Virtual Tour

Today we think of the globe as being connected in an unprecedented way through digital technologies and the internet, but the cultures and civilizations of the world have been linked for millennia by the original World Wide Web: trade. Goods and ideas have circulated widely by land and sea, often beginning with valuable luxury objects. These were traded regionally and across continents, exemplified by Chinese silk in the Roman Empire and Roman glass in the contemporary Han Empire in China. As global markets developed, producers of these goods adapted to the wants and needs of sometimes distant buyers, and local makers worked to respond to the beauty, rarity, and value of these imports with their own creations.

While the conditions for an interconnected world have been created and energized by the darker forces of greed or imperialism—from the land empire of the Mongols to the sea empires of European and American powers—the objects themselves can reflect higher aspirations. Perhaps beginning with an attraction to the rare or “exotic”, the appreciation for and imitation of artwork from distant places points to an openness to new ways of seeing and to new ideas of what is beautiful or moving.

Artistic exchanges between cultures have long been described in terms of influence: Chinese influence on blue and white ceramics made in East or Southeast Asia; European influence on the use of linear perspective in Japanese woodblock prints; the influence of Islamic design on geometric and floral motifs in European art. But doesn’t the term influence suggest a one-way transfer? What about the makers for whom studying and picking and choosing and adapting of source material was a creative act? Perhaps the term inspiration better reflects the realities of this global dialogue.

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