By Land and Sea: Traders Spreading Culture
Hokusai
Inspiration and Influence
Tuesday, February 17, 2026, 10:30am
Sharon and Timothy Ubben Signature Event Space
Sarah E. Thompson, Ph.D., Curator of Japanese Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence examines the impact on the global art world of Japan’s most famous artist, Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), as seen in the work of his pupils, his contemporary rivals, and his later admirers around the world, from his own lifetime up to the present day.
The Global Trade in Chinese Export Porcelain
Tuesday, February 24, 2026, 10:30am
Sharon and Timothy Ubben Signature Event Space
William R. Sargent, Ph.D., Independent Curator
Chinese porcelain has held a special place on our tables and in display cabinets for years. In this presentation, William R. Sargent, an independent curator and senior consultant in Chinese art, will take you from the raw materials used to make porcelain to finished product, trade routes used to transport it to Europe and the invention of hard paste porcelain in Meissen, Germany.
They Came to Trade
Illustrating Cosmopolitanism in South India, c. 1610
Tuesday, March 3, 2026, 10:30am
Sharon and Timothy Ubben Signature Event Space
Joan Cummins, Ph.D., Lisa and Bernard Selz Senior Curator of Asian Art, Brooklyn Museum
Join Joan Cummins, Ph.D. and curator of Asian art at the Brooklyn Museum, for this discussion about trade in the Indian Ocean during the early 17th century. Cummins will use a painted cotton wall hanging in the Brooklyn Museum’s collection to transport you back in time to India’s busy southeastern ports where diverse merchant populations gathered before embarking back to their homelands.
Top image: Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760-1859). Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), c. 1830-32. Woodblock print; ink and color on paper, 10 1/8 x 14 15/16 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929, JP1847. Public Domain. Third image: Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk, Northern Song Dynasty, early 12th Century CE. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: 12.886, Chinese & Japanese Special Fund. Fourth image: Shah Jahan on Horseback, Folio from the Shah Jahan Album, ca. 1630. By Payag (Indian, active ca. 1591–1658). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Fifth image: Angkor Wat, Siem Reap. Sixth image: Annabeth Rosen, American, born in 1957. Wave, 2012. Glazed earthenware, steel wire, steel. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Museum purchase with funds donated by Martin and Deborah Hale, 2013.1469. © Annabeth Rosen. Seventh image: Punch Bowl, 1800-1815, Gift of Elizabeth Dorchester and Anonymous, 1982, E72007, Peabody Essex Museum.