Founded by Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887-1973), heiress to the Postum Cereal Company, which later became General Foods, Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens houses over 17,000 works of art. The collection includes one of the largest and most important collections of Russian art outside Russia, comprising pieces from the pre-Petrine to the early Soviet periods. This talk will explore the history of Hillwood’s Russian collection acquired in part in Soviet Russia by Post and her husband Ambassador Davies.
Dr. Wilfried Zeisler is Hillwood’s chief curator. He is a graduate of Sorbonne University and the Ecole du Louvre, Paris. Wilfried has written extensively on French and Russian decorative arts, including a 2010 book on French ceramics commemorating the Franco-Russian Alliance, several articles, and contributions to books such as Artistic Luxury Fabergé Tiffany Lalique (2008). Wilfried’s dissertation, L’Objet d’art et de luxe français en Russie (1881-1917) [French Objets d’art and Luxury Goods in Russia], was published in Paris in 2014. Between 2009 and 2011, he has participated in and curated exhibitions in Paris and Monaco. At Hillwood, he has curated Splendor and Surprise: Elegant Containers, Antique to Modern (2015), Konstantin Makovsky: The Tsar's Painter (2016), Fabergé Rediscovered (2018), Bouke de Vries: War and Pieces (2019), and Natural Beauties: Exquisite Works of Minerals and Gems (2020). Wilfried co-authored Konstantin Makovsky: The Tsar's Painter in America and Paris (2015), and is the author of Fabergé Rediscovered and Vivre la Belle Epoque à Paris -- Paul de Russie et Olga Paley, both published in 2018.
