Building the Freer|Sackler Southeast Asian Ceramic Collection by Louise Allison Cort

4pm Sunday, 16 December 2018
82 Cairnhill Road
Singapore 229684

The Freer|Sackler Museum in Washington, D.C., has an extensive collection of ceramics, some of them having once been in the collection of SEACS’ very first President, Helen Ling, who purchased it from the collection of a Danish collector (Jacob E. Melchior) in China during China’s turbulent Republican years. Other donors to the Museum’s Southeast Asian ceramic collection include former SEACS members Abu Ridho and John Shaw. Louise Allison Cort (Curator for ceramics at the Freer|Sackler) has kindly prepared a richly-illustrated talk on the Museum’s Southeast Asian collection for SEACS, which will be delivered on her behalf by SEACS’ current President Patricia Bjaaland Welch at 4.pm.

After the talk at 5.15pm, there will be a SEACS end-of-year celebration and Holiday Cheer in the form of light refreshments and an array of beverages (both still and bubbly) at the same venue. If unable to attend the above talk, SEACS members are welcome to drop in and say ‘hello’ before 7pm and raise a glass with fellow SEACS members. An exciting 50th Anniversary year is almost upon SEACS, with many activities in the 2019 schedule, such as study tours to Thailand and China, symposiums and more.

About Louise Allison Cort

Louise Cort is Curator for Ceramics at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, at the Smithsonian Institution. Her interests include historical and contemporary ceramics in Japan, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, Japanese baskets and textiles, and the Japanese arts of tea (chanoyu). In 2012 she received the thirty-third Koyama Fujio Memorial Prize for her research on historical and contemporary Japanese ceramics, and the Smithsonian Distinguished Scholar Award.

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This talk is free and open to SEACS members, their families and friends. The program will commence promptly at 4pm and end by 7pm. Parking is very difficult along Cairnhill Road, and members are encouraged to come by public transport or taxi. The closest MRT station is Orchard or Newton, which is only a 10-minute walk away from this event venue.