Description
In this webinar, a panel of four experts discuss a Kakiemon model of an elephant from the collections of the NMAA, focusing on provenance research approaches and resources. Manufactured in seventeenth-century Japan, this porcelain elephant likely arrived in Europe as cargo on a Dutch East India Company trading vessel. In examining this object, panelists will articulate research questions, brainstorm approaches, and discuss methods to track down answers about both the object’s journey and the life histories of the individuals who encountered it.
The online series Unpacking Provenance: Retracing the Histories of Asian Art brings together cross-disciplinary specialists to explore provenance research processes and share resources. Discussions focus on a single object, exploring a variety of innovative, strategic, and collaborative approaches to inquiry.
Unpacking Provenance is part of a larger collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz that seeks to cultivate the global network of provenance researchers and promote exchange. Previous programs include Hidden Networks: The Trade of Asian Art (2020–2022) and Provenance of Asian Art: A Collaborative Workshop and Symposium (2023).
Generous support for the museum’s provenance research and object histories program is provided by the David Berg Foundation and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.
Speakers include
- Martha Chaiklin, Independent Scholar
- Menno Fitski, Rijksmuseum, Netherlands
- Sol Jung, National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC
- Mark Westgarth, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
- Joanna M. Gohmann, National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC
- Christine Howald, Zentralarchiv/Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
- Martha Chaiklin Martha Chaiklin earned her PhD at Leiden University. Her research includes early modern and modern Japan, material culture, and the East India companies. On these topics, she has authored monographs, articles, and book chapters and has edited and translated several volumes. She has been Curator of Asian History at the Milwaukee Public Museum, an independent curator, and taught at universities in several countries.
- Menno Fitski studied Japanese language and culture at Leiden and Oxford. In 1997 he became curator of East Asian art at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, where he was appointed Head of Asian art in 2018.
- Joanna M. Gohmann (PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is the National Museum of Asian Art’s first curator of provenance and object histories. In this role, she leads provenance research across collection areas and manages the museum’s ongoing collaboration with Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz’s Museum of Asian Art and Central Archives. Gohmann integrates provenance stories into NMAA’s web presence and gallery installations. Her work appears in the exhibition Freer’s Global Network: Artists, Collectors, and Dealers, exploring the influences that shaped how the museum’s founder collected art. Before coming to the Smithsonian, she held positions at the Walters Art Museum, the Offices of Historic Alexandria, the Ackland Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Art.
- Christine Howald (PhD) is an expert in Asian art provenance research. As deputy director of the Zentralarchiv (Central Archive), she coleads the provenance research team at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. She has published widely and is coeditor of two issues of the Journal for Art Market Studies on Asian Art (2018 and 2020) as well as the publication em//power//relations: A Booklet on Postcolonial Provenance Research (2022). Amongst others, she currently runs the research project Traces of the "Boxer War" in German Museum Collections, a cooperative project of seven German museums together with the Palace Museum Peking, and she heads a global research and network initiative on provenance and Asian art with the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian.
- Sol Jung is the Shirley Z. Johnson Assistant Curator of Japanese Art at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian. She specializes in Japanese art history with a focus on how transnational maritime trade impacted Japan’s visual culture during the premodern period. Jung received her BA with distinction in History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and her MA in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University. She curated Princeton University Art Museum’s first thematic exhibition of Korean ceramics entitled Korean Ceramics: From Archaeology to Art History. Jung has examined the reception of Korean tea bowls, called kōrai jawan in Japan, during the sixteenth century. Fieldwork at several maritime settlement sites in Japan, and analysis of period tea documents, literary texts, and archaeological remains have informed her research, which has been supported by the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies and the Kyujanggak International Center for Korean Studies.
- Mark Westgarth is Professor, History of the Art Market at the University of Leeds, UK. He is founder and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Art & Antiques Market in the School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies. His research interests are focused on the history of the art market, the history of antique dealing and collecting, and, more especially, the agency and social and cultural identity of the dealer in the 19th and 20th centuries. He is the author of several books on the history of the antique trade and has curated several exhibitions, including SOLD! The Great British Antiques Story at The Bowes Museum in 2019.
Kakiemon model of an elephant; Japan, Saga prefecture, Arita, Nangawara Kakiemon kiln, late 17th century; porcelain with enamels over clear colorless glaze; National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Drs. Avril and Andrew Somlyo, S2023.10.6
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