Women, Collecting, and Cultures Beyond Europe

This book examines collecting around the world and how women have participated in and formed collections globally. The edited volume builds on recent research and offers a wider lens through which to examine and challenge women's collecting histories. Spanning from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first (although not organized chronologically) the research herein extends beyond European geographies and across time periods; it brings to light new research on how artificiallia and naturallia were collected, transported, exchanged, and/or displayed beyond Europe. Women, Collecting and Cultures Beyond Europe considers collections as points of contact that forged transcultural connections and knowledge exchange. Some authors focus mainly on collectors and what was collected, while others consider taxonomies, travel, patterns of consumption, migration, markets, and the after life of things. In its broad and interdisciplinary approach, this book amplifies women's voices, and aims to position their collecting practices toward new transcultural directions, including women's relation to distinct cultures, customs, and beliefs as well as exposing the challenges women faced when carving a place for themselves within global networks. This study will be of interest to scholars working in collections and collecting, conservation, museum studies, art history, women's studies, material and visual cultures, Indigenous studies, textile histories, global studies, history of science, social and cultural histories.

Arlene Leis is an independent art historian who received her PhD from University of York.

Collecting to Collectingism: New Directions in Women's Transcultural Practices Arlene Leis Part 1: Points of Transcultural Exchange 1. Européenerie in Feminine Space: Qing Imperial Women and Collecting in China's Long Eighteenth Century Chih-En Chen 2. Coerced Contact: The Dzungar Court Costume of a Swedish Knitting Instructor Lisa Hellman 3. Trading Places: The Japanese Art Collection of O'Tama Kiyohara Ragusa Maria Antonietta Spadaro 4. Created to Gleam: Decorum, Taste and Luxury of Four Dresses from Viceregal Mexico Martha Sandoval-Villegas and Laura Garcia-Vedrenne Part 2: Natural History, Colonial Encounters, and Indigenous Histories 5. The Botanist Was a Woman: Classifying and Collecting on the First French Circumnavigation of the Globe Glynis Ridley 6. Pineapple Lady: Expertise and Exoticism in Agnes Block's Self-Representation as Flora Batava Catherine Powell-Warren 7. A Memsahib's 'Natural World': Lady Mary Impey's Collection of Indian Natural History Paintings Apurba Chatterjee 8. Women and Huipils: The Treasuring of an Indigenous Garment in New Spain Martha Sandoval-Villegas 9. Colonial Pantomime: Queen Marie I of Portugal's Human Cabinet of Curiosities Agnieszka Anna Ficek Part 3: Settlers, Immigrants and New Frontiers 10. Settler Botanists, Nature's Gentlemen, and the Canadian Book of Nature: Catharine Parr Traill's Canadian Wild Flowers Cynthia Sugars 11. Collecting Indian Art in Santa Fe: The Bryn Mawrters and the Politics of Preservation Nancy Owen Lewis 12. The Spectacle of Sponsoring an Ottoman Trousseau Gwendolyn Collaço 13. Las Bexareñas and their Wills: Women's Material Culture and Cataloguing Practices in Spanish San Fernando de Béxar Amy M. Porter Part 4: Recovery, Collaboration, and Repatriation 14. 'He Surely Existed': Women of the Early Folk Art Collecting Movement and Thomas W. Commeraw, Forgotten African-American Potter Brandt Zipp 15. Adjacency in the Collection Toby Upson 16. Collecting Fibre Arts in Arnhem Land Louise Hamby 17. From Women's Hands: Learning from Métis Women's Collections Angela Fey and Maureen Matthews