Mei Mei
Rado (PhD 2018) is an art historian specializing in textiles and dress, and is the Associate Curator of Costumes and Textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). She
holds an MA from the University of Chicago and a BA from Nanjing University. Previously
she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Freer/Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian
Institution; a pre-doctoral fellow in the Department of European Sculptures and
Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and a residency research
fellow in the Division of Textiles at the Palace Museum, Beijing. Dr. Rado has
contributed curatorial work to a number of major fashion and textile
exhibitions, including
China:
Through the Looking Glass (Met, 2015) and
Interwoven Globe: Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800 (Met, 2013).
In addition, she curated the fashion exhibition
Shanghai Glamour: New Women, 1910s-40s at Museum
of Chinese in America in 2013. Among the grants and awards she has received are the Natalie Rothstein Award for Excellent Research (The Textile
Society, UK, 2013) and Student and
Young Professional Award (The Textile Society of America, 2014). She has published articles on a wide range of topics, most recently “The Lady’s Fan: Fashion Accessories
and Modern Femininity in Republican China” (in
Fashion, Identity, and Power in Modern Asia, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2018) and “Qing Court’s Encounters with European Tapestries: the
Tenture chinoise and Beyond” (in
Arachné: un regard critique sur l’histoire de la tapisserie, Presses
universitaires de Rennes, 2017).
What attracted you to
Bard Graduate Center’s program?
I had always wished to
study textiles and fashion within the art history discipline, but this is a
subject not taught anywhere in the regular art history doctoral programs in the
United States. BGC is an exception. I also did not like the traditional cultural
divisions in most art history programs, where students have to chose between
the rather arbitrary categories of ‘Western” art or “non-Western” art, confining
themselves within a specific geographical/cultural niche. BGC is a unique place
where the coursework and administrative procedure are not designed to impose such
divisions. I was interested in both European (primarily French) and East Asian
(primarily Chinese) textiles, dress, and decorative arts in the early modern
period. BGC had everything that suited my interests: substantial courses on
European fashion and textiles, a broad scope of courses on Chinese and European
decorative arts, a strong emphasis on object-based studies and close collaborations
with museums, and an academic environment in favor of transcultural and multi-disciplinary
research.
What was your focus of
study here, how did you find yourself involved with it?
I am most passionate about the eighteenth century, and this was my focus
here. I took almost all the courses that Michele Majer taught, including “History
of European Textiles” and “Mode and Manners in the Eighteenth Century
.”
I learned from Michele a solid object-based knowledge of textiles and
garments, and I was greatly inspired by her sensitivity to literature and
visual materials. These courses formed the foundation of my scholarship. I also
took various courses on Chinese and European decorative arts with François
Louis and Jeffrey Collins. The highlights of my study here were two courses
that helped shape my dissertation: “Western Luxuries and Chinese Taste” (François
Louis) and “Interwoven Globe” (Jeffrey Collins co-taught with Metropolitan
Museum of Art curators Melinda Watt and Amelia Peck).
You have been awarded
the prestigious Luce/ACLS postdoctoral fellowship. What are your plans for this
award?
From this summer onward, I plan to devote full-time to writing my book,
The Empire’s New Cloth: Western
Textiles at the Eighteenth-Century Qing Court, which is based on my dissertation. This book will
be the first to examine the forgotten history of European textiles at the Qing
court and Qing imperial products after European models. Focusing on luxury silk
brocades and woolen tapestries, I will show how their fresh visual styles,
materiality, and embedded spatial concept inspired new modes of political
display for the Qing emperor. The book will add nuances to the reciprocity and
dynamism in eighteenth-century global exchanges.
What
ultimately is your professional goal?
My
professional goal is two-fold. First, I wish to work as a textile and fashion curator
in a position that can really suit my global vision and allow me to bridge my
knowledge of both East and West. Second, through my writing, exhibitions, and
teaching, it is my long-term goal to promote studies of textiles and dress in the
art history discipline, drawing them in dialogues with other types of art and
refining research methodologies.
As part
of my effort to advance art historical research and teaching of textiles, this June,
I will co-teach a weeklong Chinese Object Study
Workshop at the Met’s Ratti Center with curator Pengliang Lu (also a BGC PhD
candidate) and Professor Yuhang Li. Sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and
intended for art history graduate students, this intensive course will train
students in the visual and technical literacy of textiles and examine
the multivalent roles of textiles in Chinese culture ranging from artistic
mediums, symbolic objects, to agents of social changes.
