Arts Between Europe and the World: 1500-1700

Catalog description

How did arts and visual objects of all kinds mediate between Europe and regions of the world opened to contact through trade, conquest, religious conversion, and the exchange of knowledge? This seminar will search for the major contexts of these exchanges and for the best methods to understand their histories. What conditions enabled or prevented mutual recognition? How were foreign materials imported and integrated, as with Chinese porcelain in the Netherlands or European glass in China? What balances of power determined exchanges, from possible the colonial extinction of Pre-Columbian art to the adaptation of western perspective in Japanese prints?