The Royal Library of Belgium currently has a noteworthy exhibition on show: In de ban van boeken. Grote verzamelaars uit de 19e eeuw in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België - Les seigneurs du livre. Les grands collectionneurs du XIXème siècle à la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique (February 1, 2008-August 24, 2008, Nassaukapel).The opening was preceded by a half day of lectures about Private Collections in Belgium (1750-1850). Some of our finest book historians delivered talks: Pierre Delsaerdt (Antwerp), Carmélia Opsomer (Liège), Bart Op de Beeck (Brussels), Ludo Vandamme (Bruges), Claude Sorgeloos (Brussels), and Jan Pauwels (Brussels). Talks were moderated by Stijn Van Rossem (Antwerp), who's preparing a PhD on the Verdussen printers.
The exhibition highlights twenty 19th-century collectors, from abroad (e.g. Richard Heber) and from the young nation state that Belgium was or was going to become. The period was marked by four regimes in a time spanning two generations.
The collections of these twenty collectors captured a fraction of collections changing hands or at peril of calamity, following the abolition of monasteries and their libraries at the end of the Ancien Régime (around 1797). Either these collectors donated directly (too few of them), or their books and manuscripts were acquired in auctions, not without a degree of vicissitude, for the newly inaugurated national library (from 1837 onwards).
Provenance research is increasingly becoming a focus in several public institutions in this country. The lecturers stressed the importance of noting the markings in copies, for a better understanding of how collections developed. The online catalogue of our National Library for instance gives extensive provenance data for each copy, and the Short Title Catalogus Vlaanderen may soon follow suit.
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