Jane Austen News - April 2019

If you loved the scenes of Pemberley in the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and wished that you could visit the location where it was filmed,  then you might be able to do the next best thing if you're able to get to New York between June 28th and September 18th 2019. David Korins, the set designer for the musical Hamilton is behind the new exhibition which is due to open at Sotheby's in New York on June 28th. It sees the essence of Chatsworth house and estate (which was the filming location for the series Death Comes to Pemberley in 2013, and the exterior filming location for Pemberley for the 2005 Pride and Prejudice film) translated for the smaller space of the galleries of Sotheby's. 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. However, Korins 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, Mr. 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 Duke of Devonshire said he’s thrilled by Mr. Korins’s 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.”