Mr Thiers' China: collecting, thinking, classifying

By Timothy Brook, from British Columbia
Lecture on May 22, 2025, as part of the exhibition "A Passion for China. The Adolphe Thiers Collection"

Renowned sinologist and author of the celebrated Vermeer's Hat, Timothy Brook, explores Adolphe Thiers' Chinese collections. What methodology was employed by the politician in order to select these objects from such a distant cultural world? What was his perception of their meaning and history? Through the prism of these collections, Timothy Brook questions the narratives constructed in the Western imagination by these objects, revealing a complex dialogue between China and Europe.

Timothy Brook is a Professor of History and sinologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He held the Chair of Chinese History at the University of Oxford from 2007 to 2009. An expert in the Ming period (1368-1644), he was also a pionner in global history, forging connections between China and the rest of the world in his works. In his essays, including the renowned 'Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century at the Dawn of Globalisation' (2008), he presents his distinctive approach to history, characterised by a profound scholarly understanding of objects, anecdotes and details.

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