Programme
This is a provisional programme. The final version is expected to be released in September.
Please note that any changes to the programme or order will not be notified individually.
Day 1
12 October (Monday)
08:30 – 09:00
Registration of Delegates at Hong Kong Maritime Museum
09:00 - 09:10
Opening Ceremony:
Welcome Speech - Chief Executive Officer & Director, Hong Kong Maritime Museum: Mr Richard KENDALL
09:10 - 09:20
Opening Ceremony:
Welcome Speech - Associate Head of College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Department of Chinese and History, City University, Hong Kong: Prof. CHING May Bo
09:20-09:25
Opening Ceremony:
Welcome Speech - General Manager of the Susan Chen Foundation, Mrs Eugenie Hardy
09:25-09:35
Photographs of invited guests, keynotes, speakers and moderators
09:35 - 09:55
Keynote Speech:
Moderator
Qiushi Distinguished Professor, Zhejiang University and Professor at the School of Art and Archaeology
09:55 - 10:15
Keynote Speech:
Moderator
Deputy Chief Curator and The H.A. Crosby Forbes Curator of Asian Export Art, Peabody Essex Museum
10:15 - 10: 45
Tea Break
10:45 - 12:35
Panel 1: European & Chinese Export Art Dialogue
This panel explores how export art shaped European views of China, while also revealing how Chinese and European artistic practices influenced the copying and interpretation of unfamiliar subjects. It considers the appeal of the exotic, including depictions of non-Chinese animals, created for European tastes, and asks what these images reveal through close analysis. The panel also examines the dialogue in the opposite direction, showing how Chinese makers responded to Western design, including how misunderstandings of Western architectural styles became part of Chinese export production.
Moderator
Associate Professor, Arts of Asia, IFIKK (Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas), Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo
12:35 - 14:00
Lunch & networking
14:00 - 15:50
Panel 2: Global Markets - Creation & Consumption
Chinese export art can be understood through collecting histories, maritime and Asia-Pacific circulation, auction-house scholarship, and the personal stories that shape how objects are valued and reinterpreted. Technical and iconographic study reveals the global materials, Asian trade networks, and production choices behind objects used in both consumer and ceremonial contexts. These exchanges were not one-way: British manufacturers adapted production, marketing, and trade strategies to compete in China. Chinese export art was not always a luxury commodity, serving as a tool of trade, diplomacy, negotiation, and influence within intra-Asian networks, as shown by examples from the region.
Moderator
PhD candidate, University of Sussex and Brighton & Hove Museums; Paper Conservator at Brighton & Hove Museums
Research Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese History and Culture, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
15:50 - 16:20
Tea Break
16:20 - 18:10
Panel 3: Visual Consumption & Object Adaption - Part 1
Trade and exchange shaped how objects were adapted, circulated, and reinterpreted across cultures. Chinese export lacquer screens show how Asian lacquerware was transformed within European royal interiors. Ming Kraak porcelain, including dragon-motif wares linked to imperial use, highlights the role of the Ming court and regional kilns in early global trade. Late Ming Jingdezhen poetry-decorated porcelains for Japan also reveal workshop adaptation, intermediary commerce, and market negotiation. Later, opium imagery, Qing handscrolls, and Canton export paintings helped construct visual narratives of China, pirates, and maritime memory across imperial, commercial, and global contexts.
Moderator
Associate Professor (Art and Architecture of Late Imperial China), Department of Chinese and History, City University of Hong Kong
Professor of Practice in the Department of Sociology (Arts, Culture, and Technology Programme) at Hong Kong Shue Yan University
18:10
End of Day 1
Evening
No event planned - free evening
Day 2
13 October (Tuesday)
08:30
Arrival at HKMM
09:00 - 10:30
Panel 4a: 7 x 10 min papers - Emerging Researchers
This emerging scholars panel showcase the breadth of new research being undertaken in the field. For instance, papers include adaption of objects for British use, and how European motifs were interpreted and incorporated into Chinese export designs. In fact, some of the motifs that travelled out of Asia contribute to reshaping cultural identities elsewhere. Finally, papers examine how export art ‘sold’ China to the British in the eighteenth century, and later that Chinese clothing styles and architecture become influential in early 20th century America.
Moderator
MA student in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture at Bard Graduate Center, New York
Project Coordinator for CEW-Hub and PhD researcher at the UCL Department of Information Studies, UK
Graduate student in History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art (HTC), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Panel 4b: 7 x 10 min papers - Emerging Researchers
This panel's papers examine animal-shaped ceramic tureens as products of two-way cultural exchange, Ernest Grandidier’s porcelain collection and its role in shaping French museum knowledge, and scientific reattribution of lacquerware through material analysis. Other studies reconsider Guangzhou as an active centre of textile innovation, explore the circulation and misattribution of the Qing court’s Manual of Birds in Japan, and show how Chinese export porcelain reached wider social groups in colonial Mexico. The panel also considers how Polish rulers acquired Chinese export art through alternative routes to express authority, prestige, and legitimacy.
Fourth-year Curatorial Track Art History PhD Candidate at the University of Delaware, USA
Master’s student, Department of Cultural Heritage and Museology at Fudan University
10:30 - 11:00
Tea Break
11:00 - 12:30
Panel 5: Commercial Competition & Regional Gateways
The speakers explore how competition and regional exchange shaped Chinese export art. Eighteenth-century painted silks show that Chinese, Indian, and European textile traditions interacted through intra-Asian exchange, challenging Eurocentric accounts of global fashion. Zhang Shen’s paintings and Japan-related activity reveal a Jiangnan-based export-painting network serving Japanese consumers, extending the field beyond Guangzhou and Western markets. The panel also considers how Yuan maritime trade carried Jingdezhen blue-and-white porcelain across the Maritime Silk Road, influencing ceramic production in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Finally, Blanc de Chine-style porcelains are reassessed through archaeological and historical evidence, distinguishing Dehua wares from southern Chinese imitations.
Moderator
12:30 - 14:00
Lunch & networking
14:00 - 15:30
Panel 6: Natural History and Architecture
Export art was not only decorative; it also became a medium for gathering and circulating knowledge. The 1796 Haichuang Temple album, commissioned by Manuel de Agote, shows how Canton export painting used architectural surveying, measurement, and observation to satisfy European curiosity about China. Robert Fortune’s botanical illustration project similarly expanded late Qing export painting by documenting northern Chinese plants for British and European cultivation. Other Chinese, South Asian, and Southeast Asian botanical and zoological paintings moved through Asian networks of production, trade, and patronage before reaching Britain. In contrast, nineteenth-century Canton famille rose porcelain appealed to American imaginings of Canton gardens and Chinoiserie rather than accurate garden culture.
Moderator
Assistant Professor (Chinese Art and Culture), Department of Chinese Literature, Hong Kong Chu Hai College
15:30 - 16:00
Tea Break
16:00 - 17:30
Panel 7: Visual Consumption & Object Adaption - part 2
This panel examines how Chinese export goods were adapted, reframed, and reinterpreted across cultural contexts. Eighteenth-century export paintings from Canton and Suzhou were transformed when trimmed, reordered, and inserted into European screens, creating hybrid objects shaped by chinoiserie taste. In the photographic era, Lai Afong adapted the visual conventions and commercial networks of export painting for the treaty-port studio market, changing how images of China were produced and consumed. Moreover, export images of Canton Hong merchants’ gardens combined observation, collage, and imagination, while late Qing circular mirrors show how local belief, ritual practice, visual tradition, and maritime trade transformed global materials into meaningful objects.
Moderator
Assistant Professor, Department of History, Academy of Chinese, History, Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University
Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural and Creative Arts, Education University of Hong Kong
17:30 - 18:00
Forum Closing Summary Report and Outlook
18:00
End of Symposium