A lecture series, free and open to the public, in which distinguished speakers will discuss some
of the major aspects of the history and culture of the Silk Road. The lectures are intended for
general audiences, although each speaker brings particular expertise to the material. Lectures
will be held in the auditorium of the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park at 7 PM on
Thursdays. Note that the first four lectures are every other week, but the last two lectures
are on successive Thursdays. Since the museum is open Thursday evenings, there will be
opportunities prior to and following the lectures to see examples of the arts of the Silk Road
which are on display in its galleries.
| Th., Mar. 28, 2002 |
"What is the Silk Road? An Overview of Its History and Cultures," by Prof. Daniel Waugh of the
University of Washington.
A specialist on early Russia, Prof. Waugh teaches a variety of courses
on the history and culture of Eurasia, including a course specifically on the Silk Road. He has
traveled extensively along the Silk Road and will illustrate his talk in part with stunning
photographs taken during those travels. He is the principal coordinator for Silk Road Seattle. |
| Th., Apr. 11, 2002 |
"Soghdia and its Culture," by Dr. Boris Marshak, the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg,
Russia.
Dr. Marshak is Head of the Central Asian and Caucasus section of the Oriental Division
of the Hermitage, which contains some of the most important collections of Silk Road art and
artifacts. He has lectured frequently in the United States; during spring semester 2002 he will
be a visiting professor at Yale University. He is widely recognized as one of the leading
experts on the culture of Sasanian Iran and on the Soghdians, whose cities occupied a key
position in the center of the Silk Road during the middle of the first millennium of the Common
Era. Dr. Marshak will draw upon his extensive experience supervising archaeological excavations
in Central Asia. |
| Th., Apr. 25, 2002 |
"Come Flying! Images of Buddha at Dunhuang" by Roderick
Whitfield, Percival David Professor of Chinese and East Asian Art, School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London.
The lecture will trace the aerial and earthbound roots of Buddhism and Buddhist images, as they
were transmitted from India to China. The epithet of feilai (come flying) or chengyun
(cloud-borne) recurs frequently on Tang (618-906) and Five Dynasties (907-960) mural
representations of Buddhist images in the Mogao or "Peerless" cave-temples of Dunhuang, the
most important oasis on the Silk Road in the border regions of north-west China. Other, still
earlier images, lacking such epithets, have their own stories to tell of their Indian origins,
and of their journeys across the heart of Asia.
Prof. Whitfield is a distinguished expert on the Buddhist art of the Silk Road. For many years
he was Assistant Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities, The British Museum, with
particular responsibility for Chinese painting, including the Aurel Stein Collection. His major
publications include: The Art of Central Asia: The Stein Collection at the British Museum
(1982-1985); Dunhuang, Caves of the Singing Sands: Buddhist Art from the Silk Road (1995), and
The Art of Central Asia: The Pelliot Collection in the Musée Guimet (1996). His lecture will
focus on Dunhuang, a World Heritage site which was an important center on the Silk Road that
preserved a remarkably extensive record of the culture. |
| Th., May 9, 2002 |
"Cultural Exchange Under the Mongols," by Prof. Thomas Allsen, Department of History, State
College of New Jersey.
In the thirteenth century the Mongols created a vast, transcontinental empire that intensified
commercial and cultural contact throughout Eurasia. From the outset of their expansion the
Mongols identified and mobilized artisans, technicians and scholars and moved them from one
cultural zone of the empire to another. The result was an extensive traffic in specialist
personnel and human talent between East and West.
An expert on the history of the Mongol Empire, Prof. Allsen will be drawing upon his innovative
research into cultural exchange across Eurasia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. His
publications include: Mongol Imperialism: The Policies of the Grand Qan Möngke in China, Russia
and the Islamic Lands (1987). Commodity and Exchange: A Cultural History of Muslim Textiles in
the Mongol Empire (1997); Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (2001). The last of these books
has been characterized as "a work of great erudition which crosses new scholarly boundaries in
its analysis of communication and culture in the Mongol empire." |
| Th., May 30, 2002 |
"Courtly Art and Cultural Transmission in Western Asia in the 13th - 15th Centuries," by Dr.
Linda Komaroff, Head, Department of Ancient and Islamic Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
This lecture will consider some of the remarkable cultural achievements in western Asia that
followed on the heels of the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, and the Turco-Mongol
conquests of the late 14th century. In each instance, periods of unfathomable destruction were
succeeded by periods of brilliant creativity in the visual arts, under the Ilkhanid (1256-1353)
and Timurid (1370-1507) dynasties, respectively. This creativity was fostered in part through
contact with East Asian art and artistic ideas that helped to infuse and invigorate Iranian art
with new forms, meanings, and motifs, and a sophisticated awareness of art as a means of
political expression, which were further disseminated throughout the Islamic world.
Dr. Komaroff was previously at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and, in addition to
her current position at LACMA, she holds a visiting professorship at UCLA. She is the recipient
of many awards for her work; her publications include The Golden Disk of Heaven: Metalwork of
Timurid Iran (1992); Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Historical Context
(1992); and Islamic Art at the Los Angeles County Museum (1998). |
| Th., June 6, 2002 |
"New Journeys Down Old Roads: 20th-Century Impressions of the Silk Road," by Dr. Karil
Kucera, University of Washington.
The lands that comprise the once famous "Silk Road" have lived on in
history's collective imagination as alternately exotic and erotic, or
violent and dangerous. In the last century, images created of the areas
stretching to the west from China and to the east from Constantinople have
served varying agendas stretching from glorification to subjugation, and
its accompanying outcries of indignation. This lecture will look at
largely the eastern and Central Asian portions of the Silk Road. The
focus will be on the various ways in which both artist and historian have
portrayed both the sites along this old trade route, as well as the route
itself. Drawing on text and image from an assortment of media, the
presentation will attempt to recreate visions of what the Silk Road has
meant over the past century to both those who traveled it, and to those
who only dreamed of traveling it. The goal here is to arrive at an
understanding of what the "Silk Road" has come to mean as a time and place
at the end of the 20th-century, and how it might be viewed within the new,
faster world of the 21st-century.
Dr. Kucera recently completed her Ph.D. dissertation on "Text and Image at Baodingshan," an
important Buddhist cave site in China. She has taught at several universities, including The
University of Oregon, Dartmouth College, and the University of Kansas. She is currently a
lecturer in art history at the University of Washington, where she will be offering a course on
the Arts of the Silk Road during Spring Quarter 2002. |