“Migrants at Work: The Production of Christian Ivories in 17th-century Southeast Asia”

Guest Lecturers Jessie Park, Nina and Lee Griggs Assistant Curator of European Art, Yale University Art Gallery, give a public lecture.

For over two hundred years, ivory sculptures with Christian iconography were produced in the Spanish Philippines for local and transpacific markets. These masterfully carved ivories have long been examined from the vantage point of European hegemony, in which aspirations of ivory carvers and a larger migrant community to which they belonged in the Philippines were unaccounted for. This talk proposes an alternative approach to looking at the ivories by exploring the interlocking developments of maritime trade, migration, and competition in Southeast Asia. It will demonstrate the agency of ivory carvers in creating sculptures of global appeal and thereby reversing the direction of artistic transmission across the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. FREE

Click here to join by ZOOM

Sponsored by: Department of History of Art & Architectural Studies, Engaged Listening Grant