Panel: The Silk Road from China to America

Panel: “The Silk Road from China to America”

Zoom link to join virtually: https://wpunj.zoom.us/j/94325648090

Moderator
Dr. He Zhang, Professor, Art History, William Paterson University

Please join the University Galleries for a panel discussion next Wednesday, October 26th to support our exhibition A Durable Thread: The Silk Road from China to America during the campus symposium "Across Time and Space: The Silk Road and the Silk City". Prof. He Zhang will moderate and guest scholars studying the history of silk design, production, and consumption will present new perspectives from their own areas of study. Opening receptions for A Durable Thread as well as Textile Arts from Guizhou, China will follow from 3 pm - 5 pm in Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts.

Zhao Feng, curator and honorary director, China National Silk Museum

Intriguing Looms: Silk Patterns from the Silk Roads

Dr. Zhao Feng will discuss the evolution of Chinese weaving looms in antiquity and the role they played in developing silk traditions, including plain weave, multi-shaft looms and warp-faced patterns, Zilu looms and weft-faced patterns, and draw looms after the 6^th century CE.

Dr. Zhao Feng is a Chinese textile specialist with a special interest in Silk Road textiles and cultural exchange. He was a research fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1997-1998, at the Royal Ontario Museum in 1999, and the British Museum in 2006. He has worked at the China National Silk Museum (CNSM) for more than 30 years, and has served as Director since 2009. He transformed the CNSM into a leading center for the preservation, study, and appreciation of silk as a significant art medium. In 2022, he was elected to a three-year term serving on the International Council of Museums’ executive board.

Martina D’Amato, gallery manager, Cora Ginsburg LLC

Novelties in Pigment and Thread: 18th-Century Chinoiserie Silks and Their Afterlives

This talk reexamines the phenomenon of European woven and painted silks imitating or inspired by Chinese precedents in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I will focus on a group of brocaded silks produced in Amsterdam in the 1730s and 1740s (now in public and private collections, and including an example on view in the exhibition) and a previously unpublished painted silk with identical motifs to raise new questions about the transmission of designs over time and in different materials.

Martina D’Amato is Gallery Manager at Cora Ginsburg LLC and a historian of decorative arts and design with a focus on continental European textiles. Her research interests include the intersection of decorative arts and cultural nationalism, and the history of collecting and museums. Recent publications include “Il passa les Alpes avec ses trésors : Louis Carrand and Florence,” in A. Lepoittevinn, E. Lurin, and A. Mérot, eds., Florence, ville d’art, et les Français. La création d’un mythe (2021). She holds a BA from New York University (2009) and an MA from the Bard Graduate Center (2012), and is currently completing a dissertation at the Bard Graduate Center on the subject of collecting Renaissance art in Third Republic France and newly unified Italy. Since 2015, she has worked at Cora Ginsburg LLC.

Donna Ghelerter, textile and fashion historian

“World Famous Artists Designed These Silks for You”: AUDAC and 1930s American Silks

Members of the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (AUDAC), founded in 1928 and in existence until the early 1930s, influenced the design and marketing of silks in the United States. The organization’s talented members, both men and women, particularly those who worked as textile designers, stylists, and photographers, collaborated with manufacturers, department stores, advertising firms, museums, and galleries to promote modern design in all aspects of daily life, including silk yardage that was made into fashionable clothes for American women.

Donna Ghelerter is an independent fashion and textile historian as well as a USPAP-certified appraiser in New York City. From 1990 to 2001 Ms. Ghelerter was with the firm of Cora Ginsburg LLC and continues to work on their annual catalogues of antique and modern textiles and clothing. In 2015, Ms. Ghelerter researched the work of the forgotten American textile designer Marguerita Mergentime, resulting in the publication of Marguerita Mergentime: American Textiles, Modern Ideas in 2017.

Claire McRee, assistant curator, Allentown Art Museum

Designs for the Loom: The Work of William Geskes

One of many skilled immigrants that helped make Paterson a booming silk manufacturing center, William Geskes (1877–1962) specialized in developing patterns to be woven on the Jacquard loom. While most of Paterson’s early-twentieth-century textile designers remain unknown today, this is not the case for Geskes. Over 500 of his vivid abstract and floral drawings are held at the Allentown Art Museum, offering a unique opportunity to better understand the American silk industry through the lens of an individual designer’s career.

Claire McRee is the associate curator at the Allentown Art Museum. She received her MA from the Bard Graduate Center in decorative arts, design history, and material culture, and specializes in the study of historic clothing and textiles. Her curatorial work includes exhibitions on William Geskes, as well as Sleep Tight! Bedcovers and Hangings from Around the World, Collecting Across Cultures: Japanese Textiles in the West, and the fashion exhibition New Century, New Woman.

He Zhang, professor of art history, William Paterson University

Silk Trading and Making in Western China and Central Asia in Early History

Dr. Zhang will introduce Central Asia and western China as part of the Silk Road, where documentation excavated at Khotan-Niya date the earliest transactions to the 3^rd century CE. She will also discuss silk making in Khotan, the well-known warp-died or ikat silk produced there from late historical to modern times, and the role of the Sogdians – the traders of the Silk Road.

Dr. He Zhang is professor of Art History at William Paterson University and is a Fulbright Scholar in Central and South Asia. Her specialty is Pre-Columbian Art. Her teaching responsibilities include Pre-Columbian Art, Asian Art, Silk Road Art, and a Western Art History survey. She grew up in Khotan, a little oasis town on the ancient Silk Road deep in the Taklamakan Desert in western China. Dr. Zhang has dedicated her recent research studies and publications to the study of archaeological artifacts from Central Asia, focusing on the interactive cultural relationships reflected in the arts between East and West.

Opening of Art Exhibitions
3:00 – 5:00 p.m.  |  University Galleries, Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts, William Paterson University

Exhibitions
A Durable Thread: The Silk Road from China to America
On View: August 29, 2022 – December 2, 2022

Co-Organizers
Dr. He Zhang, Professor, Art History, William Paterson University  |  Casey Mathern, Director, University Galleries, William Paterson University

Textile Arts from Guizhou, China
On View: October 17, 2022 – December 2, 2022

Co-Organizers
Jianshan Wang, Guizhou University of Commerce  |  Professor Zhiyuan Cong and Casey Mathern, William Paterson University

Hosts
Guizhou University of Commerce  |  Center for Chinese Art at William Paterson University  |  William Paterson University Galleries