Event — Outreach

Art on View: Planning a new display of Chinese art at the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

This talk by Jan Stuart, curator at the Freer Gallery, and following round table discussion will take place at the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden.

A short talk by Professor Jan Stuart, followed by a roundtable discussion.

Speaker
Jan Stuart is the Hulsewe-Wazniewski Visiting Professor at Leiden University, and the Melvin R. Seiden Curator of Chinese Art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.

Roundtable
Chair: Dr Oliver Moore, Curator of Chinese Art at the Museum of Ethnology and Lecturer at Leiden University.
Discussants: Professor Kitty Zijlmans (Leiden) and Dr Anna Grasskamp (Heidelberg)


The Freer Gallery of Art  and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, two jointly administered museums, are the national museums of Asian art in the United States, and form part of the Smithsonian Institution. The Freer opened in 1923 and the Sackler in 1987. Temporarily closing until 2017, the Freer is undergoing renovation.

Jan Stuart's talk presents the early planning stage for a new display of Ming and Qing dynasty Chinese art, drawn entirely from the permanent collection, that will focus on the power of the imperial court, especially in the 15th and 18th centuries. The gallery will include many types of art, especially ceramics and paintings. Among the challenges of interpretation being considered is the degree to which the gallery should tightly focus on specific ideas or people (such as the technology of making porcelain, or the personal vision of Qianlong emperor) as well as the question if the gallery shouldn't rather try to present a more encyclopedic introduction to the art on view.
The speaker will look at specific collection objects, philosophies of display/interpretation, and the practical constraints behind all gallery projects.


Registration 
Please email h.m.van.der.minne@iias.nl if you would like to attend.


This event is generally co-sponsored by the Hulsewe-Wazniewski Stichting (HWS) and the Leiden University research profile area Asian Modernities and Traditions (AMT).   

Inline photo (c) Marc Benton (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)