Department of the History of Art and Archaeology, School of Arts

Professor Louise Tythacott

BA (Kent), DipLang (University of Westminster), PhD (Manchester), SFHEA

Overview
Teaching
Research
Publications

Overview

School of Arts

Director of Recruitment, Admissions & Marketing (DRAM)

Department of History of Art and Archaeology, School of Arts

Professor of Curating and Museology

SOAS Centre of South East Asian Studies

Academic Staff, Centre of South East Asian Studies

SOAS Collections & Galleries Advisory Panel

Member

Name:: Professor Louise Tythacott
Email address:: lt15@soas.ac.uk
Address:: SOAS University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG
Building:: Russell Square: College Buildings
Office No:: 505
Academic Support Hours:: Wednesdays, 3-5pm

Biography

Louise’s first degree was in Social Anthropology with Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Her post-graduate research was based at the University of Hong Kong where she undertook fieldwork on Chinese folk deity imagery and temple iconography. She studied Mandarin and Cantonese at the University of Westminster and was awarded her PhD in Museology from the University of Manchester.

Before joining SOAS, Louise was the Woon Tai Jee Professor of Asian Art at Northumbria University and the academic lead for the International Research Centre for the History and Culture of Nanzhao and Dali Kingdoms. Prior to this she was Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer, then Professor, of Curating and Museology of Asian Art at SOAS, and a Lecturer in Museology at the University of Manchester. Louise also worked as the Curator of Asian Collections and Head of the Non-Western Department at National Museums Liverpool, where she was lead curator for the World Cultures Gallery, which opened in 2005, with specific responsibilities for the Asia and Buddhism displays. She has been the curator of a private Burmese textile collection, an exhibitions officer at the Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery & Museums, Brighton, a managing editor of the journal, Museum and Society – and she continues to work on museum projects and curate exhibitions.

Louise is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute.

ORCID - 0000-0001-5625-6468

Affiliations

Association for Asian Studies
Association of Critical Heritage Studies
British Association for Chinese Studies
Chinese Collections Group
European Association for Asian Art and Archaeology
European Association of Chinese Studies
Museum Ethnographers Group
Society for the History of Collecting
UK Association for Buddhist Studies

Teaching

Programmes Convened

Modules Taught

PhD Students supervised

Arjmand Aziz Ahmad, Contemporary Indigenous Australian art and private display histories in London
Ayesha Fuentes, On the use of human remains in Tibetan ritual objects
Elizabeth Reid, An investigation into the meaning and significance of the exhibitions of Chinese art at the Whitechapel Art Gallery between 1901 and 1934
Helen Glaister, Collecting in Public and Private: The Ionides Collection of Chinese Export Porcelain, 1920-1970
Ivy Chan, Collecting Chinese Art in Hong Kong during the 20th Century: Appropriation and Location
Miranda Bruce-Mitford, From Natural History to Wayang: The Collections and Collecting Practices of Thomas Stamford Raffles

Duyen Nguyen, Collecting and Curating Cham Art in Vietnam: from 1975 to the present.

Louise also contributes to the following courses:

Theory and Method in the Study of Asian and African Art
Arts, Culture and Commodification: Themes in the Global Creative and Cultural Industries

Previous modules created and taught:

Museums and Museology
Collecting and Collections
Representing China in Museums
Collecting and Curating Buddhist Art in the Museum
Museums, Anthropology and the Arts of Asia and Africa
Museums, Heritage and Material Culture Studies

Completed PhD and MPhil students:

Heidi Tan (2020) Meritorious Curating and the Renewal of Pagoda Museums in Myanmar.
Deidre Parker (2019) Tracing Buddhism in the British Museum: Biographies of Buddhist Objects
acquired by the British Museum in the 19th - 20th c.
Stephanie Tredan (2018) Stuck in Limbo: The Repatriation of Unprovenanced Australian Indigenous Ancestral Remains from UK and Australian Museums.
Hee Jung Lee (2015) Exploring visual modernity and national identity in modern China: Fu Baoshi’s self-awareness and critical response during the Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945).
Maria Sklirou (2009) The Issue of Access in Greek Museums.
Alan Arcadia (2009) An Intimate Destruction: Desire, Death and the Self in Buddhism, Surrealism and Georges Bataille.
Emma Poulter (2008) The West African Collections at Manchester Museum.

PhD and MPhil Examinations

Kate Hill (2021) Complicated Objects: Chinese Imperial Artefacts in Victorian Britain, University of Glasgow.
Valentina Risdonne (2021) Materials and techniques for coating of the nineteenth century plaster casts: a scientific and archival investigation of the Victoria & Albert Museum cast collection, Northumbria University.
Boya Zhang (2021) Exhibiting China in Durham, Durham University.
Yuet Heng Wong (2016) The Display of Chinese Art in Late 19th-Century French Houses and Museums, University of Hong Kong.
Emily Williams (2016) Collecting the Revolution-British Engagements with Chinese Cultural Revolution Material and Visual Culture, Birkbeck, University of London.
Chengxi Dong (2015) The Early History of Museums in China, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Julia Snape (2013) Medieval Art on Display 1750-2010, University of Manchester.
James Pardoe (2011) Homes and Haunts: Memorialising Romantic Writers, University of Manchester.
Klem James (2010) Non-repressive sublimation and the recuperation of desire in Surrealism, University of Manchester.
Vivian Ting (2008) Communicating Chinese ceramics: a study of material culture theory in selected museums in Britain, University of Leicester.
Ian Heath (2004) The Representation of Islam in British museums, University of Manchester.

Research

Louise’s research focuses on the collecting and display of non-Western artefacts, and she has particular interests in the representation of Chinese and Buddhist objects in museums.

Louise has recently co-edited a volume with Panggah Ardiyansyah, “Returning Southeast Asia’s Past: Objects, Museums, and Restitution” (NUS Press, 2021).

In 2016, with Christian Luczanits (PI), Louise was awarded an AHRC Research Grant of £438,000 for a three-year project (2016-19) to investigate Tibetan Buddhist Monastery Collections and Museums in Nepal and Ladakh.

From 2017-2018, Louise secured a major philanthropic donation to undertake research on the histories of objects from China’s Yuanmingyuan - or old “Summer Palace” - in British and French museum collections, and is presently completing a monograph on the “Summer Palace Diaspora”.

Publications

Authored Books

Tythacott, Louise (2011) The Lives of Chinese Objects: Buddhism, Imperialism and Display. Oxford and New York: Berghahn.

Tythacott, Louise (2003) Surrealism and the Exotic. London: Routledge.

Articles

Tythacott, Louise and Bellini, Chiara (2020) 'Deity and Display: Meanings, Transformations, and Exhibitions of Tibetan Buddhist Objects'. Religions, (11) 3.

Tythacott, Louise (2018) 'Exhibiting and Auctioning Yuanmingyuan (“Summer Palace”) Loot in 1860s and 1870s London: The Elgin and Negroni Collections'. Journal for Art Market Studies, (2) 3, pp 1-15.

Tythacott, Louise (2017) 'Curating the Sacred: Exhibiting Buddhism at World Museum Liverpool'. Buddhist Studies Review, (34) 1, pp 115-133.

Tythacott, Louise (2017) '英国军事类博物馆中的圆明园文物'. 美成在久 [Chinese Orientations], (Sept), pp 108-111.

Tythacott, Louise (2016) 'The power of taste: the dispersal of the Berkeley Smith collection of Chinese ceramics at Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum (1921-1960)'. Journal of the History of Collections, (28) 2, pp 327-343.

Tythacott, Louise (2015) 'Trophies of War: Representing ‘Summer Palace’ Loot in Military Museums in the UK'. Museum and Society, (13) 4, pp 469-488.

Tythacott, Louise (2011) 'Race on display: the “Melanian”, “Mongolian” and “Caucasian” galleries at Liverpool Museum (1896-1929)'. Early Popular Visual Culture, (9) 2, pp 131-146.

Tythacott, Louise (2010) 'Curiosities, Antiquities, Art Treasure, Commodities: collecting Chinese deity figures in mid-nineteenth-century England'. Journal of Museum Ethnography, (23), pp 56-71.

Tythacott, Louise (2009) 'Sacred Island Deities'. Apollo, (CLXIX) 563, pp 90-97.

Tythacott, Louise (2000) 'Khmer'. The Millennium Encyclopaedia, pp 25-40.

Tythacott, Louise (1999) 'A Convulsive Beauty: Surrealism, Oceania and African Art'. Journal of Museum Ethnography 11, pp 43-53.

Tythacott, Louise (1998) 'The African Collection at Liverpool Museum'. African Arts, (XXXI) 3, pp 18-35.

Tythacott, Louise (1993) 'Colonel Green's Burma: Peoples and Textiles of the 1920s'. The Royal Pavilion Review 1, pp 3-7.

Tythacott, Louise (1992) 'Chinese Robes in the Ethnography Gallery'. The Royal Pavilion Review 2, pp 10-12.

Tythacott, Louise (1991) 'The Ernest Box Collection of Chinese Deities in Brighton Museum & Art Gallery'. The Royal Pavilion Review 2, pp 8-10.

Edited Books or Journals

Tythacott, Louise and Ardiyansyah, Panggah, (eds.), (2021) Returning Southeast Asia’s Past: Objects, Museums, and Restitution.. Singapore: NUS Press. (Art and Archaeology of Southeast Asia: Hindu-Buddhist Traditions).

Tythacott, Louise, (ed.), (2017) Collecting and Displaying China's 'Summer Palace' in the West: The Yuanmingyuan in Britain and France. Abingdon; New York, NY: Routledge.

Tythacott, Louise and Arvanitis, Kostas, (eds.), (2014) Museums and Restitution: New Practices, New Approaches. Farnham: Ashgate.

Book Chapters

Tythacott, Louise (2022) 'Transforming Chemrey Museum: Monastic Curating and Co-Curating in a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in Ladakh'. In: Cai, Yunci, (ed.), The Museum in Asia. London: Routledge: Leicester Readers in Museum Studies. [Forthcoming]

Tythacott, Louise (2022) 'Curiosity, Loot and Art: A Brief History of Collecting Chinese objects in the West'. In: Ates, Guler, (ed.), The MAO: The Museum and the East, Artists book of the Museum of Oriental Art (MAO), Turin. Turin: MAO. [Forthcoming]

Tythacott, Louise and Ardiyansyah, Panggah (2021) 'Collecting and Returning Southeast Asia’s Past'. In: Tythacott, Louise and Ardiyansyah, Panggah, (eds.), Returning Southeast Asia's Past: Objects, Museums, and Restitution. Singapore: NUS Press, pp 1-37.

Tythacott, Louise and Chea, Socheat and Muong, Chanraksmey (2021) 'The Looting of Koh Ker and the Return of the Prasat Chen statues'. In: Tythacott, Louise and Ardiyansyah, Panggah, (eds.), Returning Southeast Asia's Past: Objects, Museums, and Restitution. Singapore: NUS Press, pp 62-86.

Tythacott, Louise (2020) 'Military Histories of ‘Summer Palace’ objects from China in military museums in the United Kingdom'. In: Lidchi, Henrietta and Allan, Stuart, (eds.), Dividing the Spoils: Perspectives on Military Collecting and the British Empire. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp 187-204.

Tythacott, Louise (2019) 'Problems, Practices and Politics of Provenancing objects from China’s Yuanmingyuan'. In: Milosch, Jane and Pearce, Nick, (eds.), Collecting and Provenance: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach. Rowman & Littlefield: Maryland, pp 359-370.

Tythacott, Louise (2018) 'The Yuanmingyuan and its Objects'. In: Tythacott, Louise, (ed.), Collecting and Displaying China's 'Summer Palace' in the West: The Yuanmingyuan in Britain and France. Abingdon; New York, NY: Routledge, pp 3-24.

Tythacott, Louise (2016) 'British travels in China during the Opium Wars (1839-1860): Shifting Images and Perceptions'. In: Hill, Kate, (ed.), Britain and the Narration of Travel in the Nineteenth Century: Texts, Images, Objects. London, UK: Routledge, pp 191-208.

Tythacott, Louise and Arvanitis, Kostas (2014) 'Introduction: Museums and Restitution'. Museums and Restitution: New Practices, New Approaches. Farnham: Ashgate, pp 1-18.

Tythacott, Louise (2012) 'Classifying China: shifting interpretations of Buddhist bronzes in Liverpool Museum, 1867-1997'. Museums and Biographies: Stories, Objects, Identities. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, pp 173-185.

Tythacott, Louise (2010) 'The Politics of Representation in Museums'. Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences. London: Taylor & Francis Group, pp 4230-4241.

Tythacott, Louise (2001) 'From the ‘fetish’ to the ‘specimen’: the Ridyard African collection at the Liverpool Museum 1895-1916'. Collectors: expressions of self and other. London: Horniman Museum, pp 157-179.

Tythacott, Louise (2000) 'Souvenirs of the travelling surrealists'. In: Hitchcock, Michael and Teague, Ken, (eds.), Souvenirs: the material culture of tourism. Farnham: Ashgate, pp 72-77.

Tythacott, Louise (1995) 'The Theatre of the Incorporeal'. In: Benewick, Robert and Donald, Stephanie, (eds.), Belief in China: Art and Politics; Deities and Mortality. Brighton: Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery & Museums, pp 19-27.

Tythacott, Louise (1995) 'Eastern Asia'. Kingfisher Book of Mythology. London: Larousse, pp 100-125.

Tythacott, Louise (1995) 'Dance'. Dance. Hove: Wayland Publishers, pp 1-48.

Tythacott, Louise (1995) 'Musical Instruments'. Musical Instruments. Hove: Wayland Publishers, pp 1-48.

Tythacott, Louise (1994) 'Kinyozi: African Art between the boundaries'. Kinyozi: The Art of African Hairstyles. Brighton: Green Centre for Non-Western Art, pp 9-21.

Tythacott, Louise (1994) 'Jewellery and Accessories'. Jewellery and Accessories. Hove: Wayland Publishers, pp 1-48.