A Matter of Feeling: Chinese Ceramics Through the Senses

Thursday November 5, 2026
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm ET
Online via Zoom

Part of the Gardiner Signature Lecture Series
The Ann Walker Bell Lecture

Speaker: Dr. Laura Vigo, Curator of Asian Art and Archaeology, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

The Duran Duran song "A Matter of Feeling" seemed to define an era. Strangely enough, it offers an unexpectedly bittersweet point of departure for a talk that, in its own way, circles back in time. In this online lecture, Dr. Laura Vigo will turn to the origins of the Chinese ceramic collection at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) and the enduring feelings these objects have inspired in those who handled them—potters, users, collectors, and curators alike. She will also consider how attending to these sensory encounters might shift the way we engage with them today. The objects' appeal has never been simply about beauty or romance. Rather, there is a profound sensuality to ceramics: the sensation of touch, the scent of fired clay, the sound of porcelain when gently struck, and, above all, the pleasure of looking closely.

These perceptual connotations shaped the collecting practices of figures such as Sir William Van Horne and the museum’s remarkably charismatic first volunteer curator, Cleveland Morgan. Their tales, and the objects they left behind, remind us that collecting ceramics has always been about more than acquiring beautiful commodities. It was, and still is, about cultivating the senses and the imagination, and about bridging past and present through the intimate experience of handling and looking.

About the Speaker

Laura Vigo is Curator of Asian Art and Archaeology at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) and an invited curator at the Museum of Asian Art in Turin (MAO), where she co-curated several recent exhibitions and is currently preparing the new galleries dedicated to Chinese material culture.

At the MMFA, she has developed major exhibitions and collection displays, including the N. Kapany Gallery for Sikh Art, the Asian collections in the Arts of One World wing, and the recent exhibition Tōkaidō: Dreamscapes by Andō Hiroshige. Her previous projects include Egyptian Mummies, Pompeii, and The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army, as well as exhibitions exploring Japanese ceramics, artistic diversity, and the museum’s collections.

Vigo holds a PhD in Chinese Archaeology from SOAS, University of London, and has worked across museums, galleries, and auction houses in Italy, the UK, and Canada. Her interests span from the histories of collecting, the Western construction of Asian art, transcultural narratives, to sensory studies, and digital mediation. She also teaches at the Université de Montréal.

Her work often brings together museum collections, contemporary artistic practices, and questions about how we encounter objects—and how museums can create new ways of seeing, sensing, and understanding them.