Unpacking Form and Function: Ceramics

Join Associate Curator of Collections Dr. Ann Poulson and a host of experts as we take a close look at some fine examples of the design and decorative arts in the Henry’s permanent collection. Each week an expert will present works of their choice from the collection, examining them from their unique perspective. A question and answer session and casual discussion, in which everyone is invited to participate, will follow each presentation.

SPEAKER: PROFESSOR BENJAMIN SCHMIDT

Benjamin Schmidt is a Professor of History at the University of Washington, Seattle. His work sits at the disciplinary crossroads of cultural history, visual studies, the history of science, and, lately, material studies; and concerns itself chiefly with Europe's engagement with the world in the so-called first age of globalism. He has published widely on early modern topics, including Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, which won the Renaissance Society of America's 'Gordan Prize' and the Holland Society's 'Hendricks Prize'; Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts. 1400-1800 (with Pamela Smith); The Discovery of Guiana by Sir Walter Ralegh; and Going Dutch: The Dutch Presence in America, 1609–2009 (with Annette Stott).  His most recent book, Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe's Early Modern World, explores the development of European 'exoticism'—ways of looking at, imagining, and representing the world—in the early years of global encounter. A finalist for the prestigious Kenshur Prize awarded by the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Inventing Exoticism appeared earlier this year in a Chinese translation.