Dame Rosalind Savill Memorial Lecture – The Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection welcomes Wolf Burchard, Curator in Charge of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for the 2026 Dame Rosalind Savill Memorial Lecture.

Titled The World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together Louis XIV’s Grande Galerie Savonnerie Carpets, the talk explores the remarkable history of a series of 92 monumental carpets commissioned by Louis XIV in 1668 for the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. Woven over 25 years, the carpets were ultimately never installed in the space for which they were created.

Following the French Revolution, many of the carpets were altered, divided and dispersed, leaving curators and historians to piece together their story fragment by fragment. Burchard will share the collaborative research behind two recent exhibitions dedicated to the carpets, including a major presentation at the Grand Palais in Paris and a new display at The Met.

The annual lecture honours Dame Rosalind Savill, Director of The Wallace Collection from 1992 to 2011, and celebrates her lasting contribution to the study of French decorative arts and to the museum itself.

Guests attending in person can stay for a drinks reception after the talk, while the event will also be streamed live via Zoom. Online ticket holders will receive access to a recording for two weeks afterwards.

Find out more here.