Abstract
There has been a recent surge of scholarly attention on the Japanese cross-cultural portable artform known as “nanban” lacquerware. Made by Japanese artisans in the intersection of Portuguese Jesuit and Japanese interactions during the mid-seventeenth century, it was subsequently exported to transoceanic trade markets. Made from wood, highly embellished, and finished in lacquer, these objects combined the repertoires of traditional Japanese lacquerware decoration with Western utilitarian construction. Nanban lacquerware was desirable beyond Europe and went on to thrive in cosmopolitan capitals of colonial Latin America (1492-1821), affecting Spanish American expression and aesthetic taste of colonial patrons in both secular and religious sectors. It served as a catalyst for reformulated visual culture made in Latin America, which borrowed elements from Indigenous, European, and Asian practices.
Today, nanban lacquerware is scarcely visible in American museum exhibitions and are often attributed to either European or Japanese cultures, erasing their presence in the Americas. Moreover, public museum audiences remain uninformed of these influences due to poor representation within American museum settings. Thus, through a comparative case study that examines the inclusion or exclusion of nanban lacquerware exhibition in three major U.S.museum institutions (the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Denver Art Museum), this thesis argues that integrating nanban lacquerware in American/Latin American museum narratives, that match art historical scholarship, paves the way in telling a more comprehensive art historical account of Early Modern life and consumption in the Americas and contributes to resurfacing the connected histories of objects that were made and distributed in the crossroads of globalization.</p