Joanna Marschner will give a Brown Bag Lunch presentation on Thursday, April 27, at 12:15 pm. Her talk is entitled “Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World,” and examines an exhibition currently on view at the Yale Center for British Art by the same name.

Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World, an exhibition collaboration between Historic Royal Places and the Yale Center for British Art, was created with the ambition to share not only content and theme, but atmosphere and “feel.” In this talk, Marschner will discuss how the curatorial staff sought to conjure a sense of palace within Louis Kahn’s last great building in New Haven, and how they introduced something of the energy of eighteenth-century conversations and encounters, and the excitement of occasion.


Joanna Marschner is Senior Curator at Historic Royal Palaces. Based at Kensington Palace, she has been responsible for many exhibitions, and has devised and commissioned the programming which has accompanied them. She has recently led a collaborative exhibition and publication project between Historic Royal Palaces and the Yale Center for British Art, serving as guest curator for the exhibition at Yale. She has lectured nationally and internationally on subjects ranging from museology to dress history and the history of the monarchy, and has explored how their houses, and collections of the fine and decorative arts, are used to further the cultural politics of the court. She was Chair of the Dress and Textiles Specialists in Museums working group (1995–2001), and Chair of the Costume Committee of ICOM (2001–2007).