Scholarly programs, designed for experts, students, and enthusiasts, share groundbreaking research and provide a deeper look into Asian and American art and culture. Symposia are open to the public and available to watch online.
Symposia & Conferences | Webinars | Upcoming Programs | Past Events
Symposia & Conferences
Freer Medal Lecture and Award Ceremony: Honoring Vidya Dehejia
Friday, April 28, 2023, 6pm
Meyer Auditorium, Freer Gallery of Art
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/freer-medal-lecture-and-award-ceremony-honoring-vidya-dehejia-tickets-496415310557
Freer Medal Lecture and Award Ceremony: Honoring GĂĽlru NecipoÄźlu
Friday, October 27, 2023, 6pm
Meyer Auditorium, Freer Gallery of Art
Registration link to come.
Please visit the award page for more information.
Webinars
A Moment in Time: Egyptian Antiquities and the Early 20th Century
Tuesday, January 31, 2023, 12Â pm
Between 1906 and 1909, Charles Lang Freer visited Egypt three times. Freer perceived and experienced Egypt differently than other contemporaneous collectors did, as he had decided to collect objects from diverse mediums to study and compare with his East Asian collection. Though Freer’s interest in Egypt was rather brief, it coincided with a period when the field of Egyptology was taking shape and new discoveries were being made. Wealthy foreign tourists and collectors included Egypt in their world tours and assembled antiquities during their travels. Cairo, with its lavish hotels and traveling agencies that facilitated trips along the Nile, became a favorite destination for affluent travelers.
This webinar brings together experts to contextualize Freer’s time and interest in Egypt by exploring some of the events that shaped the field of Egyptology, the role of dealers and collectors who helped build ancient Egyptian collections, and the establishments in which foreigners sojourned.
Speakers include:
Iman R. Abdulfattah, Universität Bonn and NYU School of Professional Studies
Kathleen Sheppard, Missouri University of Science and Technology
Toby Wilkinson, Clare College, University of Cambridge
Register here: https://smithsonian.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8q_aIk2kR8m0iwA9p-0ZLw
Upcoming Programs
Hidden Networks: The Trade of Asian Art
2020–2022
The histories of collecting and the art market are essential to advancing provenance research. Art dealers and collectors, both private and public, play an eminent role in cultivating new tastes, desires, and market trends. Provenance research, therefore, is more than an effort to document an object’s different owners; provenance research includes the work of uncovering the mechanisms behind translocations, understanding the transformation of material culture, and exploring the production of knowledge within different worlds and systems of meaning.
Hidden Networks: The Trade of Asian Art is a series of webinars that seeks to foreground this understanding of provenance and reveal the complex structure of the market for Asian art from the 19th to the 20th century. The series is co-organized by the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, and the Zentralarchiv and Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin—Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz).
Each webinar focuses on dealers and collectors of Asian art. Some webinars will be in-depth explorations of individual companies and dealers, while others will focus on the impact of groups of collectors and dealers.
Chinese Object Study Workshops
2013–2024
Sophisticated visual analysis is a hallmark of art history and depends on skills acquired through the direct study of objects. These skills must be taught and practiced. Yet as graduate art history curricula have expanded to include training in methodology, historiography, and theory, training in object study has lessened. The problem is exacerbated for students of Chinese art history, whose graduate curricula include intensive language courses, as well as courses on religion, literature, and history.
Chinese Object Study Workshops is a program that provides graduate students in Chinese art history an immersive experience in the study of objects. The week-long workshops will help students develop the skills necessary for working with objects, introduce them to conservation issues not readily encountered in typical graduate art history curricula, and familiarize them with important American museum collections.
Postponed – Symposium: Japan in the Age of Modernization: The Art of Tomioka Tessai and Otagaki Rengetsu
This event has been postponed
This symposium gathers scholars from the United States, Japan, and Europe, who look beyond Japan’s Western industrialization to examine China’s role in forming the nation’s modern identity. It accompanies a major retrospective of the modern Japanese painter Tomioka Tessai (1836–1924) on view from March 28 to August 2, 2020, at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. A curator-led sneak preview of the exhibition concludes the symposium.
Past Events
The Sasanians in Context: Art, History, and Archaeology
October 21–22, 2022
Translocation of South Asian Art: Provenance and Documentation
Thursday, October 6—Friday, October 7, 2022
Ancient Korean Architecture in Context
July 26, 2022
Untold Stories: Women and the Asian Art Trade
September 30, 2021
Miniseries: Illustrated Woodblock-Printed Books of the Edo Period
August 10, 17, 24, 2021
Virtual Symposium—East Asian Painting Conservation: Perspectives on Education, Research, and Practice
June 29, June 30, and July 1, 2021
Yamanaka & Co.: Early Pioneer of the Global Asian Art Trade
Thursday, April 15, 2021
Honoring Esin Atıl
Saturday, February 20, 2021, 9 am–1 pm EST
C.T. Loo Revisited: New Sources & Perspectives on the Market for Asian Art in the 20th Century
8:30 a.m. –12 p.m., Thursday, December 3, 2020
Symposium: AfricAsia: Overlooked Histories of Exchange
9–11 a.m., September 14–16, 2020
Goryeo Art and Culture Study Day
Thursday, February 20, 2020
Symposium: Korean Buddhist Images and Dedication Practice
Thursday, February 20–Friday, February 21, 2020
Goryeo Buddhist Painting: A Closer Look
Friday, March 10, 2017
The Word Illuminated: Form and Function of Qur’anic Manuscripts
December 1–3, 2016
Watch the symposium online
SĹŤtatsu’s Times: Perspectives on the Culture and Politics of Kyoto
December 5, 2015
SĹŤtatsu in Washington: Insights, Discoveries, and Reflections
October 24, 2015
Watch the symposium online
In the Dig House: Behind the Scenes in Archaeology
April 25, 2015
Watch the symposium online
Whistler and Kiyochika: Modernity, Melancholy, and the Nocturne
May 14, 2014
Whistler Object Study Workshop
June 9–12, 2014
Medical and Modern Yoga
January 11, 2014
Yoga and Visual Culture: An Interdisciplinary Symposium
November 21–23, 2013
Watch the symposium online
The Legacy of Cyrus the Great: Iran and Beyond
April 27, 2013
Watch the symposium online
Crossroads of Culture: The Archaeology of Saudi Arabia
November 17, 2012
The Art of Itō Jakuchū
March 30, 2012
Imperial Exposure: Early Photography and Royal Portraits across Asia
December 5–6, 2011
Palaces of Art: Whistler and the Art Worlds of Aestheticism
October 27–28, 2011
Watch the symposium online
Art and Material Culture of the Northern Qi Period
June 3–5, 2011
Piety, Poetry, and Politics: Sufi Muslims in South Asia
April 28–30, 2011
Historians Of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) Second Biennial Symposium: “Objects, Collections, And Cultures”
October 21–23, 2010
Forbes Symposium
October 28–29, 2010