| ON DISPLAY
The Spring 2017 Duke House Exhibition
Beatrice Glow: Spice Roots/Routes
March 22 – June 19, 2017
In Beatrice Glow: Spice Roots/Routes, Glow traces environmental degradation, wealth inequality, and the ramifications of colonialism to their historical roots in the early modern spice trade. The pursuit of spices, which she calls “the petroleum of the 17th century,” motivated conquest and colonization across Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America. Trade routes like the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade ferried spices, silks, and other luxury goods from China and the Philippines to Spain via Mexico. Polygenetic objects like the manton de Manila, an embroidered silk shawl made in China and the Philippines that became a fashion staple among wealthy women in South America and Spain, expose these networks of influence. Glow’s Spice Route series takes compositional cues from popular manton de Manila embroidery patterns, navigating between and beyond individual cultural traditions. Each digital print highlights a plant or spice that was intertwined with the legacy of the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade between the 17th and 19th centuries, embodying the social and economic connections forged by colonial mercantilism.
In 1890, the pursuit of intoxicating aromatic plants produced another kind of empire: the American Tobacco Company. James B. Duke’s tobacco conglomerate dominated the American market and worked extensively with distributors in the United Kingdom and East Asia before being ordered by the Supreme Court to dissolve in 1911, having run afoul of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In 1909, Duke and his wife, Nanaline, commissioned the architect Horace Trumbauer to design a mansion on Fifth Avenue. Financed by the proceeds of the lucrative tobacco trade, the Duke House is an especially fitting site for Glow’s work, a meditation on the intersection of luxury, intoxication, and commerce.
This exhibition demonstrates how these recurring patterns of exploration and exploitation speak to one another and continue to resonate with contemporary concerns. By installing the Spice Route series in the former home of James B. Duke, we also reflect on how the Institute of Fine Arts—which has made the Duke House its home since 1958—can productively engage with the history of this site.
Organized by Kristen Gaylord and Kathleen Robin Joyce
With support from Jeong-A Kim and Matthew Lee
Susan Brown joined Cooper Hewitt in 2001, where she is Associate Curator of Textiles. She curated the highly successful exhibition Fashioning Felt, and edited the accompanying catalogue. She has co-curated numerous exhibitions, including Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance, Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay, Quicktakes: Rodarte, and David Adjaye Selects, and contributed essays to these publications along with Design Life Now: National Design Triennial and Making Design, the museum’s collections handbook. She recently published an essay in Alexander Girard: A Designer’s Universe, published by Vitra Design Museum. She has published articles in Hali, Surface Design, American Craft, TextilForum, and Modern Carpet and Textile. She also teaches in the Masters’ Program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies offered by Cooper Hewitt with Parsons/The New School for Design, as well as lecturing regularly for the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU.
Samantha De Tillio is a Brooklyn-based curator and writer. She is Assistant Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), where she specializes in post-war and contemporary craft. Some of her current research interests include performance in glass, and the intersection of craft and ecology. Her current exhibition Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS is on view through January 22, 2017, and her upcoming exhibition Judith Leiber: Crafting a New York Story opens April 4, 2017. She is also curating the exhibition Aaron Pexa: The Spoils of Annwn, which opens at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn on May 24, 2017. De Tillio has a Master of Arts in the History of Decorative Arts from the Smithsonian Associates with George Mason University, Washington, DC, a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University at Albany. She has guest lectured at the Bard Graduate Center and is a regular contributor to GLASS: The UrbanGlass Quarterly.
Artist bio
Beatrice Glow is the 2016–2017 Artist-in-Residence at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU at NYU and a Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics’ Council Member. She is the recipient of the Van Lier Visual Art Fellowship at Wave Hill (2015), was named a Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Finalist (2015), and served as Artist-in-Residence at the LES Studio Program at Artists Alliance Inc (2016). Recent projects include an installation at the Honolulu Biennial (2017), a lecture performance at the Venice Biennale (2015), and solo exhibitions at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Chile (2016), the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU (2016), and Wave Hill, New York (2015). She holds a BFA in Studio Art from NYU.
Thursday, May 11, 6:30pm
Empire of Smoke: the Legacy of TobaccoWatch online
Schedule
Smudging Ceremony at the entrance of the James B. Duke House
Introduction by curators Kristen Gaylord and Kathleen Robin Joyce
Opening Remarks by George Stonefish
"Spice Roots/Routes," a performance/lecture by Beatrice Glow
"Tobacco, tobacco! Sojourns, Symbols, and Slaves in the Shaping of the Modern World," a talk by Gunja SenGupta
George Stonefish is a First Nation member [American Indian] who is 1/2 Delaware; 1/4 Ottawa; 1/8 Ojibwa; 1/16 Pottawatomi; 1/16 Miami from Ontario, Canada. However, he was raised in NYC and has spent most of his life working for the First Nation [American Indian] community on both a national and local level. He started his activism at an early age when he went to the takeover of Alcatraz by First Nation students in 1969 with his Grandmother and Uncle. Since that time he has participated in the defense of Native Nations as a member of their warrior societies and by promoting their struggles though media, as he had the first weekly radio program on Native issues on WBAI 99.5 FM in NYC from 1978 to 1983. He was also raised in the tradition of his people, which has helped him to organize Native Nations’ governmental structures in preparation for federal recognition. He is a well-known traditional dancer and singer.
Beatrice Glow is the 2016–2017 Artist-in-Residence at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU at NYU and a Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics’ Council Member. She is the recipient of the Van Lier Visual Art Fellowship at Wave Hill (2015), was named a Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Finalist (2015), and served as Artist-in-Residence at the LES Studio Program at Artists Alliance Inc (2016). Recent projects include an installation at the Honolulu Biennial (2017), a lecture performance at the Venice Biennale (2015), and solo exhibitions at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Chile (2016), the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU (2016), and Wave Hill, New York (2015). She holds a BFA in Studio Art from NYU.
Gunja SenGupta is Professor and Chair of the History department at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Her current interests lie in 19th-century U.S. and slavery/abolition in the Indian Ocean; sectional conflict; African American and women's history. Her first book, For God and Mammon: Evangelicals and Entrepreneurs, Masters and Slaves in Territorial Kansas (1996), dealt with sectional conflict and consensus. In From Slavery to Poverty: The Racial Origins of Welfare in New York, 1840-1918 (2009), she explored welfare debates as sites for negotiating identities of race, gender, and nation. Her articles have appeared in numerous journals including the American Historical Review, Journal of Negro (African American) History, Civil War History, and Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Her current projects, co-authored with Awam Amkpa, and funded by Melon, Whiting, Wolfe, and Tow fellowships/grants, include one on 19th-century United States and slavery/abolition/empire in the Indian Ocean; and another on the history, memory and films of the Black Atlantic.
