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Write About Asia Fall 2020 – Color in Asian Art: Materials and Meaning

Write about Asia was offered by the East Asia Resource Center at the University of Washington in conjunction with the Seattle Asian Art Museum’s (SAAM) Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas and its seasonal Saturday University Lecture Series. This series, titled Color in Asian Art: Materials and Meaning, looked at color in Asian artworks and investigated pigment histories, materials, and meanings. Sessions included color and vision in early Buddhist art, trade in turquoise, and much more.

About the SAAM Saturday University Lecture Series

Delve into new themes every season with a different speaker each week. Challenging, thought-provoking, and sometimes surprising, this long-running and always popular lecture series incorporates audience discussion as experts from around the world join us to share their insights on Asia throughout time.

About Write About Asia

Write About Asia was offered following each SAAM public lecture and facilitated by Mary Roberts. During the workshop, time was given to solitary writing in response to the morning lecture. The workshop nurtured educators as writers through self-reflection and group discussion, and took place after each lecture from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM.

Write About Asia was offered at no cost to current, in-service teachers, and was sponsored by the East Asia Resource Center (EARC) in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington with funding from a Freeman Foundation grant in support of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA). The event on October 24th was sponsored by the South Asia Center in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington as well.

Online procedure for each Saturday University Lecture + Write About Asia:

  • 10:00 to 11:30 AM, PST: participants attended the online Zoom SAAM lecture for 90 minutes.
  • Following the lecture, participants drafted a response to the lecture topic offline. This exercise took about 45 minutes.
  • 1:00 to 2:00 PM, PST: participants attended the online Zoom Write About Asia Group to share writing with other educators.

Please note that, since our office is in Seattle, WA, all times are Pacific Time.

Lecture Days and Titles

Oct 3, 2020, 10-11:30 am PST:  Dragon’s Blood and the Blood of Dragons

Oct 10, 2020, 10-11:30 am PST: The Colors of Space and Time: Recent Findings on the Materials and Techniques of Edo and Meiji Period Paintings and Prints

Oct 17, 2020, 10-11:30 am PST: Shades of Green and White 

Oct 24, 2020, 10-11:30 am PST:  Pigments and Artistic Interventions in Indian Painting

Oct 31, 2020, 10-11:30 am PST: Indigo in Two Fifteenth-century Chinese Paintings

Nov 7 , 2020, 10-11:30 am PST: Korean Culture in Five Colors 

Nov 14, 2020, 10-11:30 am PST: Colors of the Earth, Colors of the Sky: Bingata Textiles of Okinawa

Nov 21, 2020, 10-11:30 am PST: Turquoise: The Sky Blue Stone

Registration details

Important: Participation to the public lecture was mandatory and free for Write About Asia participants. Participants were asked register for the lectures following the links above. Participants received two different links to attend online the events, one for the Lecture coming from SAAM, and one for Write About Asia coming from us.

Benefits

  • Free participation to the SAAM public lecture.
  • Four free WA OSPI clock hours are available for each workshop. Participation to a minimum of two workshops and fulfillment of online discussion prompts were required in order to obtain clock hours.