AHNCA | Materiality and the Nineteenth-Century Decorative Arts

Please join the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) on Wednesday, February 9, at 7PM ET for Materiality and the Nineteenth –Century Decorative Arts, the February Virtual Salon co-sponsored by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) and the Dahesh Museum of Art. This online event is free and open to the public, but registration is required: https://tinyurl.com/19decarts

In this Salon, Amy F. Ogata (Moderator), Lee Talbot, and Christine Garnier will discuss questions of materiality and the decorative arts in the nineteenth century. Their discussion will explore the environmental origins and processing of materials, the significance of materiality expressed in decorative forms to cultural identity, and the broader ways that histories of materiality, applied arts and art history might be understood together. The discussion will be followed by a Q&A and, after the event, there will be a break-out room where attendees can socialize informally.

Amy F. Ogata is Professor of Art History at the University of Southern California. Her research concerns the relationship between architecture and design, and the history of applied arts in Europe and the US in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Her books include Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America (Minnesota 2013), which won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. She was the co-curator of Swedish Wooden Toys (2014) and co-editor of the accompanying catalog (Yale 2014). She also wrote a book on Art Nouveau in Belgium (Cambridge 2001). Articles have appeared in Art History, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Journal of Design History, The Senses and Society, Studies in the Decorative Arts, West 86^th, and Winterthur Portfolio. She is currently working on a book about French Second Empire, metalwork, and the industrial age.

Lee Talbot is a curator at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum in Washington, DC. He joined The Textile Museum in 2007, specializing in the history of East Asian textiles. He has curated numerous exhibitions and published catalogues, articles, and textbook chapters. Lee was previously curator at the Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum in Seoul, Korea. He has a B.A. from Rhodes College, an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and a M.A. and M.Phil. from Bard Graduate Center. He serves on the board of The Textile Society of America, and co-edited the recent issue of the Journal of Textile Design, Research, and Practice. 

Christine Garnier is a PhD candidate in the History of Art & Architecture at Harvard University and the Wyeth Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. Her work focuses on the histories of the decorative arts, craft, and photography of the United States, with a focus on material histories and ecocriticism. Her dissertation, “The American Silverscape: Art, Extraction, and Sovereignty (1848-1893),” considers how a range of silver aesthetic objects—sculptures, medals, dinner services, and jewelry—helped mediate discourses on economics, natural resources, and Indigenous sovereignty during the silver mining boom throughout the Intermountain West. Her research has been supported by the Center, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Decorative Arts Trust, and the Center for Craft,
among others.