Exhibition | Port Cities: Multicultural Emporiums of Asia
Press release for the exhibition:
Port Cities: Multicultural Emporiums of Asia, 1500–1900
The Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore, 4 November 2016 — 19 February 2017
Curated by Peter Lee
The Asian Civilisations Museum presents Port Cities: Multicultural Emporiums of Asia, 1500–1900, an exhibition that explores the unique heritage of Asian port cities and tells the story of how the global flow of people, goods, and ideas contributed to the evolution of multi-cultural societies in Singapore and other port cities in Asia today. The first in the world to explore the topic, Port Cities charts a lesser known era of globalisation, identifying linkages between cities across the Asian continent, from Goa and Bombay in India, to Batavia (Jakarta) and Manila in Southeast Asia, to Canton (Guangzhou) and Nagasaki in East Asia. It tell the stories of how specific people and objects adapted as they traveled across the seas from one port city to another and how communities in many of these port cities were thoroughly modern, blending the latest global trends with their own local traditions of craft and design to create entirely new forms of fashion, decorative arts, and ways of living.
Speaking on the exhibition, Director of the ACM and NHB Group Director, Museums, Kennie Ting said, “Port cities that have come before Singapore illustrate that globalisation and cosmopolitanism are not a modern phenomenon. There have been global trade networks since ancient times and certainly during the period from 1500 to 1900. These networks facilitated the development and evolution of multicultural societies in historic port cities leading up to Singapore. As the latest in a long line of cosmopolitan port cities in Asia, Singapore is in a good position to explore this topic because our history is precisely that of trade and connections across cultures.”
He added, “This special exhibition furthers the museum’s mission of exploring and presenting cross-cultural and hybrid forms of art, people, and cultures that have emerged at crossroads of civilisations in Asia. Focusing on ‘East-meets-West’ and ‘East-meets-East’ is crucial in that it allows us to better understand who we are as Singapore and as Singaporeans today. I hope that through this exhibition, Singaporeans and visitors get a deeper understanding of what makes Singapore tick and what it means to have lived and continue to live in a multicultural society grounded in trade.”
Port Cities: Multicultural Emporiums of Asia, 1500–1900 has been made possible through the strong relationships between ACM and many international partners. Over 180 objects from eight countries—Singapore, Portugal, Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Indonesia, Belgium, the Philippines—and 22 acclaimed institutions and private collections around the world are on display to tell this lesser known history behind our pan-Asian networks. Many of these objects are being showcased for the first time in Singapore, including a collection of rare Chinese objects from 17th-century Batavia on loan from Stiftsbibliothek St Gallen in Switzerland, with whom ACM is partnering for the first time.
The exhibition presents three aspects related to the movement of people, goods and ideas in Asia— Divergence (Moving, Selling, Copying), Convergence (Owning, Collecting, Commissioning), and Integration (Contriving, Combining, Creating)—along with how these aspects shaped the development of port cities.
Peter Lee, guest curator at ACM and of the exhibition, shared, “We hope visitors will gain a new perspective of port cities through this fresh curatorial approach as we trace the stories of intensely globalised individuals and communities through lesser known networks. The Chettiar community, for example, were as globalised and multicultural then as they are today. They have been trading beyond their homeland for centuries, even building temples in Saigon more than two hundred years ago, when Pondicherry and Saigon became part of the French colonial empire.”
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Port Cities curator Peter Lee shares on the life of Cornelia van Nijenroode and how her story provides an insight to the dynamics of Asian port cities between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Painted in Batavia (Jakarta) by Jacob Jansz. Coeman, Portrait of Peter Cnoll and Cornelia van Nijenrode with Their Daughters and Malay Slaves dates to 1665 and is now part of the collection of the Rijksmuseum. It was also included in the exhibition Asia in Amsterdam (shown at the Rijksmuseum and the Peabody Essex Museum).
Journée d’études | Vie et survie d’un motif décoratif, 1550–1789
From Le Blog de L’ApAhAu
Vie et survie d’un motif décoratif, 1550–1789
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 30 November 2016
Cette journée d’étude souhaite s’interroger sur la survivance de certains motifs dans les programmes décoratifs de la période moderne. Il s’agirait de définir le motif décoratif de son invention jusqu’à ses usages les plus tardifs afin de proposer une réflexion sur la fonction du décor et ses modalités de réception. Cette réflexion portera à la fois sur l’invention du motif, c’est-à-dire sur sa naissance et ses conditions de création et la place qu’il occupe dans le système décoratif. Sera également abordée la question de la survie et de la récurrence du motif sous différentes formes et divers usages dans le décor intérieur qu’il soit public ou privé. Enfin la survivance d’un motif à travers les siècles nous amène à nous interroger sur sa réception et la fluctuation de sa valeur dans le temps.
Comité scientifique
Lucille Calderini, lucille.calderini@inha.fr
Bastien Coulon, blycoulon@gmail.com
Charlotte Rousset, charlotte_rousset@hotmail.com
P R O G R A M M E
9.45 Accueil des intervenants et mot d’introduction
10.00 Vie et résurgence d’un procédé visuel
• Tiphaine Gaumy (Université de Caen), Un pais ou les chapeaux n’ont point esté faicts pour couvrir la teste… : le salut, un motif décoratif plus complexe qu’il n’y paraît, 1550–1700
• Stéphanie Imbaud (Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne), Les lambrequins dans les représentations armoriées du XVIe au XVIIIe siècles
• Charlotte Rousset (Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne), Vie et survie d’emblèmes au service d’une ornementation efficace : le cas de l’entrée royale de Marie de Médicis à Avignon en 1600
12.00 Pause déjeuner
14.00 Création et évolution d’un motif décoratif : le trophée
• Sébastien Bontemps (Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne, Bnf), Célébrer Dieu, célébrer le Roi : le motif du trophée en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle
• Chloé Perrot (Université Lille 3, Ecole du Louvre), Le trophée comme motif ornemental : composition, formes et évolution en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècles
15.15 Pause
15.30 Le motif décoratif en architecture
• Francisco Mamani Fuentes (ENS, Université de Grenade), L’arabesque et l’héritage andalou en Espagne et en Amérique latine pendant le XVI siècle
• Lucille Calderini (Université Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne, Inha), La fontaine dans la gravure de Jean Lepautre: création et variation d’un motif au XVIIe siècle
• Michaël Decrossas (EPHE, Université catholique de l’ouest Angers), Regard de l’architecte sur le motif : la conception ornementale selon Pierre Vigné de Vigny (1690–1772)
17.00 Discussion et mot de conclusion
Call for Papers | Collecting Raphael
From H-ArtHist:
Collecting Raphael: Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino in the History of Collections
Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, 12–14 October 2017
Proposals due by 31 December 2016
In view of the forthcoming 500th anniversary celebration of Raphael’s death (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, Urbino 1483 – Rome 1520), an international conference to focus on the reception of Raphael and the history of collections will draw together scholars of collecting and history of taste with curators of the main collections of Raphael’s paintings and drawings in both Italy and abroad. The conference, organised by Sybille Ebert-Schifferer and Claudia La Malfa, will be held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, in Rome in October 2017.
Raphael’s works have enjoyed an uninterrupted fortuna in the history of collecting. His fame has fueled collectors’ passions for centuries, which in turn has contributed to his fortuna, never challenged through the changing cultural and artistic periods. His works were considered symbols of power by those popes, princes and nobles who owned them, eventually becoming the identity matrix of many important European museums in the 19th and 20th centuries. The aim of the conference is to explore the various mechanisms that have contributed to this phenomenon. Suggested topics include: the role of the great collectors of Raphael between the 16th and the 19th centuries, including the Gonzaga and Borghese families, Christina of Sweden, Charles I of England, Louis XIV of France, and the Kings of Spain; the function of antiquarians and art dealers, such as Daniel Nijs, Pierre Crozat, Pierre-Jean Mariette, and John Julius Angerstein, in the diffusion of Raphael’s works and copies in 17th- and 18th-century collections in Italy and abroad; the part played by figures like Filippo Baldinucci for the Uffizi, Everhard Jabach for the Louvre, and Sir Joshua Reynolds for collections in England; the influence of academies in the diffusion of the master’s oeuvre through collections of drawings and reproduction prints in the Age of the Grand Tour; the relationship between art historians and collectors, and the role of early biographers like Johann David Passavant, Bernard Berenson, Oskar Fischel, in the creation of the 19th- and 20th-century museums; the issue of connoisseurship from the 17th century on and the problem of originals, workshop productions, copies and fakes.
Please send an abstract of 250 words and a CV to c.lamalfa@aur.edu and to albl@biblhertz.it by December 31th 2016.
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