Weintz Art Lecture Series: Maggie Cao

In the nineteenth century, whale ivory moved between US-based whalers, China trade merchants, and Indigenous Fijians. What if we consider this material as a kind of archive, on which whalemen logged their voyages and through which Indigenous people marked their social lives? This talk uses marine ivory to rethink temporality and timekeeping in colonial contexts. By examining Western and Indigenous ideas of time as well as the non-human time of whales, I propose that whale ivory can help us understand maritime encounters between cultures and across species.

Maggie Cao [pronounced "Chow"] is the David G. Frey Associate Professor of art history at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She studies the visual and material culture of globalization, particularly at the intersections of art, science, and economics in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century United States. She is the author of two books: The End of Landscape in Nineteenth-Century America (2018), and Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (2025). Her current research focuses on artistic engagements with ecological time. She is also one of the editors of the interdisciplinary journal Grey Room.

Image: Watch Stand, 1830s. Ivory, whale skeletal bone, mahogany, 19.7 x 30.5 x 12.7 cm. Nantucket Historical Association. Gift of Edwin Obrecht, 2003. Acc. No. 2003.21.1a-d.

Made possible by the J. Fred Weintz and Rosemary Weintz Art Lecture Series Fund, this series invites distinguished art historians from diverse concentrations each quarter to speak and engage with our students and the Stanford community, enriching the culture of art history and appreciation on campus and beyond.

VISITOR INFORMATION
This event is open to Stanford affiliates and the general public. Space for this program is limited; advance registration is recommended. Those who have registered will have priority for seating. Admission is free.

Oshman Hall is located within the McMurtry Building on Stanford campus at 355 Roth Way. Visitor parking is available in designated areas and is free after 4pm on weekdays. Alternatively, take the Caltrain to Palo Alto Transit Center and hop on the free Stanford Marguerite Shuttle. If you need a disability-related accommodation or wheelchair access information, please contact Julianne White at [email protected].

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