Hybridity Symposia at De Young Museum Fall 2013 Followup to Met show on global trade

This symposia was an extension of the Interweaving exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Fall 2013, sponsored by the Textile Society of which I am a member and the De Young Museum. 

Sofia Sanabrais, PHD, independent scholar,  Mexican?  pointed to the time when Manila was a major world trading port, and to a time when Mexico wanted trade, due to a silver route opening.  Her research concerns the cultural and artistic exchanges between Asia and colonial Latin America(governed by Spain)  and a little of Portugal. She was very professional and effective in showing how Mexicans(Spanish artists) adapted the style and medium of Japanese screens to represent their own history, their own plants and so on, and showed examples of such screens in museums  from Mexico City and Spain.  

Karen Kramer Russell, Curator, Native American Art and Culture Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) reviewed the exhibition and critiqued it:  “Shapeshfiting:  Transformations in Native American Art at PEM.  She shows native American art in its contemporaneity but advancing the original tradition.  Very interesting. Silver tepee set up with chandelier when Indians were taken to court of Louis IV was fascinating!   (see notes) 

Sarah Fee, Phd Curator, E. Hemispehre textiles and costume, Royal Ontario Museum “Artful Blending:  The Texiles in Madagascar in the Indian Ocean World”  Degrees from Oxford and Paris in Anthropology.   Studied handweaving, dress and the social significance of cloth in Madagacar(Indian) was guest curator of the exhibition, “Gifts and Blessings:  the Textile Arts of Madagascar  in the Indian Ocean World  "

Then Robert Hobbs, Phd Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair of American Art, Dept of Art History, Commonwealth University, Virginia spoke at length about artists from Ghana.  (See notes)