Dawn Odell

Professor Odell teaches courses on the history of European and East Asian art, with a focus on art produced between 1600-1900. In her classes, she highlights the ways that art and artists move between regional, cultural, and social spaces around the world. She has a particular interest in art produced in port cities such as Canton, Jakarta, Cape Town, Manila, and Amsterdam, and the richness of the visual culture that was created in and traveled between these cosmopolitan locations. Whatever the course topic, she encourages students to discuss issues that I believe are as pressing today as they were in the past, among these: art crimes (theft, forgery, looting, iconoclasm); the qualities that make an artwork appear lifelike or “real” and the effect of that “reality” on the viewer; the impact of urban environments on a sense of self (how do architecture, signage, clothing, popular publications make an inhabitant feel at home or estranged?); and the history and ethical practices of museums. 

Her research is closely related to her teaching. Currently she is writing a book about an eighteenth-century Dutch East Indian Company merchant (A.E. van Braam Houckgeest). Van Braam traveled between cities in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas for much of his life. While living in China, he amassed a large collection of art that he eventually displayed at his Philadelphia residence, an estate he named “China’s Retreat.” Some objects from van Braam’s art collection survive today. Each chapter of her book addresses an art work van Braam owned and the port city in which that work was created. She focuses attention on the individuals (many of whom had been erased from the historical record) who created and gave meaning to these objects.

She is also co-editing a volume of essays, titled Nonextant Art: Studies in Speculative Art History, 1492-1800, with Reed College Professor Dana Katz. The volume builds upon ideas that Professors Katz and Odell first discussed while co-teaching a course on nonextant art offered jointly between Lewis & Clark and Reed.

Academic Credentials

PhD 2003, Art History, University of Chicago

MA 1993, East Asian Studies, Harvard University

BA 1986, Art History, Carleton College

Teaching

• Core 120: Art Crimes
• Art 100: Introduction to European and North American Art
• Art 150: Introduction to Chinese Art
• Art 230: Global Baroque
• Art 232: The Politics of Collection and Display (overseas program, next offered summer 2027)
• Art 361: Modern China
• Art 367: Nonextant Art (co-taught with Reed faculty)
• Art 493: Senior Seminar for Art History majors
• Art 451: Special Topics  - Night, Darkness, and Print Culture (upcoming 2027)

Research

“Chinese Porcelain Re-Made: A Projectile Point on the Northwest Coast of America,” (Re)Made in China: Material Disconnections, Art, and Creative Reuse, Anna Grasskamp, editor, de Gruyter, forthcoming 2025.

“Who or What Speaks in a Global History of Art?” Journal18, October 2024. https://www.journal18.org/7431

“How to Read a Chinese Painting in a European Book,” The Routledge Companion to Global Renaissance Art, Stephen J. Campbell and Stephanie Porras, editors, Routledge, 2024. 

Book Review: Global Objects: Toward a Connected History of Art, sehepunkte 24 (2024). https://www.sehepunkte.de/preview/37407

Book Review: Rarities of these Lands: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Dutch Republic, HNA Reviews, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art (2023). https://hnanews.org/hnar/reviews/rarities-of-these-lands-art-trade-and-diplomacy-in-the-dutch-republic/

“Ekphrasis and the Global Eighteenth Century: A.E. van Braam Houckgeest’s Collection of Chinese Art,” Ekphrastic Image Making in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700, Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture, volume 79, Arthur J. DiFuria and Walter S. Melion, editors, Brill, 2022.

“’Chinese’ Art in the Dutch East Indies,” Cultural Exchange Between Europe and Southeast Asia, Hazel Hahn, editor, University of Singapore Press, 2019.

“Delftware and the Domestication of Chinese Porcelain,” EurAsia Objects: Art and Material Culture in Global Exchange, 1600-1800, Monica Juneja and Anna Grasskamp, editors, University of Heidelberg, Series on Transcultural Studies, 2018.

“Depicting Desire: Chinese ‘Paintings of Beauties’ and Images of Asia in a Jesuit Text,” The Reflexive Imagery of Love in Artistic Theory and Practice, Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture, Walter Melion, Michael Zell, Joanna Woodall, editors, Brill, 2017.

“Chinese Painting and Dutch Book Arts,” The Primacy of the Image in Northern European Art, 1400-1700: Essays in Honor of Larry Silver, Debra Cashion, Henry Luittikhuizen, Ashley West, editors, Brill, 2017.

Book Review: Asia in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age, CAA Reviews, March 8, 2017, http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/2870#.WmuEJ62ZNsN 

Midwestern Arcadia: Essays in Honor of Alison Kettering (Editor) Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, https://apps.carleton.edu/kettering/, 2014.

“Porcelain, Print Culture and Mercantile Aesthetics” The Cultural Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century Porcelain, Alden Cavanaugh and Michael Yonan, editors, Ashgate, 2010.

“Public Identity and Material Culture in Dutch Batavia,” Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence, Jaynie Anderson, editor, Miegunyah Press, 2009.

“Creaturely Invented Letters and Dead Chinese Idols,” Idols in the Age of Art, Michael Cole and Rebecca Zorach, editors, Ashgate, 2009.

“Clothing, Customs and Mercantilism: Dutch and Chinese Ethnographies in the Seventeenth Century,” Picturing the Exotic 1550-1950, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, vol. 53, Waanders Publishers, Zwolle, 2003.

“The Soul of Transactions: Illustration and Johan Nieuhof’s Travels to China,” Tweelinge eener dragt: Woord en beeld in de Nederlanden (1500-1750), The Seventeenth Century, Vol. 12, No. 3, Verloren, 2001.

“Is THIS the Orient?” Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue, Vol. 5, No. 3, Brill, 1999.