Virtual: THINGS: A Global Conversation About Globalization

Tickets are FREE with a donation of any amount* https://10798a.blackbaudhosting.com/10798a/Things-A-Global-Conversation-about-Globalization
In 1545, over half a century before Jamestown and Plymouth, the Spanish discovered vast silver deposits at Potosí in the Andes Mountains. Potosí’s silver was mined by Indigenous peoples and African slaves and fueled trade, conflict, and cultural confluence at a truly global scale with tragic environmental and human costs. Silver flowed west to Europe where it financed the armies and navies of empire as well as into the shops of silversmiths were it was wrought into newly fashionable forms that were filled with tea, coffee, chocolate, and sugar from Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It has been estimated that silver from Potosí was used to make 90 percent of the world’s silver objects during the eighteenth century, such as MESDA’s coffeepot marked by Alexander Petrie. The silver from Potosí was also sent east to Asia in exchanged for silk, tea, spices, ceramics, and other exotic luxury goods. These Asian objects profoundly influenced the decorative vocabularies of Europe and the Americas in objects such as a Peruvian textile, likely woven in an Indigenous workshop, with motifs inspired by Chinese silks. Join Gary Albert and Dennis Carr for a conversation about trade and globalization 500-years in the making.
Daniel Ackermann is Interim Chief Curator at Old Salem Museums & Gardens and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States of America.
Stephen Jackson is Curator of Decorative Arts at the National Museum of Scotland
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Featuring:
Gary Albert
Director of MESDA Research & Adjunct Curator of Silver and Metals
Old Salem Museums & Gardens and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States of America
Dennis Carr
Chief Curator of American Art
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
San Marino, California, United States of America
THINGS: A Global Conversation is an online program that features curators, makers, and other experts from around the world in conversation with people and objects from the Old Salem and MESDA collection. You’re invited to join the conversation via Zoom. Our things may be old, but the lessons we can learn from them are as contemporary and relevant as ever! Check out the whole series at: https://mesda.org/program/things-a-global-conversation/
*We know many of our colleagues and friends are feeling the financial strain of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Therefore, we are asking you to pay what you wish to help us keep these informative conversations going. If you can’t make a donation right now, that’s OK too. To request a free ticket visit: https://mesda.org/things-a-global-conversation-free-ticket-request/