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Virtual Student Guide Tour: World in a Vessel, with Kaitlin Hao

In the photomontage, a smiling young woman is dressed in a blue dress seemingly holding a bronze rectangular Chinese ritual food vessel, consisting of four legs and two handles. It is highly decorated on the outside and has a greenish color.
One of the works Kaitlin Hao will discuss is a highly decorative Chinese bronze ritual food vessel from the Zhou Dynasty. Photomontage courtesy of Alexis Boo ’22.

Tour

Kaitlin Hao ’21 explores how three historical vessels bring us into the worlds that created them, along with their legacies and their sense of the world yet to come.

First, she will discuss a ritual food vessel made in China in the 11th or 10 century BCE. She will then turn to a stoneware storage jar by David Drake, also known as Dave the Potter, an enslaved Black man in antebellum South Carolina. And finally, she will take a look at a Bauhaus teapot designed by Wilhelm Wagenfeld in Germany in 1924–25. Along the way, she will talk about cosmology, trade and violence, and intersections of art and industrialization.

This interactive tour will take place online via Zoom. To join, click the following link: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/92533000625 (free admission; no pre-registration required).

Virtual Student Guide Tours offer a chance to explore the collections of the Harvard Art Museums through the eyes of a Harvard student. Each tour is unique, so drop in and join the conversation!

Read these instructions on how to join a meeting on Zoom. For general questions about Student Guide Tours, email am_register@harvard.edu.

This program is supported by the Ho Family Student Guide Fund.

The Ho Family Student Guide Program at the Harvard Art Museums trains students to develop original, research-based tours of the collections. These tours, designed and led by Harvard undergraduates from a range of academic disciplines, focus on objects chosen by each Student Guide and offer a unique, thematic view into the collections.

The Harvard Art Museums are committed to accessibility for all visitors. For anyone requiring accessibility accommodations for our programs, please contact us at am_register@harvard.edu at least 48 hours in advance.