I watch one of the Five Colleges’ Center for East Asian Studies Archived Webinars: Ties that Bind: Peabody Essex Museum Asian Export Gallery. The webinar was originally given on July 24, 2020 by Karina H. Corrigan, the Curator of Asian Export Art at the museum. I plan on visiting the museum sometime this summer so I wanted a primer on what I would see. The museum developed out of a maritime club of sailors in Salem, MA that traveled around the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn and the primary pieces were artifacts they brought back from their travels, including many pieces from China. One of the things Karina spoke about was that the gallery was designed to disrupt the idea that ours is the first global era, and to show how interconnected the United States was with China even at the inception of the nation. She showed some really great examples of some of the luxury commodities that Americans got from China including tea, furniture, textiles, and china (porcelain), really reframing the whole idea of what the term “Made in China” has meant historically. 

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/1328370983527228172