Patterns

Keeping up my routine of starting out every day with a few labels, I started one of a portrait of Lord Amherst and another of a watercolor of Akbar II holding court over the Mughal Empire in Delhi, both showing different views of trade interactions with the rest of the world. In Lord Amherst's portrait, he standst all and imposing in front of Western warehouses in Canton, an image commemorating his visit to Chine during which he refused to show deference to the emperor unless the same deferencew as given to a portrait of the British king, which Chinese officials refused to do. Alternatively, the Mughal image shows the British Resident, Sir Ochterlony, as subservient  and below the emperor and his blood, even if that was not politically true at that point in time. 

Every Tuesday the curators have a meeting, but much to everyone's surprise there was a media meeting going on in the normal room, which many of the curatorial meeting attendees were also attending, so we were displaced and also met with a few obstacles in people not attending. I suppose this happens in a larger institution sometimes though. At the meeting, we discussed the head curator's recent visit to London and some potential acquisitions in Japanese and Indian art she saw there, what to do with an entire exhibit worth of art abandoned for twenty years that was just finding its way back to its owner, and a few other odds and ends required to keep the museum going from a curatorial perspective. After the meeting, I continued to work on labels and research, broke for lunch, and then continued to do so in the afternoon, which was a bit monotonous, true, but still very interesting. The doc files are full of correspondence and history of the piece, one of the most interesting aspects of which is tracing the paper trail left behind by attempting to date the piece or figure out who is in it. This involves contacting many experts and museums from all over the world, tracing the piece back to its origin to discover its history. 

All in all, not a terribly eventful day, yet certainly none the less interesting because of it. At this point, I have written 14 labels, with 6 more objects left in the trade timeline. Granted, none of them have been picked apart and edited yet, so I certainly have more work today. However, this shows a potential for starting on more pieces for the show, which would expend my breadth into more parts of the show and give me a better understanding of the show than the slight cursory overview I have at the moment.