Kristel Smentek

Dark blue and gold mounted porcelain vase
Rococo Exotic: French Mounted Porcelain and the Allure of the East
to

In mid eighteenth-century France, elaborately mounted Asian porcelains were at the height of fashion. More Far Eastern porcelains with gilt bronze mounts were produced in the period between 1740 and 1760 than at any other point in European history, and Paris was the center of this phenomenon.

Dark blue and gold mounted porcelain vase
First Special Presentation on Frick Porcelain in Fifteen Years
Link to video of Kristel Smentek lecture
Kristel Smentek: "Pierre-Jean Mariette: The Collector as Historian"

Kristel Smentek, Associate Professor of Art History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, delivers her lecture "Pierre-Jean Mariette: The Collector as Historian" on Friday, March 4, 2016. This lecture is part of the symposium A Demand for Drawings: Five Centuries of Collecting, co-presented by the Center for the History of Collecting at The Frick Collection and The Drawing Institute at The Morgan Library on Friday and Saturday, March 4-5, 2016.

Link to video of Kristel Smentek lecture
Kristel Smentek: "Chinoiseries for Beijing: An Eighteenth-Century French Gift to the Emperor of China"

October 21, 2015

In 1766 a set of chinoiserie tapestries designed by François Boucher was presented to the Qianlong Emperor on behalf of the French administration. This lecture examines the circumstances of the gift and the remarkable Sino-French exchange of art objects it initiated.