Research and publication overview
My research is concerned with art, craftsmanship, material culture and transcultural exchange in Europe and Asia from the early modern period to the present with a special focus on China. Publications include Objects in Frames: Displaying Foreign Collectibles in Early Modern China and Europe (2019; second edition 2022) and Art and Ocean Objects of Early Modern Eurasia. Shells, Bodies, and Materiality published in the Amsterdam University Press series Connected Histories in the Early Modern World in 2021. I co-edited EurAsian Matters (2018) and Transformative Jars (2022) and am currently working on my third monograph and an edited volume on creative strategies of recycling in Chinese art and material culture. Articles have been published in Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, Renaissance Studies, World Art, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin and elsewhere.
I was a Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Research Center “global dis:connect” at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich in 2022–2023 and a Visiting Post-doctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin in the summer of 2015. My work has been supported by fellowships from a number of institutions including the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel and the International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden University.
My curatorial work includes exhibitions with a focus on art and creative strategies of upcycling and I was the Principal Investigator for two projects funded by the Research Grants Council Hong Kong, Upcycling Hong Kong: The Circular Economy of Recycling Material Culture in Pearl River Delta Jewelry Design (2020–2022, co-investigator: Ching Sze-Yin Cicy) and Ocean Objects: Maritime Material Culture in Southern China from a Global Perspective (2018–2020).
Before joining the University of Oslo in 2023, I held positions at the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews, the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University and the Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe in a Global Context at the University of Heidelberg. I received my doctoral degree in 2013 from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
Academic interests
Art and ecology, material culture (especially maritime material culture), creative strategies of recycling, museum studies and transcultural histories of collecting, postcolonial studies, history and theory of crafts, gender studies, historiography of art, with a focus on art and material exchange between Europe and Asia (especially China) from the early modern period to the present.
Teaching and supervision
I have co-supervised PhD students at the University of St Andrews and Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Visual Arts and devised and taught more than a dozen courses at undergraduate or graduate level.
At the University of Oslo, I teach the Art and Ecology course (spring term 2024).
Awards
2022: Golden Dandelion Seed Award, Sustainability in the Curriculum Committee, University of St Andrews, for development of teaching module AH4178 Art and the Ocean: Aesthetics, Materiality, and Ecology, ca. 1500–1800
2020: Hong Kong Baptist University President’s Award for Outstanding Performance as a Young Researcher 2019–2020
2014: Short-listed for the Jan van Gelderprijs 2014
Appointments
2019– Subject editor, online review journal SEHEPUNKTE
2019– Member, editorial board, Journal for the History of Knowledge
2019– Member, editorial review board, Global Epistemics book series
Selected publications
Monographs
Art and Ocean Objects of Early Modern Eurasia. Shells, Bodies, and Materiality, Connected Histories in the Early Modern World. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021.
Reviews:
1. Marsely Kehoe in West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 30,1 (2023): 108-110.
2. Marika Keblusek in Renaissance Quarterly 76,3 (2023): 1076-1078.
3. Roderich Ptak in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 86,2 (2023): 382-383.
4. Kyoungjin Bae in CAA Reviews (June 2023).
Objects in Frames: Displaying Foreign Collectibles in Early Modern China and Europe. Berlin: Reimer, 2019; second edition 2022.
Reviews:
1. Andrea Bubenik in Parergon 39,1 (2022): 281.
2. Ricarda Brosch in Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 117,1 (2022): 75-76.
3. Paul Duro in Art History 44,5 (2021): 1080–1083.
4. Leah Clark in Oxford Art Journal (2021): 1–5.
5. Elisa Frei in Reformation & Renaissance Review (2021): 1–2.
6. Anne Gerritsen in Journal of Early Modern History 24, 6 (2020): 568–570.
7. Sabine Du Crest in SEHEPUNKTE 20, 6 (2020).
8. Eva Ströber in Aziatische Kunst 50, 3 (2020): 87–91.
9. Ulla Houkjær in keramiske noter 50 (2019).
Edited Volumes
Anna Grasskamp, Monica Juneja, eds. EurAsian Matters: China, Europe, and the Transcultural Object, 1600–1800, Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Cham: Springer, 2018.
Anna Grasskamp, Anne Gerritsen, eds. Transformative Jars: Asian Ceramic Vessels as Transcultural Enclosures, Material Culture of Art and Design. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
“Reframing the History of Proletarian Art: Sino-Japanese Relations in Modern Woodcut Print Culture”, Journal of Art Historiography 29 (forthcoming December 2023), 27 pages.
Carolin Alff, Anna Grasskamp, “Cupids of Color: Gods of African Appearance at Sixteenth-Century German Courts,” Renaissance Studies 37, 1 (2023): 6–35.
“Spirals and Shells: Breasted Vessels in Sixteenth-Century Nuremberg,” Res: Anthropology and aesthetics 67/68 (2016/17): 146–163.
“EurAsian Layers: Netherlandish Surfaces and Early Modern Chinese Artefacts,” The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 63, 4 (2015): 363–398.
Anna Grasskamp, Annette Löseke, “Asia in Your Window Frame: Museum Displays, Window Curators and Dutch-Asian Material Culture,” World Art 5,2 (2015): 223–248.
“Metamorphose in Rot: Die Inszenierung von Korallenfragmenten in Kunstkammern des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts,” Tierstudien 4 (2013): 13–23.
Editorially Reviewed Journal Articles
“枝丫与骨骼：中国明代珊瑚变形记 [Branches and Bones: The Metamorphosis of Ming Dynasty Coral],” Zijin Cheng (Forbidden City Magazine) 346, 11 (2023): 68-87.
“框架自然：從清宮中的三件珊瑚藝品論起 [Framing Nature: Three Coral Objects from the Qing Imperial Collections in Context],” Gugong Wenwu Yuekan [The National Palace Museum Monthly of Chinese Art] 399 (2016): 108–117.
Anna Grasskamp, Wen-ting Wu, “We Call Them ‘Ginger Jars’: European Re-framings of Chinese Ceramic Containers,” theme issue edited by Eline van den Berg and Christiaan Jörg, Vormen uit Vuur 232, 3 (2016): 64–71.
Annette Löseke, Anna Grasskamp, “Framing ‘Asia’: Results from a Visitor Study at the Rijksmuseum’s Asian Pavilion,” Aziatische Kunst 44, 2 (2014): 49–55.
Book Chapters
“The Matter of Cultural Exchange: China, Europe, and Early Modern Material Connections,” in Cambridge Handbook of Material Culture Studies, edited by Lu Ann De Cunzo and Catharine Dann Roeber, 269–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Sooyoung Leam, Anna Grasskamp, “Jar Interventions: Ceramic Containers as Disobedient Objects in Contemporary Asian Art,” in Transformative Jars: Asian Ceramic Vessels as Transcultural Enclosures, edited by Anna Grasskamp and Anne Gerritsen, 232–257. London: Bloomsbury (Material Culture of Art and Design), 2022.
Anna Grasskamp, Anne Gerritsen, “Transformative Jars: An Introduction”, in Transformative Jars: Asian Ceramic Vessels as Transcultural Enclosures, edited by Anna Grasskamp and Anne Gerritsen, 1-10. London: Bloomsbury (Material Culture of Art and Design), 2022.
Anne Gerritsen, Anna Grasskamp, “Concluding Thoughts on Transformative Jars: Asian Ceramic Vessels as Transcultural Enclosures,” in Transformative Jars: Asian Ceramic Vessels as Transcultural Enclosures, edited by Anna Grasskamp and Anne Gerritsen, 258-262. London: Bloomsbury (Material Culture of Art and Design), 2022.
“Shells, Bodies, and the Collector’s Cabinet,” in Conchophilia: Shells, Art, and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe, edited by Marisa Bass, Anne Goldgar, Hanneke Grootenboer, Claudia Swan, 49–74. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2021.
“Koralle Unterwegs: Euro-asiatische Netzwerke und die materielle Kultur des Buddhismus,” in Things on the Move - Dinge Unterwegs. Objects in Early Modern Cultural Transfer, edited by Marília dos Santos Lopes and Ulrike Gleixner, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, 33–53. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2021.
“Unpacking Foreign Ingenuity: The German Conquest of ‘Artful’ Objects with ‘Indian’ Provenance around 1600,” in Ingenuity in the Making: Matter and Technique in Early Modern Art and Science, edited by Richard Oosterhoff, José R. Marcaida and Alexander Marr, 213–228. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2021.
Chapter on the art historian Anneliese Bulling (1900–2004), in Kunsthistorikerinnen, 1910-1980. Theorien, Methoden, Kritiken, edited by Lee Chichester and Brigitte Sölch, 258–265. Berlin: Reimer, 2021.
Anna Grasskamp, Lee Wing Ki, Wong Suk Mei, “Euro-American Artefacts as Asian Heritage: Lantern Slides of the China Inland Mission at Hong Kong Baptist University Library,” in A Million Pictures: Magic Lantern Slide Heritage, edited by Sarah Dellmann und Frank Kessler, KINtop Studies in Early Cinema 6, 89–102. New Barnet: John Libbey, 2020.
“Branches and Bones: The Transformative Matter of Coral in Ming Dynasty China,” in Gems in the Early Modern World: Materials, Knowledge, and Global Trade, 1450–1800, edited by Michael Bycroft and Sven Dupré, Europe’s Asian Centuries, 118–147. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018.
Monica Juneja, Anna Grasskamp, “EurAsian Matters: An Introduction,” in EurAsian Matters: China, Europe and the Transcultural Object, 1600–1800, edited by Anna Grasskamp and Monica Juneja, Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context, 3–33. Cham: Springer, 2018.
“The Frames of Reflection: ‘Indian’ Shell Surfaces and European Collecting, 1550–1650,” in Objets frontière, edited by Sabine du Crest, 69–83. Paris: Boccard, 2018.
“反射の枠組み ー１５５０年から１６５０年における "インド"の貝殻表面 とオランダの収集” [The Frames of Reflection: ‘Indian’ Shell Surfaces and European Collecting, 1550–1650], in Dutch Seventeenth Century Art and “Asia”, edited by Akira Kofuku, 205–225. Tokyo: Chuo-Koron Bijutsu, 2018.
“Frames of Appropriation: Foreign Artifacts on Display in Early Modern Europe and China,” in Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges between China and the West, edited by Petra ten Doesschate Chu and Ding Ning, Issues & Debates, 29–42. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2015.
“Transcultural Margins: Pictorial Framing Strategies in Sino-European Print Culture, 1580–1680,” in FRAMINGS, edited by Ellen Harlizius-Klück, Slavko Kacunko and Hans Körner, 421–444. Berlin: Logos, 2015.
Other
Exhibition catalogue contribution: “The Fabric of Exchange,” in Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy, exhibition catalogue, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 37–39. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022.
Book review: Julius von Schlosser, edited by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, translated by Jonathan Blower, Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance: A Contribution to the History of Collecting, Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2021, caa.reviews, http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/3865#.YO-4SkARWUk (June 2021).
Book review: Christiane Hertel, Siting China in Germany: Eighteenth-Century Chinoiserie and Its Modern Legacy (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019), 21. Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual 2, 3 (2021): 201-208.
Exhibition review: “Hungry Ghosts meet Ming Bling: Re-Framing 50 Years in the Life of an Empire,” International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter 70 (2015): 42.
Conference report: “Living Legacies. The History of East Asian Art Reconsidered,” International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter 55 (2010): 42.
Online Publications:
- https://thingsthattalk.net/zone/UpCyclingHongKong
- https://thingsthattalk.net/zone/oceanobjects
Published
Oct. 20, 2023 2:06 PM
- Last modified
Dec. 1, 2023 8:27 PM
