SOAS, University of London

Looking Back at Britain's Pioneering Analyst of Early Southeast Asia, SOAS, University of London

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• published: 29 May 2014
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This lecture, which was the Inaugural Event of the Alphawood Foundation funded Southeast Asian Art Programme, took place on 27th May 2014. It was given by Hiram W. Woodward on a distinguished former SOAS scholar entitled 'Looking Back at Britain's Pioneering Analyst of Early Southeast Asia: the Work of H.G. Quaritch Wales'. The event was followed by a reception in the Brunei Suite and a view of the newly installed exhibition in the Foyle Special Collections Gallery 'Arts of Southeast Asia in the SOAS Collection' curated by Professor Anna Contadini. Hiram W. Woodward is one of the world's leading art historians of Southeast Asia. From 1986 to 2003 he was curator of the renowned Griswold art collection in the Walter's Art Museum in Baltimore, one of the two greatest collections of Southeast Asian art outside Cambodia and Thailand. His catalogue of the collection, published as The Sacred Sculpture of Thailand in 1997 by River Books, Bangkok, has achieved classic status and his 2003 handbook by Brill of Leiden, The Art and Architecture of Thailand, is now the standard work in the field. Woodward's work is celebrated for its sensitive examination of objects, its scrupulous documentation of their contexts and for its being bound together with an intellectual energy and imaginative verve that has produced a long series of discoveries and breakthrough interpretations. Further information on The Arts of Southeast Asia in the SOAS Collection can be found at http://www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/sea-art-soascollection/ The Arts of Southeast Asia in the SOAS Collection highlights the breadth of the region's cultures as represented in the SOAS collections. Curated by Professor Anna Contadini (School of Arts), the exhibition constitutes an important further stage in the "Treasures of SOAS Project", designed to highlight and encourage research of the SOAS collections. The objects displayed, many for the first time, have a wide chronological span, are diverse in nature, comprising manuscripts (written on bark, palm leaves, copper sheets and paper), textiles, sculptures, metalwork, ceramics and paintings, and reflect the variety of religions, cultures and languages to be found across this vast area. The objects come from Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, and range in date from circa 1000 BCE to the twenty first century.