Bruce Boucher

Art historian and curator Professor Bruce Boucher explains how the collection of art and artefacts made by the architect Sir John Soane throws light on his personality and the psychology of collecting.

Boucher, a former director of Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, says the strategy behind and motivation for Soane’s bequest to the nation has remained unexplored and a source of mystery and ambiguity. He explains what aspects of the collection reveal about Soane, including the display of antiquities, the fascination with ruins, his response to Gothic architecture and his investment in modern art and sculpture. And Boucher looks at how Soane’s life and career informed his collecting and at the challenges of turning a private house into a museum.

Boucher was director of Sir John Soane’s Museum from 2016 to 2023. His previous books include The Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino, Andrea Palladio: the Architect in his Time and Earth and Fire: Italian Terracotta Sculpture from Donatello to Canova.