in Halifax and the British Museum. From 1914 to 1918 he served with the Cameron Highlanders in France and in the Intelligence Service.
Ethel Rudkin was an English writer, historian, archaeologist and folklorist from Lincolnshire. She pioneered the collection of folk material, particularly from Lincolnshire, and her collections are now part of several public institutions, including the North Lincolnshire Museum.
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Joshua Roy Porter was a British Anglican priest, theologian and author. Having been chaplain and fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, from 1949 to 1962, he was Professor of Theology at the University of Exeter from 1962 to 1986.
Sona Rosa Burstein (1897–1971) was a museum curator, folklorist and historian of gerontology.
Roy Judge (1929–2000) was a British folklorist and historian.
Leslie Frank Newman (1882–1973) was a British chemist and folklorist.
Arthur Allan Gomme (1882-1955) was a British librarian, historian of technology and folklorist.
Patricia Lysaght is an Irish folklorist. She is Professor Emerita of European Ethnology, University College Dublin, Ireland.
James Huntley Grayson is a scholar of the religions and folklore of Korea. He is Emeritus Professor of Modern Korean Studies in the School of East Asian Studies at The University of Sheffield.
Thomas East Lones (1860–1944) was a British folklorist, noted for his research into British calendar customs.
Alex Helm (1920-1970) was an award-winning British Folklorist, described as "one of the most important figures in the study of calendar custom and [folk] dance in post-war England".
Thomas Fairman Ordish (1855-1924), sometimes also referred to as T. Fairman Ordish was a British folklorist, noted for his interest in traditional drama and folk play, early theatre and the history of London. He is credited as having undertaken "the first major investigation of British traditional drama".
Grace Otis Partridge Smith was an American folklorist and educator. She studied American regional folk cultures, especially that of "Egypt", a local nickname of Southern Illinois.
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