By Land and Sea: Traders Spreading Culture
2025-26 Season Subscriptions Reserve a seat for each lecture in this series. Subscribers enjoy the best seats at the best price.
Silver and Southern Asia
The 19th Century Transformed
Tuesday, January 13, 2026, 10:30am
Sharon and Timothy Ubben Signature Event Space
Katherine Anne Paul, Ph.D., The Virginia and William M. Spencer III Curator of Asian Art, Birmingham Musem of Art
Discover Southern Asia’s role in the origination, transformation, and consumption of once-rarified goods, to those taken for granted daily around the world. Imagine a day without coffee, tea, sugar, milk, pepper, salt, tobacco, India pale ale, fruit punch, ketchup and mustard. Silversmiths in Southern Asia promoted all this — and more.
For All the Tea in China
U.S. Tea Trade and Consumption in the Long 19th Century
Tuesday, January 20, 2026, 10:30am
Sharon and Timothy Ubben Signature Event Space
Dan Du, Ph.D., Professor of Chinese History, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Do you know Americans were the second largest importers and consumers of Chinese tea in the 19th century? This talk explores how U.S. traders gradually dominated the global market for Chinese green tea and Oolong tea, and invented a new brand, “English Breakfast Tea,” to market Chinese black tea.
Silk and Its Consequences
The Effect of the Silk Trade from East to West
Tuesday, January 27, 2026, 10:30am
Sharon and Timothy Ubben Signature Event Space
Judith A. Lerner, Ph.D., Research Associate, New York University
In this talk, lecturer and art historian Judith Lerner will take you on a journey from the Far East and across Central Asia, tracing much-coveted Chinese silk to Rome and the Mediterranean via land and sea routes as well as the traders who plied them.
Giraffes and Horses and Turkeys, Oh My!
Trade and Gifting of Animals in Early Modern India
Tuesday, February 3, 2026, 10:30am
Sharon and Timothy Ubben Signature Event Space
Qamar Adamjee, Ph.D., Provenance Researcher, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Prized and admired, unusual animals have a history of being traded, gifted and re-gifted. This talk explores their social and material values in global trade and diplomacy in the 14th–17th centuries. Three case studies look at Persian and Arab horses, an American turkey bird and East African giraffes that journey in and out of India.
Empires of Silver from the Silk Road
Chinese New Year Luncheon and Film
Tuesday, February 10, 2026, 10:30am
Sharon and Timothy Ubben Signature Event Space
Presentation of Empires of Silver from the Silk Road
Directed and produced by Michael Burke and Graeme Hart
In 16th-century China, the emperor decided that tax should be paid in silver, not gold. This simple decision would spark a chain reaction that would not only start a new type of cultural shift toward the material but would revolutionize trade all around the world. Empires of Silver from the Silk Road is your guide through the storied history of the Far East. This documentary delves into the vibrant histories of the Far East and the Middle East, uncovering the hidden stories of empires, traders, and cultures that flourished along the fabled Silk Road.
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., 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.