LSU art history professor William Ma discusses the Jesuit Arts and Crafts Workshop of Tushanwan in Shanghai. Free to attend.

In this talk, Professor Ma will share his research on the Chinese arts and crafts workshop of Tushanwan (T’ou-sé-wé) from the early decades of the twentieth century. Part of an orphanage in the Catholic community in Shanghai, the Jesuit workshop trained young Chinese men and women practical skills they would need in an increasingly urbanizing, Western and semi-colonial environment in the process of modernization. Through examination of the art products from the workshop (an oil painting of Our Lady of China, a set of pagoda models, carved wooden furniture,  photographs of Tushanwan, and the Chinese orphans themselves) and how they were presented domestically and internationally, Ma situates the workshops and their set of practices in the nexus of fine art and craft, nationalism and internationalism, empathy and sympathy, religiosity and profane practicality.