The Judging Panel

Desmond Shawe-Taylor

Desmond was Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures from 2005 until his retirement in 2021; before this he was Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery. He is widely published and has been responsible for exhibitions in the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace, the Royal Academy, and elsewhere.

Max Donnelly

Max is Curator of Furniture and Woodwork 1800–1900 at the V&A. He has worked for antique dealers in New York and New Bond Street and appeared on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. A regular contributor to books, monographs, and magazines, he has lectured around the world. He is a trustee of the Decorative Arts Society and the Emery Walker Trust.

Adrian Sassoon

From working at the J. Paul Getty Museum in the 1980s, Adrian Sassoon became an independent dealer in eighteenth-century French porcelain in the 1990s and is now one of London’s leading dealers in contemporary works of art. Adrian is a former trustee of the Wallace Collection.

"I am looking forward to seeing historic houses I have never seen before being loved by their owners and the more variety in every way the better!"

~ Adrian Sassoon

Georgina Macpherson

Georgina was formerly Head of Sotheby’s European Private Client Group and today is an art consultant advising Dreweatts and assisting collectors. Whilst consulting Dreweatts, Georgina has helped with auctions such as Sir William Whitfield CBE, Aynhoe Park, Hollycombe House, and Weston Hall and the Sitwells.

James Mackie

James is a leading interior decorator and art advisor. Formerly Head of the Impressionist & Modern Art Department at Sotheby’s and Board Director of Bonhams before that, he has worked with leading collectors of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art. He is a member of the curatorial committee of the new art-and-design fair The Eye of the Collector, and was named in House & Garden magazine’s 2021 list of Top Up and Coming Interior Designers.

‘I am delighted to join the judging panel for the new Historic Houses Collections award in partnership with Dreweatts, which brings together my long held interest and passion for English country houses and they’re fascinating contents.’ 

~ James Mackie

What are the judges looking for?

The sorts of things likely to catch the judges’ eyes include:

• New conservation approaches, techniques, needs, challenges, projects, or efforts
• New ways of arranging, presenting, interpreting, capturing, communicating, or organising a collection, perhaps to draw out new links or connections to people, places, stories, or other objects, or to attract new audiences or respond to new or changed priorities among the public, academia, or the owners and curators
• New additions, acquisitions, returns, restorations, recoveries, rationalisations, or any other change to the composition and make-up of the collection to better preserve, protect, or enhance it
• New research, discoveries, understandings or realisations that shed new light on the academic, artistic, intellectual, historical, or social content and meaning of the collection and take forward, add to, or change its story in some way

Entries close on 15 April, and in June the panel will visit up to five shortlisted contenders. You can follow their progress on Dreweatts’ or Historic Houses’ social media or at historichouses.org/the-collections-award.