The Judging Panel

Julie Montagu, Viscountess Hinchingbrooke

Julie Montagu is a wellness entrepreneur, yoga instructor, author, and television personality. She hosts the American Viscountess Youtube Channel, where she shares insighted into castles, manors, and stately homes, as well as the custodians caring for them. She combines her American perspective with her experiences living in the UK.

In addition to her YouTube channel, Julie is a freelance royal commentator, offering her expertise to major media outlets during significant royal events.

Hatta Byng, Editor, House & Garden

Hatta Byng joined House & Garden in 2006, as Features Editor, and became Editor in 2014, overseeing the content and vision across all platforms. Hatta holds a lifelong interest in interiors and architecture, studying History of Art and Architecture, first at Edinburgh and then the Courtauld. She worked for several years in interior design, before heading to Cape Town where she worked for the South African edition of House & Garden between 2003-2005. This was to be the springboard for her magazine career. She is married with three children and lives between London and North Yorkshire.

Will Fisher, Jamb

Will is the founder of Jamb on the Pimlico Road, a quintessentially British company, which he runs together with his wife, Charlotte, dealing in antiques and immaculately reproduced eighteenth- and nineteenth-century chimneypieces, lights, and garden ornaments, they have, between the two of them, done much to bring that much sought-after – but rarely achieved – English country-house look to the mainstream aesthetic.

Will Richards, Deputy Chairman, Dreweatts

Will Richards is Deputy Chairman and a Director of Dreweatts and Forum Auctions and is based at Dreweatts’ Pall Mall office in London and at the Donnington Priory salerooms in Newbury. He has over 30 years’ experience in the auction business. Previously with Phillips and Bonhams, Will joined Dreweatts as a Director in May 2008.

Will advises an international body of private clients, institutions and public galleries on all aspects of managing collections.

Dr Nicholas Cullinan OBE, The British Museum

Nicholas took up his position as the Director of The British Museum in 2024. Prior to this, he was Director of the National Portrait Gallery, where he oversaw the largest transformation of the Gallery since its building opened in 1896. He has also been the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and from 2007 to 2013, as well as Curator of International Modern Art at Tate Modern where he co-curated an exhibition of Henri Matisse’s cut-outs with Sir Nicholas Serota in 2014. Nicholas received his BA, MA and PhD in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and in 2006–7 he held the Hilla Rebay International Fellowship at the Guggenheim museums in Bilbao, New York and Venice.

What are the judges looking for?

The sorts of things likely to catch the judges’ eyes include:

• New conservation approaches, techniques, needs, challenges, projects, or efforts
• New ways of arranging, presenting, interpreting, capturing, communicating, or organising a collection, perhaps to draw out new links or connections to people, places, stories, or other objects, or to attract new audiences or respond to new or changed priorities among the public, academia, or the owners and curators
• New additions, acquisitions, returns, restorations, recoveries, rationalisations, or any other change to the composition and make-up of the collection to better preserve, protect, or enhance it
• New research, discoveries, understandings or realisations that shed new light on the academic, artistic, intellectual, historical, or social content and meaning of the collection and take forward, add to, or change its story in some way

Over the summer, the panel will visit up to five shortlisted contenders. You can follow their progress on Dreweatts’ or Historic Houses’ social media or at historichouses.org/the-collections-award.