Artist Talk | Sean Scully on the Legacy of John Constable
Wednesday at YCBA:
Shadows in Nature: Renowned Painter Sean Scully on
the Enduring Legacy of John Constable
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 28 October 2026, 5pm
John Constable, Hampstead Heath Looking towards Harrow, 1821, oil on paper laid on canvas, 26 × 31 cm (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1976.7.103).
In this special conversation, acclaimed British painter Sean Scully will join Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director of the YCBA, to reflect on Constable’s work and legacy while also offering insights and reflections into his own artistic practice. The YCBA’s exhibition John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined is on view now through July 2027. It is the only major US exhibition of this seminal British landscape artist on the occasion of his 250th birthday.
Renowned painter Sean Scully moved to Hampstead, UK, in 2021—more than two hundred years after Constable, who moved there in 1819. For two years, to get to his studio each day, Scully walked across the same expanse of Hampstead Heath that became such an important subject in Constable’s art. In Constable, the Dublin-born Scully recognizes a kindred artistic spirit. Fostered under the same dark, wet light, theirs is a shared sense of materiality, with a color sense that is often tonal. The horizon lines of land, sea, and sky are an enduring theme for both—and it is through their mutual interest in nature, in particular the shadows in nature, that their work evokes emotion.
This event will be held in the second-floor galleries, home to John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined. It is free to attend and open to all; no registration required. Seating is limited. Before the talk, please join us for a special curator tour of the exhibition at 4pm.
Online Exhibition | Soundings: Making Culture at Sea
Pierre-Jacques Volaire, Seacoast with Ships, mid-late 1700s, oil on canvas
(Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1974.0139)
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From the Spencer Museum of Art (and note the online roundtable on 28 October). . .
Soundings: Making Culture at Sea
Online, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence
Curated by Emily Casey and Celka Straughn
For peoples in cultures around the world, the sea is a source of nourishment, spiritual belief, and connection. While we tend to locate human culture on the land we inhabit, the seas we imagine and cross are also a place where culture is created. A sounding is a measurement of ocean depth made using a weighted rope or sonar to map the topography of the sea floor. This exhibition makes a ‘sounding’ of the Spencer Museum’s deep collection and brings to the surface works of art that reveal the enduring and vibrant relationship between humans and the sea.
Throughout history the ocean has been a space of travel, exploration, and exploitation. In the 15th century, the world’s oceans became the vortex for colonial violence as European empires sought to master the sea in order to claim the peoples and resources of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and beyond. In the present day, the ocean is a space that is as ecologically fragile as it is powerful. Human-made climate change has transformed the world’s oceans from melting glaciers to rising sea levels. Artists and makers from diverse cultural backgrounds illuminate the currents connecting people to their environment. In the past and present, artistic representations of the sea shape how people around the world navigate their relationships to one another and to the earth.
Plate with Foreign Gigures, 1700s–mid 1800s, Edo period (1600–1868), Arita ware; underglaze; overglaze (Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Promised gift of the Weare-West Family Trust, PG2023.160).
This virtual exhibition builds on an in-gallery exhibition presented at the Spencer Museum of Art, 12 August — 14 December 2025. Through additional contributions the virtual exhibition extends insights from curatorial, academic, and student collaboration to a wider audience. An interactive map allows viewers to visually connect objects and themes. Both the in-gallery and virtual exhibitions of Soundings are structured in four sections that explore cultural and environmental dimensions of the human experience of the ocean: Living with the Ocean, Mapping, Global Exchange, and Rising Seas. These themes also connect to topics in the KU art history course “Art and the Sea.”
Students enrolled in “Art and the Sea” during the fall 2025 semester conducted research on the exhibited artworks, which they shared through in-gallery public presentations. As part of their coursework, they also wrote labels as another way to engage with and respond to ideas and themes within the exhibition. Some of their written contributions are included in this virtual exhibition, adding a new layer of interpretation to the artworks. While student-written labels sometimes overlap with the labels written by the curators, they each bring a distinct perspective that enriches the viewer’s overall understanding of an artwork.
Both the in-gallery and virtual presentations of Soundings: Making Culture at Sea are co-curated by Emily C. Casey, Hall Assistant Professor of American Art and Culture, Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas, and Celka Straughn, Deputy Director for Public Practice and Curatorial, and Director of Academic Programs, Spencer Museum of Art. The Soundings series launched in 2018 with an exhibition curated by Charles Eldredge, Hall Distinguished Professor Emeritus of American Art and Culture. This virtual exhibition and related programs are supported by the KU Office of Research, the Kress Foundation Department of Art History, and the Spencer Museum of Art.
Online conversation from the Spencer, available after the event as a recording:
Virtual Roundtable | Soundings: Making Culture at Sea
Online, 28 October 2026, 6pm (CT)
Building on the Spencer’s 2025 exhibition Soundings: Making Culture at Sea and the launch of the accompanying virtual exhibition, this moderated discussion further explores exhibition themes. Panelists include Emily Casey (Soundings co-curator and KU art history professor) and art historians Kailani Polzak (University California Santa Cruz), Bart Pushaw (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), and Vidhita Raina (Colorado State University), whose work explores different ocean geographies and cultural histories, including the Pacific, Arctic, and Indian Oceans.
Find the livestream on the Spencer’s YouTube channel.
Lecture | Emma Rothschild on the 1776 Counter-Revolution in France
From The Lewis Walpole Library:
Emma Rothschild | The Counter-Revolution of 1776 in France
29th Lewis Walpole Library Lecture
Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, New Haven, 29 October 2026, 5.30pm
1776 began with the promise of reform in France, which was abandoned after the dismissal of the economist and finance minister A.R.J.Turgot in May 1776. The lecture will be about rumors—that Turgot was planning to sell Saint-Domingue (the modern Haiti) and to abolish slavery in the French empire—and about the counter-revolution that followed Turgot’s fall, with enduring consequences across the Atlantic world.
Emma Rothschild is Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard, affiliated faculty at Harvard Law School, and professeur invitée at the Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po, Paris. She is the author of An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France over Three Centuries (2021), The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History (2011), and Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment (2001).
Poster draws on Coiffure en médaillon, coiffure à la zodiaque, ca. 1776. The image appears in the 1777 volume of the The Lady’s Magazine.
New Book | Performing Enlightenment: Buddhism and Theater
From Harvard UP (Professor Wang will present on the book at Yale this Thursday at 4pm as part of the China Colloquium Lecture Series) . . .
Mengxiao Wang, Performing Enlightenment: Buddhism and Theater in Early Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2026), 348 pages, ISBN: 978-0674303423, $53.
In early modern China, a major revival of Buddhism coincided with a surging fascination with theater. Buddhist monastics and laypeople increasingly participated in viewing, discussing, and writing plays. Far from merely serving as a medium for conveying religious teachings and practices, drama became a source of deep concern for Buddhists due to the perceived tension between spiritual discipline and worldly entertainment.
In Performing Enlightenment, Mengxiao Wang examines how Buddhist clerics and laity engaged with and drove innovations in theater during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Drawing on an extensive range of sources—including clerical sermons, scriptural commentaries, temple gazetteers, morality books, literati prose, and dramatic texts and paratexts—Wang argues that Ming-Qing Buddhists resolved the conflict between religion and entertainment by transforming theater into a creative mode of devotional practice. Consequently, playwriting, stage performance, and theatergoing all emerged as legitimate pathways to spiritual enlightenment. This interdisciplinary work provides fresh insights into Chinese studies, Buddhist studies, and theater studies while offering a comparative perspective on the complex interplay between religion, literature, and performance across cultures.
Mengxiao Wang is Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature at the University of Southern California. She received her PhD from Yale University and was the Sheng Yen Postdoctoral Fellow in Chinese Buddhism at UC Berkeley.
c o n t e n t s
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Note to the Reader
Introduction
1 Forbidding Theater
2 Philosophizing Theater
3 Playwright as Buddha
4 Drama as Scripture
5 Staging as Ritual
Coda
Appendix 1 Translation of Zhuhong’s “Jiyue”
Appendix 2 Translation of Zhida’s “Xiju gongtong”
Appendix 3 Plot Synopsis for Tanhuaji
Appendix 4 Plot Synopsis for Guiyuanjing
Appendix 5 Extant Editions of Guiyuanjing
Bibliography
Lecture | Richard Goddard on Huguenot Craftsmen in London, 1713–1744
From Eventbrite:
Richard Goddard | Protestant But Still French: West End Craftsmen, 1713–1744
French Protestant Church, London, 22 October 2026, 5.30pm
Richard Goddard will speak on “Protestant But Still French: West End Craftsmen during the Long Peace of 1713–1744.” The talk will be followed by a 6.30 concert, as Bloomsbury Baroque presents a musical celebration of David Garrick and his Huguenot connections.
Richard Goddard has published on his Huguenot ancestors, the Basire family as printmakers (2017), and on the Grignions as clock and watchmakers (2022); both studies are available as free downloads here.
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From Bloomsbury Festival:
Bloomsbury Baroque | Huguenot Music and David Garrick
French Protestant Church, London, 22 October 2026, 6.30pm
An evening of music by Huguenot composers with period instruments and readings of letters by David Garrick.
Bloomsbury Baroque will play a selection of music from the main Huguenot composers since their initial appearance in England during the seventeenth century to their established role in English cultural life in the late eighteenth century. We will focus on David Garrick’s work with musicians and connections to France to illustrate the changing place of this community within British life, with extracts from his letters read during the performance. Composers featured will include Nicholas Lanier, Peter Prelleur, and members of the Barthelemon family.
Members of Bloomsbury Baroque are active in a wide range of musical ventures, reflecting the diversity of London’s current early music scene, mirroring its eighteenth-century counterpart. The ensemble’s activities regularly include sacred music, theatrical productions, solo and chamber concerts, large-scale choral works, and music in taverns.
Philippa Hyde, soprano
William Summers, Baroque flute, recorder
Diane Moore, Baroque violin
Ibrahim Aziz, viola da Gamba, Baroque Cello
Yeo Yat-Soon, harpsichord
Concert tickets are available here»
Talk | Riva Arnold on Jewish Ritual Art of Rosh Hashanah
Andrea Zambelli ‘L’Honnesta’, Torah Crown (keter), ca. 1740–50, silver, parcel gilt
(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013.443)
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This talk is already sold out, but I’m glad for any excuse to post exquisite eighteenth-century silver from Venice. And for readers celebrating, happy new year. –CH
Riva Arnold | Looking at the Jewish Ritual Art of Rosh Hashanah
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 15 September 2026, 3pm
Join Riva Arnold, David Berg Foundation Senior Research Associate, to discover The Met’s Judaica collection with a focus on Jewish ritual art used in the synagogue. Timed with the High Holidays, a season rich in tradition and symbolism, this talk will examine exceptional works including a rare set of Torah finials from the Rothschild collection and an Italian Torah crown manufactured by silversmith Andrea Zambelli for an 18th-century Jewish community. The next tour in this series will be on 8 December 2026 in celebration of Hanukkah.
Julia Carver on William Hogarth’s Altarpiece in Bristol
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From the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery:
Julia Carver | William Hogarth’s Bristol Altarpiece
St Nicholas Church, Bristol, 17 September and 19 November, 2pm each afternoon
William Hogarth’s largest known work resides inside St Nicholas Church in Bristol. Drop into St Nicholas Church to see the vast triptych that was painted for St Mary Redcliffe in 1755/56. On September 17 and November 19, Julia Carver, curator of art at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, will give an introduction to the painting and its remarkable journey around Bristol.
Depicting Christ’s Ascension on a central canvas flanked by The Sealing of the Sepulchre and The Three Marys at the Tomb, the triptych was commissioned as a new altarpiece for Bristol’s St Mary Redcliffe church. It was Hogarth’s only commission from the Church of England. He was paid £525, and the receipt still exists.
During the Victorian era Hogarth’s work was no longer thought to be suitable for St Mary Redcliffe, and attempts were made to sell it. Eventually, it was given to the Bristol Fine Art Academy, which became the Royal West of England Academy, in 1859. The work continued to present challenges for public display, not least due to its size. It was eventually rolled up and stored in the basement. Bristol Museum & Art Gallery officially acquired the triptych in 1955 from the Art Collections Fund, and it has been on display at St Nicholas Church since the 1970s.
Open afternoons in 2026
Thursday, 17 September, 2–3pm
Thursday, 19 November, 2–3pm
Conference | New Republic, New Worlds
From Colonial Williamsburg:
New Republic, New Worlds
Fifth and final meeting of the ‘For 2026’ Project
Williamsburg, 23–24 October 2026
Hosted by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, and William & Mary
The American Revolution forged a new nation out of thirteen British colonies, triggering a host of predictable and unexpected consequences. This conference will explore the novel circumstances, challenges, and opportunities of the transitional era that followed victory in the War for American Independence. What were the fresh constitutional and political structures fueled by the Revolution, and what were the possibilities in play then and after? How were families, communities, boundaries, and environments changed in the new era? What were the ambitions of this new nation, and what do we now know about how diverse communities assessed its prospects? How did the various peoples within its borders and beyond respond to this new moment?
New Republic, New Worlds, the final meeting of the five-year For 2026 project, brings into conversation scholarly and public-facing research exploring the far-reaching effects of the American Revolution. It will take place October 23–24, 2026, at the William & Mary School of Education and at Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia. Daytime programs will take place on the campus of William & Mary and throughout the Historic Area of Colonial Williamsburg, with two evening plenaries open to the public with no pre-registration required. Full conference registration information will be available by September.
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e v e n i n g p l e n a r i e s
The Friday and Saturday evening plenaries are free and open to the public. Seating will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, and the recorded programs will be available online on both William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg supported pages following the event.
Ronald Johnson | Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and
Atlantic Diplomacy during the American Revolution
Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, 23 October 2026, 5pm (doors open at 4:30)
Dr. Ronald Angelo Johnson is the 2026–2027 Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the American Antiquarian Society and the Ralph and Bessie Mae Lynn Professor of History at Baylor University. He is the author two books: Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy during the American Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2025) and Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance (UGA Press, 2014). He co-edited the volume In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World (UGA Press, 2021). His current book manuscript We Are All Equal: Turmoil and Triumph in the Early United States and Revolutionary Haiti is under contract with Princeton University Press.
Kathleen DuVal | The American Revolution and the Survival of Native Nations
Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, 24 October 2026, 5pm (doors open at 4:30)
The American Revolution brought unprecedented challenges to Indigenous lives, land, and sovereignty in North America. Yet we can also tell the past 250 years of Native history as the story of surviving the creation of the United States. Focusing on Native history can help us put the American Revolution in the longer context of North America’s long past, present, and future.
Dr. Kathleen DuVal is the Carl W. Ernst Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and the author of Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, and the Cundill History Prize. Her other books include Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent, and the U.S. history textbook Give Me Liberty!, co-authored with Eric Foner and Lisa McGirr. DuVal has published in the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Early Republic, The Atlantic, Time Magazine, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. She also appeared in the recent Ken Burns film, The American Revolution.
Online Talk | Mei Mei Rado on Chinoiserie Textile Designs
From the Cooper Hewitt:
Mei Mei Rado | Chinoiserie Designs in Textiles
Online, 8 July 2026, 1pm (ET)
Curtain, 1774–1811, after Jean-Baptiste Pillement, printed by Bromley Hall, copperplate printed cotton plain weave (New York: Cooper Hewitt, American Textile History Museum Collection, 2016-35-101).
Join Cooper Hewitt for an illustrated talk exploring a selection of chinoiserie (Chinese-inspired) designs used in works on paper and textiles from Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection.
During the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, innovative chinoiserie designs in European textiles vividly reflected the cross-cultural exchanges fostered by global networks of trade, Jesuit missions, diplomatic contacts, and colonial expansions. Print sources, including illustrated travel accounts and decorative vignettes by artists such as François Boucher and Jean Pillement, provided major inspirations for the chinoiserie motifs across various textiles mediums, ranging from tapestry and silk, to embroidery and printed cotton. Used for furnishings or fashionable dress, these textiles offered Europeans visual knowledge and imaginative engagements with a distant land and foreign culture. Meanwhile, European chinoiserie textiles also travelled back to China, where they sparked a very different set of perceptions and imagination of the West. This is the third and final program of our recent series exploring the connections between Chinese and Western art and design from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century.
Registration is available here»
Mei Mei Rado is Assistant Professor at Bard Graduate Center, New York. Her research focuses on the history of textiles, dress, and decorative arts in China and France from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Previously Dr Rado served as Associate Curator of Costume and Textiles at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her recent monograph The Empire’s New Cloth: Cross-Cultural Textiles at the Qing Court (Yale University Press, 2025) was the winner of the 2026 Louis Gottschalk book prize of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and a finalist for the 2026 Charles Rufus Morey book award of the College Art Association.
Jamie Kwan is the Assistant Curator of Drawings, Prints and Graphic Design at Cooper Hewitt. Before her time at Cooper Hewitt, Kwan served as the Associate Curator at the Wende Museum, an institution focused on the Cold War in Culver City, California. She has also held positions at the Morgan Library & Museum, J. Paul Getty Museum, Huntington Library, and Getty Research Institute.
Tasting and Discussion | The Worlds That Chocolate Made
From Eventbrite:
The Worlds That Chocolate Made: A Tasting and Discussion
Tara Zanardi and Daniel Corpuz, as Facilitated by Adrian de León
Espacio de Culturas, New York University, 10 April, 3–5pm
Let’s talk Chocolate! Join Espacio de Culturas for an afternoon of delicious chocolate tasting while learning about its origins and history. On select Fridays throughout the semester, we offer programs that are hands-on and interactive under the title of ‘Fridays on the Patio’. These programs are free and open to the public with registration.
This event is in collaboration with SULO: The Philippine Studies Initiative at NYU, and includes a guided chocolate tasting, where you will be able to try chocolate crafted by Daniel Corpuz, a Filipino chocolatier based in New York City. The event will also feature a conversation with Tara Zanardi, a professor at Hunter College, who will explore the history and geopolitics of chocolate as they relate to the Americas and Philippines. The conversation will be facilitated by Adrian de León. Join us to appreciate the flavors of chocolate while also gaining insight into the systems that shape its production and accessibility—discovering the worlds that chocolate created.
Daniel Corpuz is a pastry chef and chocolatier based in New York City who graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, achieving his Associates Degree in Baking and Pastry and his Bachelor’s Degree in Food Business Administration in 2019. After working in Michelin restaurants like The Modern, One White Street, and The Clocktower, Daniel shifted to work primarily with chocolate as a result of the pandemic. This yielded the opportunity to be on Netflix’s School of Chocolate with world renowned Pastry Chef Amaury Guichon. Utilizing his Filipino-American background, he launched Daniel Corpuz Chocolatier. This chocolate brand centers on his upbringing while amplifying his industry experience by incorporating Filipino and Asian ingredients and flavors into his chocolates.
Tara Zanardi is Associate Professor of Art History at Hunter College, CUNY. Zanardi’s forthcoming book, Material Seduction: Charles III, Empire, and the Porcelain Cabinet at Aranjuez, 1760-65 (The Getty Research Institute), examines the king’s porcelain cabinet as a highly political and performative space and problematizes its imagery of empire and chinoiserie. Her current research includes an upcoming exhibition on chocolate, co-curated with Lynda Klich, and a book on the Real Gabinete de Historia Natural (opened, 1776). As Madrid’s first public museum, its global collections showcased the fluidity of art, science, ethnology, and archeology.
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