Laurel Peterson, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings, YCBA, and Holly Shaffer, Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University, in a conversation moderated by Romita Ray, Associate Professor, Art History, Syracuse University
Join exhibition co-curators Laurel Peterson and Holly Shaffer to learn more about Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850, which draws primarily from the YCBA’s rich collection of works of art produced across Asia. Moderated by Romita Ray, a specialist in the art of the British Empire in India, this program provides an overview of the exhibition with a focus on the remarkable paintings and drawings of plants and animals in the show. These works highlight the exchange of artistic ideas among Indian, Chinese, and British artists, and the circulation of papers and pigments during a period ruthlessly driven by commerce and the imperial ambitions of the East India Company.
After the talk, drop into the galleries to look closely at a few key works in the exhibition with the co-curators and Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor, Department of the History of Art.
About Laurel Peterson
Laurel O. Peterson is the Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Yale Center for British Art, specializing in British art of the long eighteenth century, with a particular focus on the history of drawing. Prior to her role at the YCBA, she was the Moore Curatorial Fellow at the Morgan Library & Museum, where she organized the exhibition John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal in 2019 and co-curated Architecture, Theater, and Fantasy: Bibiena Drawings from the Jules Fisher Collection in 2021. Peterson has contributed essays to Master Drawings and Journal18. Her current projects for the YCBA include the 2027 exhibition Gwen John: Strange Beauties and a forthcoming exhibition on Michel Jean Cazabon.
About Holly Shaffer
Holly Shaffer is an Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Brown University. Her research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century arts in Britain and South Asia, and their intersections through empire. Her book, Grafted Arts: Art Making and Taking in the Struggle for Western India, 1760–1910 (2022), was awarded the Edward C. Dimock Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities and a Historians of British Art Book Prize. In 2011, she curated Adapting the Eye: An Archive of the British in India, 1770–1830 at the YCBA. She has published numerous essays and is currently working on a second book on food, art, and the cultivation of taste.
About Romita Ray
Romita Ray is Associate Professor of Art History at Syracuse University, where she serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies in Art History. She is the author of Under the Banyan Tree: Relocating the Picturesque in British India (2013) and The Eternal Masquerade: Prints and Paintings by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst (1890–1978) from the Jacob Burns Foundation (2006). Ray has published widely on the art of the British Empire in India and has curated numerous exhibitions. She is currently working on a book on tea, tentatively titled Leafy Wonders: Art, Science, and the Aesthetics of Tea in India. With professors Richard Coulton and Jordan Goodman, she is co-editing Encountering Tea: Histories and Objects, 1650–1850 (2027).
