Fellow's Talk

Curious Trade

MacMillan Reading Room, John Carter Brown Library

94 George Street

Directions

This event is free and open to the public. 

Native American artifacts including a bowl shown in two views and two knives

JCB Fellow Dana Leibsohn (Smith College, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow) presents "Curious Trade: Art and Commerce from America's Pacific Coast, 1780-1820." Along the Pacific coast of North America, foreigners and locals traded every day. European accounts and images - by James Cook, George Vancouver, and John Webber - represent some of the best known, yet most vociferously critiqued perspectives on this trade. This talk highlights indigenous objects that still survive from 1780-1820, asking how persuasively they can revise (if not actually de-colonize) European accounts and their seemingly-familiar ideas about art and commodity, luxury and curiosity.