Featured Event

Porcelains and Power: The Politics of Chinese Art in the Age of American Ascendancy

Wed, Apr 8 2026, 5:30–6:30pm

Helmut Stern Auditorium

How can we understand the relationship between art collecting and Western imperialism as more than simply a story of victim and aggressor, of the plundered and the plunderer? From the Gilded Age to World War II, elite collectors and museums in the United States transformed from owning a smattering of Chinese porcelains to possessing some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated collections of Chinese art. In this talk, historian Ian Shin shows that, beyond aesthetic taste and economics, geopolitics were vital to this transformation.