Spring Exhibitions Openings
Come celebrate our three newly opened exhibitions! The evening kicks off with a conversation between artist Rina Banerjee and the curators of Painters, Ports, and Profits. Then, get a closer look at the exhibitions with in-gallery talks.
About this program
How do artists respond to and actively influence global consumer culture? Join artist Rina Banerjee, Laurel Peterson and Holly Shaffer, cocurators of Painters, Ports, and Profits, and Yasufumi Nakamori, writer and curator of global modern and contemporary art, for a conversation about the intertwined histories of art and consumerism. Drawing together the YCBA’s current exhibitions, this discussion considers how artists across different eras and continents are not only influenced by but also contribute to cultural globalization and in doing so, challenge traditional art historical boundaries.
After the talk, drop into the galleries to look closely at a few key works with
• Anita Dey, Assistant Paper Conservator | Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850
• Lucinda Lax, Interim Head of the Curatorial Division and Curator of Paintings and Sculpture | Going Modern: British Art 1900–1960
• Brooke Krancer, Senior Curatorial Assistant | Rina Banerjee: Take me, take me, take me … to the Palace of love.
About Rina Banerjee
Born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, in 1963, Rina Banerjee spent her early childhood in London and Manchester, England, before moving to Queens, New York City, at the age of seven. She earned her master's degree in fine art in painting and printmaking from the Yale School of Art in 1995. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Freer Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, and the Musée Guimet, Paris. Selected group exhibitions include the Venice Biennale (2017); Prospect.4, New Orleans (2017); Busan Biennale, South Korea (2016); Asian Art Biennial, Taiwan (2015); Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Australia (2012); and the Whitney Biennial (2000). Her works are held in more than thirty private and public collections. She currently lives in New York City.
About Yasufumi Nakamori
Yasufumi Nakamori is a writer and curator of global modern and contemporary art. A former senior curator of international art at Tate, he was most recently the Vice President of Arts and Culture of the Asia Society and the Director of the Asia Society Museum, New York. Nakamori has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues and has taught graduate seminars at Hunter College, the City University of New York; and Rice University, Houston. He is a 2016 fellow of the Getty Leadership Institute, holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin, an MA in the history of art from Hunter College, and a PhD in the history of art from Cornell University.
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 cocurated 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.
