Scholarly programs, designed for experts, students, and enthusiasts, share groundbreaking research and provide a deeper look into Asian and American art and culture. Symposia are open to the public and available to watch online.

Symposia & Conferences | Webinars | Upcoming Programs | Past Events

Symposia & Conferences

Postponed – Freer Medal Lecture and Award Ceremony: Honoring Vidya Dehejia

Friday, April 28, 2023, 6pm
Meyer Auditorium, Freer Gallery of Art

Due to unforeseen business circumstances, we need to postpone the Freer Medal lecture and the conferring of the award. We regret any inconvenience this late notice may cause. We hope to have an update soon.

Freer Medal Lecture and Award Ceremony: Honoring GĂŒlru Necipoğlu

Friday, October 27, 2023, 6pm
Meyer Auditorium, Freer Gallery of Art

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/freer-medal-lecture-and-award-ceremony-tickets-514372821957

Please visit the award page for more information.

 

Webinars

A Moment in Time: Egyptian Antiquities and the Early 20th Century

Tuesday, January 31, 2023, 12 pm

Between 1906 and 1909, Charles Lang Freer visited Egypt three times. Freer perceived and experienced Egypt differently than other contemporaneous collectors did, as he had decided to collect objects from diverse mediums to study and compare with his East Asian collection. Though Freer’s interest in Egypt was rather brief, it coincided with a period when the field of Egyptology was taking shape and new discoveries were being made. Wealthy foreign tourists and collectors included Egypt in their world tours and assembled antiquities during their travels. Cairo, with its lavish hotels and traveling agencies that facilitated trips along the Nile, became a favorite destination for affluent travelers.

This webinar brings together experts to contextualize Freer’s time and interest in Egypt by exploring some of the events that shaped the field of Egyptology, the role of dealers and collectors who helped build ancient Egyptian collections, and the establishments in which foreigners sojourned.

Speakers include:
Iman R. Abdulfattah, UniversitÀt Bonn and NYU School of Professional Studies
Kathleen Sheppard, Missouri University of Science and Technology
Toby Wilkinson, Clare College, University of Cambridge

Register here: https://smithsonian.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8q_aIk2kR8m0iwA9p-0ZLw

Upcoming Programs

Hidden Networks: The Trade of Asian Art

2020–2022

The histories of collecting and the art market are essential to advancing provenance research. Art dealers and collectors, both private and public, play an eminent role in cultivating new tastes, desires, and market trends. Provenance research, therefore, is more than an effort to document an object’s different owners; provenance research includes the work of uncovering the mechanisms behind translocations, understanding the transformation of material culture, and exploring the production of knowledge within different worlds and systems of meaning.

Hidden Networks: The Trade of Asian Art is a series of webinars that seeks to foreground this understanding of provenance and reveal the complex structure of the market for Asian art from the 19th to the 20th century. The series is co-organized by the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M.  Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, and the Zentralarchiv and Museum fĂŒr Asiatische Kunst (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin—Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz).

Each webinar focuses on dealers and collectors of Asian art. Some webinars will be in-depth explorations of individual companies and dealers, while others will focus on the impact of groups of collectors and dealers.

Chinese Object Study Workshops
2013–2024

Sophisticated visual analysis is a hallmark of art history and depends on skills acquired through the direct study of objects. These skills must be taught and practiced. Yet as graduate art history curricula have expanded to include training in methodology, historiography, and theory, training in object study has lessened. The problem is exacerbated for students of Chinese art history, whose graduate curricula include intensive language courses, as well as courses on religion, literature, and history.

Chinese Object Study Workshops is a program that provides graduate students in Chinese art history an immersive experience in the study of objects. The week-long workshops will help students develop the skills necessary for working with objects, introduce them to conservation issues not readily encountered in typical graduate art history curricula, and familiarize them with important American museum collections.

Postponed – Symposium: Japan in the Age of Modernization: The Art of Tomioka Tessai and Otagaki Rengetsu

This event has been postponed

This symposium gathers scholars from the United States, Japan, and Europe, who look beyond Japan’s Western industrialization to examine China’s role in forming the nation’s modern identity. It accompanies a major retrospective of the modern Japanese painter Tomioka Tessai (1836–1924) on view from March 28 to August 2, 2020, at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. A curator-led sneak preview of the exhibition concludes the symposium.

Past Events

The Sasanians in Context: Art, History, and Archaeology
October 21–22, 2022

Translocation of South Asian Art: Provenance and Documentation
Thursday, October 6—Friday, October 7, 2022

Ancient Korean Architecture in Context
July 26, 2022

Untold Stories: Women and the Asian Art Trade
September 30, 2021

Miniseries: Illustrated Woodblock-Printed Books of the Edo Period
August 10, 17, 24, 2021

Virtual Symposium—East Asian Painting Conservation: Perspectives on Education, Research, and Practice
June 29, June 30, and July 1, 2021

Yamanaka & Co.: Early Pioneer of the Global Asian Art Trade
Thursday, April 15, 2021

Honoring Esin Atıl
Saturday, February 20, 2021, 9 am–1 pm EST

C.T. Loo Revisited: New Sources & Perspectives on the Market for Asian Art in the 20th Century
8:30 a.m. –12 p.m., Thursday, December 3, 2020

Symposium: AfricAsia: Overlooked Histories of Exchange
9–11 a.m., September 14–16, 2020

Goryeo Art and Culture Study Day
Thursday, February 20, 2020

Symposium: Korean Buddhist Images and Dedication Practice
Thursday, February 20–Friday, February 21, 2020

Goryeo Buddhist Painting: A Closer Look
Friday, March 10, 2017

The Word Illuminated: Form and Function of Qur’anic Manuscripts
December 1–3, 2016
Watch the symposium online

Sƍtatsu’s Times: Perspectives on the Culture and Politics of Kyoto
December 5, 2015

Sƍtatsu in Washington: Insights, Discoveries, and Reflections
October 24, 2015
Watch the symposium online

In the Dig House: Behind the Scenes in Archaeology
April 25, 2015
Watch the symposium online

Whistler and Kiyochika: Modernity, Melancholy, and the Nocturne
May 14, 2014

Whistler Object Study Workshop
June 9–12, 2014

Medical and Modern Yoga
January 11, 2014

Yoga and Visual Culture: An Interdisciplinary Symposium
November 21–23, 2013
Watch the symposium online

The Legacy of Cyrus the Great: Iran and Beyond
April 27, 2013
Watch the symposium online

Crossroads of Culture: The Archaeology of Saudi Arabia
November 17, 2012

The Art of Itƍ JakuchĆ«
March 30, 2012

Imperial Exposure: Early Photography and Royal Portraits across Asia
December 5–6, 2011

Palaces of Art: Whistler and the Art Worlds of Aestheticism
October 27–28, 2011
Watch the symposium online

Art and Material Culture of the Northern Qi Period
June 3–5, 2011

Piety, Poetry, and Politics: Sufi Muslims in South Asia
April 28–30, 2011

Historians Of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) Second Biennial Symposium: “Objects, Collections, And Cultures”
October 21–23, 2010

Forbes Symposium
October 28–29, 2010