Thoth with Wadjet-eye

Amuletic Pendant

Black-Figure Eye Cup: Iris and Satyrs (A, B); Gorgoneion (I)

Bead

Bangle

Bird-shaped Vessel

"Tensifa" (Ceremonial Scarf used to Decorate the Mirror of Bride's Chamber)

Garment

Necklace with Coral Beads

Penca de Balangandã

Cover

Madonna and Child Enthroned

Prayer Bead with Christ and Saint James

Khamsa Standard

La Mano Poderosa

Pendant Jewel

Bronze phallic amulet

Pendant

Chess or Game Piece

Horse Tack Ornament

Chess Piece, Pawn

Carnelian ring stone

Kohl Flask

Cowrie shell

Ring

Painted Dado Panels

Ball-Playing Ceremony: the king before a goddess, possibly Hathor

Sword (Kilij) with Scabbard

Terracotta gorgoneion antefix (roof tile)

Gaming Piece

Button or Bead

Talismanic Scroll

Spindle Whorl

Flute

Head of a Grotesque

Ring Bit

Earring, One of a Pair

Healing Scroll

Gold earring with glass head pendant

Virgin and Child

Eye of Horus (Wedjat) Amulet

Madonna and Child

Wadjet-eye Amulet

Rattle, Whistle, and Bells

For millions of people across the globe, the nazar symbol provides powerful protection against the evil eye. While people from many different cultures associate the gaze with the power to both inflict and shield people from evil, the dot-in-circle eye motif most likely originated in the ancient Mediterranean and Southwest Asia. The evil eye is a kind of curse often believed to be conferred through envious gazes. Within this broader tradition, people use a number of motifs including the eye (nazar), the open hand (khamsa or mano poderosa), phallic and vulva imagery (mano figa), and bird figures as an interlocking symbolic language of protection. Precious materials, such as turquoise and coral, are also commonly used to boost the objects' protective powers. The ancient Mediterranean use of the eye motif is evident in objects such as the Wedjat (Eye of Horus) from Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Greek drinking cup from the 500s BCE, included in this collection. Across thousands of years, this constellation of apotropaic (protective) symbols spread globally with trade and conquest, syncretizing with multiple religious and magical traditions. For example, this collection includes a 19th century Penca de Balangandã, a type of precious protective object among many enslaved Afro-Brazilian people. The Penca de Balangandã combines, among many charms, a mano figa (with likely Mediterranean roots) and a fish symbolizing the orisha Lemanjá, a powerful candomblé deity of Yoruba origin. The significance of the motifs included here varies across time and place. At some moments, and in some regions, they may be purely decorative. For example, art historians argue that a Chinese bead from the fifth century BCE likely features the eye as an aesthetic motif adopted from trade objects, rather than as a protective symbol. Today, many people who purchase nazar objects from commercial jewelers have relationships with the symbol ranging from pure decoration to deep belief. In contexts where people value apotropaic objects for their cultural and/or magical impact, they are often used for good fortune during times of transition. For example, the 19th century Yemeni coral necklace, featured here, likely protected a bride or expectant mother.

Protection from the Evil Eye

Interieur van Crystal Palace in Londen

Great Exhibition, London, England, 1851

Textile

Interieur van de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Steam Engine near the Grand Transept, Crystal Palace

Gezicht op het Crystal Palace in Londen

Glazen fontein van Follett Osler tentoongesteld op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in Londen in het Crystal Palace

Locomotief van Crampton op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Pair of Percussion Target Pistols Made for Display at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, 1851

Gezicht op het Crystal Palace in Londen tijdens de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851

Interieur van het Crystal Palace tijdens de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851

Scheepsmotor op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Weefgetouw van Barlow op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Pers van D. Dick op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Turbine van Fromont op de de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Stoomhamer van Nasmyth op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Ketel voor het vacuümverdampen van suiker op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Stoommotor van B. Hick and Son op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Machine om katoen te reinigen van Risler op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Katoenmachine van Hibbert, Platt and Sons op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Machine om vlas te bewerken van Lawson and Sons op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Elektrisch gereedschap van Whitworth and Co op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Machine om wol te kaarden van Mercier en Co. op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in het Crystal Palace in Londen

The Crystal Palace

North Germany. Plate from "Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851," published 1854.

Recollections of the Great Exhibition

Refreshment - At the Great Exhibition

Koningin Victoria opent de Wereldtentoonstelling in het Crystal Palace in Londen

Jewels - At the Great Exhibition

The Opera Boxes During the Time of the Great Exhibition

"Baxter" Print: Gems of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Gem No. 2

Gietijzeren hekken van de Coalbrook Dale Company tentoongesteld op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in Londen

Torenuurwerk van Dent op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in Londen

Ivoren troon uit India tentoongesteld op de Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations van 1851 in Londen

The Opening of the Great Industrial Exhibition of All Nations, by Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria and His Royal Highness Prince Albert, on the 1st of May, 1851: The View is Taken from the South West  Gallery, at the time when the Archbishop is offering up a Prayer for the Divine blessing upon the objects in the Exhibition

Square Piano

Constructed for London’s Great Exhibition of 1851, the Crystal Palace is a landmark in the history of spectatorship and colonization. Over six million visitors traveled to the greenhouse-like structure built in Hyde Park to see an unprecedented collection of scientific, artistic, and technological objects from around the world. The exhibition was supposedly intended to promote intercultural understanding, yet in many ways the education that it provided reinforced colonial perspectives instead. The design and organization of the space supported the narrative that Britain was the superior nation. In the opening ceremony, Queen Victoria traveled down streets lined with cheering spectators, descending from the royal carriage to enter the Crystal Palace as a band played the national anthem and a soldier hoisted the standard of England. This bold nationalism worried figures like Charles Dickens, who felt that it undermined the very ideals the exhibition claimed to uphold. The first of the World’s Fairs, the Great Exhibition arguably set the tone for future events including the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which outwardly celebrated intercultural exchange while indulging in the same strident nationalism displayed in London. This collection showcases the distinctive architecture of the Crystal Palace and aims to help audiences imagine what visitors heard when they stepped through the glass doors. From the bustling crowds and iconic glass fountain to the tinkling of pianos and the hiss of machines that were reshaping the nineteenth-century soundscape, the Great Exhibition was not just visually but also sonically immersive. This experience could be overwhelming, with one visitor noting how “the buzz and noise around lead [one] to endeavor to reach some less frequented place.” Importantly, the same inventions that provoked wonder within the Crystal Palace embody industries—cotton, sugar, steel—that flourished through colonial violence.

The Crystal Palace and Imperial Britain

Shrine (Iphri)

Panel of a Portable Shrine

Portable Shine (zushi) with Batō Kannon, the Horse-headed Bodhisattva of Compassion

Portable Buddhist Shrine

Portable Shrine of Miroku Bosatsu with Sacred Sanskrit Syllable

Shrine, Saint Manchan

Part of Shalako Medicine Society Shrine or Galaxy Fraternity Altar, in 8 pieces

Userhat Holding a Shrine of Amen

Personal Shrine (Ivwri)

Shrine of the Virgin

Portable shrines and altars live at the intersection of religious or folk devotion, artistic innovation, and cultural power across traditions. Monumental religious complexes denote centralized power, caste or class hierarchies, and can lead to or promote exclusion. In contrast, these portable objects democratize access to the divine through direct engagement, while facilitating cultural exchange. Often they contribute to a continuum of sensuous histories through their materiality, bridging craft and contemporary iconographies. These sacred objects transform devotees from passive observers into active participants by centering them in different ways. The 12th century Irish Shrine of Saint Manchan containing the saint’s remains and relics was originally carried by two people like a stretcher. In so doing, those who carried the relic became participants and actors in a spiritual legacy. The sculptural 19th-century Ijo Iphri shrine from Nigeria incorporates fierce human and animal iconography. This affords the shrine’s owner protection and amplifies their personal, communal, and spiritual power, thus blending devotion with social signification. Similarly, the horse-headed Bodhisattva of Compassion is exalted in the lacquered early Edo period Japanese Zushi. Thought to have emerged from indigenous Shinto shrines, Zushi contextualized Buddhist cosmologies within Japanese feudal social orders. This hinged example demonstrates how Buddhist iconography adapted to the needs of a feudal warrior society by syncretically blending both cosmological and social realms. Whether through syncretism or spiritual resistance, portable shrines and altars ground the devotee in their cultural and cosmological contexts. Dating to the 1800s, the Portable Shrine of Miroku Botsatsu or Maitreya Buddha contributes to this tradition of hinged shrines. The Edo period shrine’s exterior features the syllable ‘Om’ written in the Sidhham Sanskrit script, which was no longer used in the Subcontinent at the time of this artifact’s creation – reflecting centuries of cultural exchange in the region. The 19th century Zuni Pueblo Shalako Altar highlights the persistence of spiritual practice and tradition despite colonization and conversion — a different kind of cultural exchange and continuum. These shrines also carry narrative power through embodied cosmologies. The 14th century German "Shrine of the Virgin" physically enacts Christian theology as it metamorphoses from a nursing Madonna into a Trinity altarpiece. Through sophisticated miniaturization, a 5th-6th century Gandharan panel depicts both Buddha's birth and death in a single object, allowing the altar’s user to contemplate complete spiritual narratives in intimate proximity.This collection shows how portable shrines and altars transform religious experience from public program to personal dialogue, bringing the divine directly and materially to the devotee.

Portable Shrines and Altars

Woman at a Balcony

Mother and Child on Balcony

Majas on a Balcony

Three Women on a Balcony

Women Hanging Laundry to Dry on a Balcony

Women on a Balcony of a Yoshiwara Teahouse

Courtesan watching foreign ship from balcony

Man en vrouw op een balkon en een tweede vrouw achter glas

On the Balcony

The Canary Bird

De verrekijker

Radha and Krishna Seated on a Balcony

Mashrabiya Screen

Mashrabiya Screen with Medallions

Strada S. Giovanni in Valetta, Malta

Malta

Krishna and Consort on a Palace Balcony with Musicians: Vukharo Ragaputra of Bhairav, from the “Boston Ragamala”

Egypt and Nubia, Volume III: Modern Mansion, showing the Arabesque Architecture of Cairo

Design for a Lithograph, A Young Woman Standing on a Terrace

The Balcony

Le Pari Gagné (The Winning Bet), from "Le Monument du Costume"

Sex workers in the gallery of the brothel Nectarine in Yokohama with rickshaw drivers in front of it, c. 1870 - c. 1891

Princess and attendant in trompe l’oeil window

Noblewoman at a Jharokha Window Holding a Rose, from a Portraits of Women series

Balconies have long carried both a practical function and symbolic weight for women. In art, their appearance often signals a woman’s place, marking her visibility, her belonging, and her status within private and public life. Screened and enclosed balcony structures like the Arabic mashrabiya or the Maltese gallarija cast the balcony as a liminal space: a threshold between home and street where a woman can observe the world without being seen. Rooted in cultural ideals of modesty and surveillance, these architectural features delineate a woman’s place as private property. It is even difficult to find a depiction of women in these spaces. In contrast, open balcony scenes in the collection depict women as deliberately visible, whether as prostitutes presenting themselves to the street; as noblewomen in Mughal miniatures framed by ornate railings in keeping with their status; or as objects of domesticity hanging laundry, having a quiet moment alone, taking care of children, or even peering out with a telescope to a world they are wholly separate from. For instance, the late 19th-century photograph of the “Nectarine” brothel in Yokohama shows how women are presented as literal window dressing and highlights them with lavish hand-coloring. In a more positive depiction, the 18th century Rajput painting of a noblewoman at a jharokha (throne balcony) window exemplifies the expansion of the tradition of depicting the Mughal Emperor at the Jharokha. The portrait encloses her as an esteemed member of the royal household. Across these depictions, the balcony becomes a site of tension: between control and expression, enclosure and exhibition. Balconies remind us of the persistent constraints on women’s freedom: of how we’re taught to measure our safety by shrinking our presence, and of how architecture itself can script behavior. As this collection reveals, when artists enlist the balcony to emplace women, it reveals their culture's ideas about where women are allowed to be, how we appear, disappear, and reappear under watchful eyes.

Women and Balconies

Map of the ""Syrian Coast"" and the Cities: Gaza and Ramlah

Paradijs en een kaart van Azië

Kaart van het Beloofde Land

Kaart van Palestina

Kaart van het Turkse Rijk

Kaart van het Middellandse Zeegebied met delen van Europa, Noord Afrika en het Midden Oosten (Ottomaanse rijk)

Zeekaart van het oostelijk deel van de Middellandse zee

Kaart van de Middellandse Zee met boven het westelijk deel en onder het oostelijk deel

The Gaza Strip, an area subject to a long and painful history of colonial domination, stands today at risk of complete obliteration. After the terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, Gaza was subject to relentless Israeli bombing that aimed for its “wholesale destruction,” according to the UN report released on October 1, 2024. As a way to counter attempts to wipe it off the map, this collection aims to show two main ways in which Gaza was represented in 17th century cartography. The first group of maps show Gaza as part of the biblical lands, where it is identified as the territory of the Philistines, most famously as background to the story of Samson. The second group of maps portrays Gaza as part of the Ottoman Empire (the map by L’Huilier) and, more specifically, as an important harbour in the trade routes around the Mediterranean (the other four maps). Of particular interest is the chart from The Book of Navigation by the Ottoman cartographer and corsair Piri Reis (c. 1470-1553), as it is the only one in the collection that was not produced in Western Europe. The city of Gaza appears in this map as a large town close to a stream of water, the Wadi of Gaza, and surrounded by orchards.

Putting Gaza on the 17th-Century Map

Mask

Shell with traces of blue paint

Snail Shell

Shell with Inlaid Feline

Conch Shell Trumpet

Top-Shell and Various Shells

Snuffbox

Shell Inscribed with the Cartouche of Senwosret I

Casket

Turret Shell

Nautilus pompilius shell from the wreck of the Dutch East India ship Witte Leeuw

Inlay

Shell engraved with winged female deity, sphinxes, and lotus plants

Liturgical Spoon

Ceremonial basket adorned with cowrie shells

Carved Conch with Lakshmi-Narayana

Engraved Conch Shell

Shell Game (Kaiawase) Set

Shell, possibly a Bursa rubeta, from the wreck of the Dutch East India ship Witte Leeuw

Nautilus Cup

Seal Amulet in the Shape of a Cowry Shell

Conch Shell Trumpet Effigy

Covered container

Oesterschelp, beschilderd met een bloemtak

Oesterschelp met zeefiguren en een rots met planten

Schelpen

Stoomschip op zee met schelpen op het strand

Schelpen en vissen

Nautilusschelp van parelmoer gesneden met bloemenranken

Nautilusbeker

Unidentified mythological subject

Pearl Oyster Shell with Perseus and Andromeda

Shell

Shell fragment

Shell Fragment

Fragment of a shell with a sculpted female head

Conch Shell

Box of Cowrie Shells

Ceramic Whistle in the Form of a Shell

Spouted bowl or oil lamp

Design for a Plate with Thetis on a Shell in a Medallion Bordered by Sea Monsters

Carved Conch

Ritual conch shell

Gifts of the Ebb Tide (The Shell Book) (Shiohi no tsuto) 潮干のつと(都登)

Shell Flower Arrangement

“She pressed both hands to the parabolic sides of the shell. She closed her eyes and smiled—it felt like being parenthesized.” —Karen Russell, The City of Shells A common enough item on eBay these days are small figurines of poker players mid-game made almost entirely out of shells. The players’ faces might be made from cowries, their arms and hands augers, the game table a scallop, and precious little shells for chips. Centuries earlier, shells were actually traded as currency: wampum in the Americas or cowry shells in pre-Imperial China, for example. From money to a kitschy souvenir representing money, the time that has passed and the things that have changed are parenthesized by the lasting primacy of the shell. As a deeply efficient container for past and present, the shell continues to captivate as a memento originis. It endures as a physical link to the ocean from whence we came, and to the romance of what we can not readily see. In keeping with its liminal and littoral identity, the shell has also long been used for calling upon unseen mythological and spiritual worlds, as with the Khmer Buddhist ritual conch shell or the engraved Mississippian conch. Certain shell artifacts evidence a colonial drive away from the spiritual in favor of the scientific, decorative, or the touristic. However they retain their ability to enchant. See the examples of the ornate 17th century Dutch nautilus cup, for example, or an 18th century Victorian box. Most dizzying is the journey of the shells recovered from the wreck of the Dutch East India ship Witte Leeuw. These shells are natural specimens that were colonial trade goods. Loaded as cargo on a ship sunk during wartime, the shells are now resurrected from the ocean as artifacts of a shipwreck. The use of shells ranges from raw material and ritual object to specimen, aesthetic motif, and souvenir. This collection surveys the shell’s consistent presence as a contextual shapeshifter that slips between the worlds of spirituality and commodification.

Gods and Goods: Shell, Spirit, Souvenir

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