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In this annual lecture celebrating the legacy and interests of Drs. Isabel and Alfred Bader, Dr. Mei Mei Rado presents The Silk Road in Reverse: The Global Lives of Eighteenth-Century European Silks. In anticipation of what would have been Isabel Bader’s 100th birthday on 1 November, this free public lecture explores the fascinating and unexpected ways European textiles circulated during the early modern period.

Dr. Mei Mei Rado is Assistant Professor of Decorative Arts at Bard Graduate Center. Her research focuses on textiles, dress, and decorative arts in China and France from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, especially on Sino-French exchanges. Previously she was Associate Curator of Costume and Textiles at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and she also held research positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris, and the Palace Museum, Beijing. Her recent book The Empire’s New Cloth: Cross-Cultural Textiles at the Qing Court (Yale University Press, 2025) was a finalist for College Art Association’s 2026 Charles Rufus Morey Award and a winner of the Louis Gottschalk Prize awarded by the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies.

Curated by Dr Suzanne van de Meerendonk, Bader Curator of European Art. This program is supported by the Bader Legacy Fund and presented in partnership with the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts.