Dawn O’Dell | The Politics of Personhood in A.E. van Braam Houchgeest’s China Memoir
- Event Type
- Lecture
- Sponsor
- School of Art & Design Visitors Committee, Samuel Kress Foundation, the Institute for Global Studies through a grant from the Hewlett Foundation, and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
- Location
- Siebel Center for Design, Classroom 1002, 1208 S. Fourth St., Champaign, Illinois
- Date
- Oct 21, 2022 1:30 pm
- Speaker
- Dawn O'Dell
- Contact
- Krannert Art Museum
- kam-info@illinois.edu
- Phone
- 12173331861
- Views
- 31
- Originating Calendar
- Krannert Art Museum Events
Following his participation in the Dutch East India Company’s last embassy to the Chinese court (1794–95), A.E. van Braam Houckgeest moved to Philadelphia with an enormous personal collection of Chinese art.
This talk explores van Braam’s self-fashioning through his collaboration with two unnamed Guangzhou artists and the French émigré printer and defender of race-based slavery, M.L.E. Moreau de Saint-Méry.
The illustrated memoir these men produced places van Braam’s textual narrative within an expansive visual environment of Chinese landscape paintings and other works of Asian art, conjuring artistic presences as testaments to the author’s self-proclaimed virtue, prestige, and republican ideals.
About Dawn O’Dell
Dawn Odell is Associate Professor of Art History at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Her research focuses on the circulation of artists, objects, and printed texts among cities in Asia, Europe, and the Americas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Her recent essays discuss the “domestication” of Chinese porcelain in the Netherlands, Dutch travel books and poetic painting traditions in East Asia, and the “Chineseness” of a standing screen in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Dr. Odell’s current book project is focused on the subject of this presentation, van Braam Houckgeest’s collection of Chinese art and the often-unnamed individuals who participated in its creation and display.
Accessibility
The Art & Design Visitors Series endeavors to be accessible to all. If you have questions or would like to request an accessibility accommodation, please email art@illinois.edu.