The exhibition, “Treasures From Chatsworth,” will open to the public June 28 in New York in Sotheby’s newly renovated galleries. Admission will be free.
Korins said his “aha moment” came last summer when he was staying at Chatsworth, home to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, for several days as he was conceiving the exhibition. He had gotten up early and sat for a long time in one room.
“I began to really let my eyes wander around the room, and not just the big beautiful pieces of art but the furniture and the corners of the room,” he said. He realized that he didn’t just want to make the artwork and objects part of the exhibition; he wanted to include the details of the house itself. In the form of blown-up 360-degree sculptures, Korins will magnify small details — table legs, moldings, chair feet, corners of rooms — and use them as vitrines and set pieces for the artworks and objects on display.
The exhibition will feature 45 artworks, decorative objects, pieces of jewelry, clothing and archive materials — all drawn from the Devonshire Collection, accumulated over about 500 years by the Cavendish family and held at Chatsworth House.
The large stately home made was made famous by its use in the 2005 film “Pride and Prejudice” as Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley. (Some believe that Jane Austen originally based Pemberley on Chatsworth.) Today, the house is partially open to the public but remains a private residence for the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.
Among the objects coming to the United States are a portrait by Rembrandt; two Canaletto paintings of Venice; a stunning veiled marble sculpture by Raffaele Monti; and two Lucian Freud portraits, of the 11th Duke of Devonshire and his wife, the duchess.
“The collection is really quite eclectic because different members of my family, different ancestors inevitably had different taste,” said Peregrine Andrew Morny Cavendish, known as Stoker, the current Duke of Devonshire. “An interesting thing about the collection is that it’s a continuum. It’s not just one or two generations, but nearly 500 years of them.”
He said that many things in the collection have gone through cycles of use and disuse, going out of fashion and coming into it again. He described a set of chairs by designer Joseph Walsh, which the family now uses most days in the dining room. One day, he said, “they’ll be put in a glass case.”
The Duke of Devonshire said he’s thrilled by Korins’ imaginative design for the exhibition. “I think he has a brilliant way of getting across a grand space in a smaller space,” he said. “I think the architecture of this exhibition will focus attention on the works, and we’ll look at them in a different sort of way.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.