2024 Soane Museum Fellow Aleksander M. Musiał to Deliver Exclusive Lecture

Join us for a lecture by Aleksander M. Musiał, the 2024 Soane Fellow, where he will unveil his research and discoveries from his time at the Soane Museum!

Among the surviving structures designed by Sir John Soane, the investment in engineering water circulation systems by this “master of light and space” is hardly noticeable. Aleksander Musiał has explored this missing chapter of the architect’s oeuvre and will present recently discovered evidence regarding Soane’s cutting-edge solutions to the bathing infrastructure in British domestic, residential, and public sites in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. Soane’s avid investigation of local and foreign examples derived from France, Eastern Europe, and India informs a gradual development of the architecture of hygiene, including plunge pools, water houses, and vapor baths reflected in drawings, models, and memoranda. His waterwork designs actively contributed to a global exchange of architectural innovation that preceded large-scale sanitary reforms in the Victorian period.

About the Speaker

Aleksander M. Musiał is the 2024 Soane Foundation’s Graduate Museum Fellow, specializing in 18th-century exchanges between British and Eastern European art and architecture. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University; an M.A., M.Phil., and B.A. in Classics from the University of Cambridge (U.K.); and a B.A. in Art History from the University of Warsaw (Poland). Aleksander has conducted research through fellowships and visiting positions at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte; the British School at Rome; École Normale Supérieure in Paris; and Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. His articles have appeared in the PUAM Record, and the Oxford Art Journal.