JASA Feb 7, 2018 Sacred Secrets Lecture by Rachel Saunders 

Dr. Rachel Saunders, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Associate Curator of Asian Art at the Harvard Art Museums, will speak on the oldest extant sculpture of Shotoku Taishi at Age Two, the "Sedgwick Shotoku" (ca.1292). This extraordinary sculpture of the putative founder of Buddhism in Japan, Shotoku Taishi (d.622), contained a rich cache of almost 70 diverse objects that collectively present a lively challenge to conventional wisdom concerning Buddhist sectarian practice in Kamakura period Japan. Widely considered the finest surviving example of sculpture depicting the infant prince, the Sedgwick Shotoku is one of a class of diminutive yet highly charismatic sculptures of Shotoku that emerged in the late thirteenth-early fourteenth century amid a pervasive atmosphere of intense anxiety over the impossibility of spiritual salvation. Working both literally and figuratively from the inside out, this presentation presents the very latest research into the sculpture currently being conducted at the Harvard Art Museums.

Dr. Saunders was appointed to her current position at the Harvard Art Museums in 2015. Educated at the Universities of Oxford, London, and Tokyo, Saunders gained her PhD in Japanese Art History from Harvard University and is a specialist in medieval narrative painting. Prior to joining the Harvard Art Museums, she was awarded the Ittleson Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. From 2004-2011 she was Curatorial Research Associate in Department of Arts of Asia, Africa, and Oceania at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.