Okay, thanks. Okay, everyone. Thank you for coming. My talk is actually going to be about luck and curiosity eventually leading to a Nobel Prize. As it turns out, I have a presentation on my laptop which unfortunately does not want to work. So I have to sort of do this talk from memory. I think the common conception is that, you know, with respect to the Nobel Prizes, the people who win Nobel Prizes are obviously intelligent, right? That's a basic assumption. And they work really hard. To get to the point where the work qualifies for Nobel Prizes. So can anyone tell me what the Nobel Prizes are? The six that are there? I'm sure you all know because it should be here somewhere. Maybe not. Okay, they are physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. Now in the original will for Alfred Nobel, economic sciences is not there. And the reason is because that was actually given by the Swedish Bank in Memorial or Alfred Nobel. So the original real Nobel Prizes are all of those that I just mentioned except economic sciences. Okay, so just keep that in mind. Now my talk today is going to focus specifically upon these sciences. In other words, physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine. And the reason I chose those because it's because luck does play a role in those, right? One of the quotes I saw was, and this is with respect to penicillin, Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin said, Nature create penicillin. I just discovered it. Sure luck, right? So in the history of the Nobel Prizes itself, excluding literature, which obviously, you know, you have to have a body of work that justifies that as human creation, nothing to do with nature in itself rather, peace, same thing. You know, you look at the Nobel Peace Prize winners, some of them you question to some extent, why did they even get the Nobel Prize? The classic example that comes to mind is anyone? Oh, true. Did he do anything to justify it? Anyone? No, he was nominated shortly after he was elected. He was nominated and won strictly on the basis of what? Potential, no actual achievements. Keep that in mind. So you have literature that I set aside. You have peace that set aside. Economics is actually, as I said, not part of the original Alfred Nobel will. So let's go back to physics, chemistry and physiology slash medicine. Let me just use medicine because it's easier at this point. So the most one of the most well known examples of sure luck, sure serendipity with respect to winning a Nobel Prize is actually Alexander Fleming. Right? What did he do? He went on a holiday. He's a messy guy, brilliant researcher, left his lab in a mess, came back. Boom. Petri dish. Oh, wow. This area. No bacteria.  Now that's luck, right? The next step is curiosity. Why did it not have the bacteria? So there are two parts to this, right? Luck and curiosity. He had the luck, sheer luck. The man is a messy guy. You know, if he was in Singapore, do you think you'll still have a job? Reality strikes here, right? But the man was sure luck, messy lab.  I go on holiday, came back a few weeks later. Boom. There it is. But with respect to penicillin, that in itself actually did not lead to anything of value. Why? Because it was not a substance that you could actually use as a medication. I mean, he discovered penicillin. But as he said, nature created it, all I did was discover it. But what was the next step? The next step, he did not take. It was taken by other people, in fact, who actually purified it, made it manufacturable essentially, right? So yet three people won the Nobel Prize for penicillin. Physiology or medicine, right? In this case, Flory and Chain were the two British guys who said, hey, this looks like an interesting thing. It was about to get to World War II. What do you need? Medication to take care of people in that sort of situation. So Flaming discovered Flory and Chain were the ones who said, we can distill this, we can purify, we can make it part of a manufacturing process essentially to make it widely, widely available.  It wasn't dispensable as a medication, antibiotics essentially. So the three people who won the Nobel Prize were Flaming for discovering Flory and Chain for making it available as a production process. And they actually had to do the production process in the United States, in Iowa, in fact, just because, hey, UK, Britain, World War II, that sort of thing, you know, everything was directed towards a war effort. So they had to do it in Iowa, where they actually were used to doing this sort of things, farming community. So they actually went very well. So the three of them won it. But unfortunately, that was the fourth person who was very key to the effort that Flory and Chain were involved with. And of course, well, with respect to the Nobel Prizes, UNICAD three winners. So this third person, whose name was Henley, if I can remember correctly, did not get a Nobel Prize. So what happened was Oxford University say, you know, not much can do about it. I mean, not much that the Nobel Prize Committee can do about it because they are limited to three, according to stipulations and the will of Alfred Nobel. So what Oxford did is they gave him honorary doctorate of medicine. He was the first person, a non-doctor, excuse me, a non-medical person in the history of Oxford University to get an honorary doctorate of medicine.  I'm a third-rate scientist. Hey, when opportunity strikes take it, seize the day, right, cup of tea, I'm essentially. So that's one instance where, sure luck, right place, right time.  It's a messed up thing. The guy says, hey, this looks interesting. Actually, my slides, which you cannot see because my laptop won't boot up. They actually have a picture of the patty dish, right, with that little, you know, section that's free of growth, thanks to that penicillin organism there. Going back to the guys, to the British guys, they actually went to the United States during World War II to figure out how else can they grow penicillin. I believe it was either a rotten cantaloupe or melon that provided the best environment to grow penicillin. And once they figured that out, they did all sort of work, and then the US started pumping it out, I mean, producing it in mass, which is actually a big contribution to the World War II effort for the Allied powers. Because it saved people, lots and lots of people. So that's what I know of. The other is actually quite interesting. This is actually quite recent, in terms of the past 40 years or so. So I've talked about medicine, right? Physiology or medicine for penicillin. Something more recent was about 1970s. Traditionally, plastics do not conduct electricity, right? It's insulated, in other words, okay? So what happened was that there are two things going on at the same time, one in the US at University of Pennsylvania, the other in Japan. Let me start with the guy in Japan first of all. He had a graduate student, a Korean graduate student working with him in Japan. And he has a graduate student to do something, or add this reagent to this particular substance you're working with. And the student totally misheard the professor. He didn't write it down. He misheard the professor. The concentration that he put in for the reagent was 1,000 times that of what the professor requested. Sure luck, sure total misunderstanding. If the graduate student had written it down, we might not know about what's going on right now in terms of polymers that can conduct electricity or conductive polymers, in other words, right? Lucky stroke number one. Totally misheard what the professor asked of him, graduate student, you know, whatever. So that's lucky stroke number one. Lucky stroke number two was in University of Pennsylvania, these guys, well, the guys in Japan were doing organic polymers. The guys in the US were doing inorganic polymers. One of the American guys said, well, I'm traveling. I'm going to Japan. Let me bring the stuff that I developed, inorganic polymers that can conduct electricity, very, very badly, early stages. So not really very conductive like metal, for example. So in Japan, he was talking to various professors and all that, he happened. Sure luck, lucky stroke number two. It was actually in the Nobel Prize lecture. American professor met Japanese guy, say, hey, let me show you what I've got. They met over green tea if I'm not mistaken. A green tea, you know, get together, essentially. Let me show you what I've got. American guy showed Japanese guy likewise. Japanese guy said, wow. You're doing the same thing I'm doing. You're doing inorganic, I'm doing organic. American guy says, I'll bring you over to the state. Let's work this out, okay? They did. They found out that plastics can conduct electricity through doping, not like drugs, drugs, but an ability to add substances, make it more chemically equivalent to, excuse me, to metal in other words, okay. So two lucky strokes here. One, totally misunderstood what the professor asked of him. Post-doc student did thousand times. Number two, right place, right time. Sure luck, serendipity. Never questioned that. As Bill Gates, he'll tell you the same thing. So there are three people, Higa, Shirakawa, and McDermott. McDermott is actually from New Zealand, okay? So when he found out that he had won the Nobel Prize, what did he do as somebody from New Zealand would do? He performed the haka at the Nobel Prize ceremony. From what I've read of his biography, he actually was brought up in a Maori boarding school. So he actually was very used to doing that sort of thing. And he would do that at the Nobel Prize ceremony. So it's one of those interesting things where sometimes luck does play a role. We always think that it has to be a situation where work hard, work really hard, do the right thing, and things will come out well. True, but in a conventional career path to success. Okay, conventional career path to success. I mentioned three guys, Higa. The primary guy is actually McDermott, the Kiwi guy who's in the United States, University of Pennsylvania. Number two, Shirakawa. Number three is interesting, Higa. He's a physicist. Two chemists, one physicist, okay? McDermott asked Higa, do you want to come on board with this project and working on to see whether plastics, polymers can conduct electricity? Higa was incredibly lucky because he was the second guy asked for this project. Imagine if you were the first guy asked by McDermott to work on this project and you turn him down because you risk averse and you eventually found out that Nobel Prize was waiting for you at the end of the thing, you will be pissed. Truly, according to the buyer read, McDermott and Higa, these two gentlemen, right? If it wasn't for what they did, they will have a very, they will have a successful career path as academics but conventional, very conventional career path. Higa actually is, it's a risk taker. He's the number two guy who was asked to be on this project to see whether polymers can conduct electricity. He took the risk. And he has this thing where he says, he actually wrote a book, excuse me. And the title of the book is, Never Lose Your Nerve. Never lose your nerve. Because in order to be creative, you gotta take risks, you gotta be able to say that, damn it, I'm gonna do it. I don't know what's gonna come out of the end of it but I'm gonna do it. I'm trying it because it's worth it. The journey is itself worth it, essentially in other words. The death destination in this case was a Nobel Prize or obviously worth it but the journey was worth it too for him personally. And he was asked, where did the phrase Never Lose Your Nerve come from? Some of you might know who this singer is, Maria Callas, C-A-L-L-A-S. She's an opera singer in Italy during actually, during El Capone's time to some extent if I'm not mistaken. Higa was a theater lover, right? And he once saw a situation where Maria Callas was doing, she's opera singer, or teaching her class but she doesn't perform on stage anymore. So one of the students asked her, why do you stop singing? Did you lose your voice? And Maria Callas said, I didn't lose my voice, I lost my nerve. Because at the level that she performed at, you're stretching the vocal cords, you're really pushing, pushing, pushing. I understand the situation because at some point your body's gonna give up. But the lesson that Higa took, this University of Pennsylvania scientist took from this is, you gotta take risk if you're gonna come out on top to really succeed in a very different and distinctive way. So he wrote a book as I said called Never Lose Your Nerve. Right? So there are two different situations where luck did play a tremendous role in a Nobel Prize. Is this it? Flaming, physiology and medicine. These three gentlemen, one Japanese to one American, one Kiwi guy, what we have now, conductive polymers. Plasks do conduct. I'm gonna step back and give you a different, take on Nobel Prizes at this point. Winning a Nobel Prize is actually obviously a very noteworthy achievement, right? Singapore doesn't have any as far as I know. Does anyone know, have anyone actually been nominated for a Nobel Prize in Singapore? Okay, there's actually one guy who has been nominated. He's the Singaporean guy who works at Google. Jolly Good Fellow? Chan Mingde? Okay, he actually was nominated, not by himself, solo, but as a group, right? For a Nobel Peace Prize several years ago. It's part of a group. I don't remember what the group was, but he was part of a group. I believe, I think there was like maybe five or six Nobel Prize winners, Peace Laureate, excuse me, that nominated a group that he was part of for a Nobel Peace Prize. So as far as I know, he's the only Singaporean who's ever been nominated for any of the Nobel Prizes. So the winner of the Nobel Prize is obviously a significant achievement. There are actually four people in history who have two Nobel Prizes. The first one is one of the most famous, Marie Curie, right? Physics Chemistry, okay? Number two, I believe it's John Bardeen. Physics Physics. Number three is Frederick Sanger. British guy? Chemistry Chemistry, okay? The fourth one is actually kind of interesting. Linus Pauling. He won for Chemistry and Peace. Okay? Chemistry was 1950 something, Peace was 1962. He actually interestingly enough, I'm gonna keep trying my life though, hopefully it'll boot up. He's one of the four people in the entire world, history of mankind, excuse me, who has won two Nobel Prizes. He actually had a shot of winning a third Nobel Prize. So he won a Chemistry in 1950 something, Peace in 1962. He actually was competing against Watson and Creek to discover the structure of DNA. Very close, very close by the way. He was, you know, DNA is double helix, right? Pauling was looking at triple helix. Simplify, simplify, you know, from three to two, he would have possibly, he could have possibly gotten there by the way. And the reason Watson and Creek actually got there first before him, is because they had access to Rosalind Franklin's extra image of DNA. That was the key, because she actually had the best images of DNA at that time. They had access to it unfortunately without her permission by the way. Saw the image, says, boom, there it is. This is the structure of DNA, a double helix. So let me go back, let me reset this. Pauling, Chemistry, 1957, something I don't remember the date. Peace, 1962. When did Watson and Creek won their Nobel Prize for Physiology of Medicine? 1962, if he had, if he had figured the structure of DNA before Watson and Creek, purely hypothetical, he could have won two Nobel Prizes in one year, right? Peace, Physiology of Medicine. Incredible, isn't it? Actually, he's also so singular because he's the only person who won it unshared. No more Peace, Press, Chemistry, alone, solo. Peace, solo. So it's actually an incredible story behind Linus Pauling. He's a Caltech guy by the way, California Institute of Technology guy. It's kind of a worship like I got there along with, you know, people like Richard Feynman and all that. But let me go back to Watson and Creek. 1962, Nobel Prize winners for Structure of DNA. Does anyone know who the third person was? There's a third person, by the way, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, excuse me, Nobel Prize for Physiology of Medicine for DNA, actually. No one knows about it. Maurice Wilkins. And the reason he got it is because Francis Creek told one of the nominators, put it down, put it down, put it down. Because at this point, 50 years after the nominations are released, you can find out who nominated who for whom, right? People when they say, only one person nominated Maurice Wilkins for the Nobel Prize. And that's only because Francis Creek told him to. Otherwise, Maurice Wilkins actually, when I looked at the history of it, he actually didn't do a whole lot.  Actually he wasn't going cocky, but he really didn't play a major role in the discovery of DNA. So that's why you always see pictures of Watson and Creek. You never see Maurice Wilkins. But in the Nobel Prize, he's listed there. So it's, I mean, he was in the right place at the right time. And to some extent, he got it, I think, because he was the one who passed the picture of the DNA structure taken by Rosalind Franken to Watson and Creek. Now, he actually had authority to do that in a legal sense because he was the chairman of the department that Rosalind Franken was part of. I mean, he had legal authority. Now, whether he had moral authority is another matter, right? He should actually, Maurice Wilkins should have asked Rosalind Franklin's permission to show her work to Watson and Creek. Here, truly. Legally, he's entitled because he chairs the department, but ethically, morally. Now, on the other hand, she could not have won the Nobel Prize. Why? She died before I was awarded. I think at three or four years. So all of this actually, you know, speculative history. From what I read, she actually was, whatever, no big deal. I mean, she did it for the work, not for the recognition. There are people like that. Okay, thanks. Let me talk a little bit about Frederick Sanger, the British guy who won two chemistry awards. Very self-effacing British guy. He says, no, I'm not that brilliant. I didn't get any scholarships to go to Cambridge, but I, you know, I work hard. I'm in the right place at the right time. I figure it out. Very, very self-effacing guy.  And the reason he gave us, I don't want anyone to call me sir. I just want to be called Fred. Just call me Fred. I don't care, right? So, you know, Fred. He retired at 65 at the peak of intellectual powers. Why? I think I need to take up gardening. That's what he did. He retired, became a gardener. Number two, he says, you know what?  He wanted to nurture a new generation of scientists. Tremendous guy, very self-effacing, a sort of thing. So, sort of, let me wrap up at this point. This is about James Watson, by the way. He's still alive, I'm not mistaken. Very interesting character. And one of the things he does, he's a very ambitious American guy who went to the United States, I mean, United States, went to the UK to do work, whereas in this case, Francis Creek. After he's given a Nobel Prize, he's sort of pontificating top pick and a sort of thing. So, one of the things he says is, he has these rules, Watson's rules, right? Number one is avoid dumb people. Kind of interesting. But the other thing that he actually said, which I, you know, which actually causes a stir in college classrooms when he sort of mentions this is, look for the most interesting person in the room and sit with them. Why? If you're there to learn, learn from the most interesting person. Whoever that is. The problem with that sort of advice is, how do you tell? Do you go for the ugliest, the most handsome, the one with the most interesting outfit or whatever the case? So that advice is sort of interesting. As I say, it's interesting. I got in trouble because of some race-related remarks several years ago. And the thing I think that actually is the funniest to me to some extent is, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Does that make sense? Joe Wamy explained that. If I have to explain that then... Hahaha. Any questions? I mean, to some extent, what is the future of Singapore? You know, every time I pass that by MOE, what do I see on the signboard? You know, to mold the future of Moe. Every time I see the word Moe, I like, screwed. This country screwed, right? Moe means you know what to expect. You know what they want? You know what they want. It should be in terms of economic resource. These guys are QRSRT different. Flaming, QRSRT driven. What the hell, I don't know. Look, let me try it out and find out. Japanese guys saying, hey. Cause here there has to be, you know, payoff. I remember that years ago, Singapore did all this investment in biotech research and all that. Fundamental research. And then they realized time frame too long. So they went into, I think the term is translational if I'm not mistaken, where it's small short term. So it's interesting to see that Singapore is sort of moving. In the beginning they were doing QRSRT driven research but they say we cannot afford it. We gotta do more short term driven. To some extent, that's gonna be a challenge for Singapore in the long run. It's because how do you nurture the creativity and the innovation that's required in order for this country to basically move forward. Not being a follower, even though Singapore is actually a really, really fast follower of ideas. But to some extent, where is that, you know, I'm willing to take the risk, new ideas. Okay, any questions? Okay, I know it's the end of the day, you're tired. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you.


But Yoran, do you have any thoughts of what regulation by government of Facebook will look like? No. I mean, regulation of Facebook is a very, very scary phenomena, and technology generally has managed to escape regulation and to avoid too much regulation. And now we're seeing the tech companies asked to be regulated. And once that genie is out of the whatever lamp, I don't know if that's a good metaphor. But anyway, once the regulations start, there's no way into them. There's no way into them. And the danger here is what part of the business is going to be regulated. The worst thing is if the issue of speech is regulated, what cannot and cannot be published on Facebook. If the government gets into that, then the government now gets into the issue of free speech. Now the government is potentially censoring. That is the worst case scenario. Privacy laws, I mean, yeah, the government should pass privacy laws, but the privacy laws should be, I think Amy has a good, Amy Peacock has a good description of what those privacy laws should be like. They should be pretty broad and they shouldn't be unique to Facebook. They should be general. And yeah, at the end of the day, they shouldn't be like the European privacy laws. We should basically enforce the idea that you own your property and your information is your property and you can give it away. And the government shouldn't have these, you know, I don't know, monstrous privacy regulations like the Europeans have now. I don't know what else. You know, I think that anything the government does, particularly given the government that we have, even in a rational world, you would say, yes, you need to define what privacy is and the government should write some laws relating to privacy. Maybe that's true. But given the government we have today, anything they write is going to be a disastrous. Anything they write today is going to infringe on the property rights and the freedoms both of Facebook and its users. And it's going to be an unmitigated disaster. So I would be, you know, I would be against any form of regulation. Any form of regulation is going to be, is going to be horrific. It's going to be horrific because it'll have consequences not just on Facebook, but on all tech companies, it'll introduce regulations into Silicon Valley in a way that they've never been before. And it'll suppress innovation. It'll suppress new companies coming about. It will suppress real progress. It will be a disaster to our progress, you know, our future success and our lives. The value we get from this technology is unbelievable. It's so immense. So you know, one of the beauties of Silicon Valley has been the relative freedom to innovate and for the atlases to manifest, for productive geniuses to do their thing. And we all benefit from that massively. Any kind of regulations of that will reduce that innovation, will reduce the ability of those giants to produce. Some of them will go overseas. Some of them will produce just at a lower rate, but it would just be, it'll just be useless. Unless it's a low that brings like Alex Jones.  All of that, you know, would be, would be truly a step in a very bad direction in terms of free speech, a long term in terms of free speech.


Boys looking for jandas man. I don't think we're doing jandas yet. I Don't mind doing jandas. So you make the decision mate.  What is this premium packaged? You know what the last premium thing I got was and it's still in my bags It's so hot. It's so dear to my heart this bad boy. That's the last premium package I got from Z after that I got cut off. Yeah, except for the bracers. I gave you today I mean we made that was a fair dealer. That wasn't just a package. I was a dealer. We both know that we both know that was a package We're talking about 2% drop rate things. They're the 1% These are the most important ones They're not gonna drop bro. You think that you think the epic chess is gonna drop right? I'll give 20 subs in your stream if it drops along with the original premium deal Now you get to pick Sure sure with the original deal is to see how much goal is going for Conversions I could give you a hundred so it's not like it's gonna drop anyway. I'll give you 20 if it drops Are you backtracking on the other day? That's some Z movements All right, let's see what you played let's let's talk about played Okay, my plate is not as much as yours. My plate is eight days in nine hours No way way I'm at eight days and five hours, but I've only been streaming for four hours Did I'm on the same I'm five days five hours, please Five days five hours. Dude, you actually leveled really fast I was like 50 hours under Jose at 57 or something just saying that's that's nice man your fast leveler Not as fast as me, but yeah, you're pretty fast. I Don't think there's any holy Nova tech. You can do solo Yeah, but not not solo right you need to mob tag Yeah Like in Rathagos as solo build with it and it was kind of nice, but I think the mana cost is too high and that's six She can't do it. Who's the priest the boss here? Hope you're berating whoever asks who I am berating good man. You don't know the Lord You think that's a you're breathing bro Wait, it's a 52 breeze. It's a breeze. Oh, that's so devastating for him No chat is parking There's like the duality of man you have goozers chat every time somebody dies They're all sad the f's in the layer Every time someone dies in my chat the whole chat is on fire and they're unspoggering hard Can we get some purges on this boss Ryan? It's purged bro. What are you saying? It's been purged the whole fight It's just re-buff now for the first time I run No Trade me bro.    That's for sure me this tweenie guy said he was gonna do it I'm not risking it like what if I DC I Got too much to lose these guys are green gear. They could just level in two days and be back where they are Okay, right The boss is casting something Souljacks a lot of time coming out boys careful The boss is coming back. Let's come back watch out. Watch out. I fade it. I fade it needed assistance.  We're good.  You open with fireball and then you cast a scorch Max range and then you sent it and then nobody will post it Fireball frost bolt counterspell. This is the play. We need to kill it man. Man. It's not good Yeah, yeah pot.  Don't worry about it Ryan DJs and trouble man. I got I dropped a firewood man Yeah, use the read bro. You need to pop here. So if you get a gang in trouble, okay?  I would behave if I was you guys Dude, I don't understand.  Oh, it's here. It's in the first Oh this one.  I knew it guys.  Oh That's an agent.  Listen up. I'll panic. I will take agro on all the piss reshackle So do you think you have challenging shout my boy Ryan can you shackle the I'll cancel my blizzard and re-blizzard It broke from a totem I'm gonna know everything. Do you know touch? I'm gonna go back. Don't break it. All right.  Don't be sheep. Don't be cheap. I already know be sheep sending it I'll throw it out here Thank you coming trying to avoid them maybe That's gonna be another corruptor stone for this ball All right, I'm going in I'm hugging the left I'm here.


What extracurricular activities have you been involved in at Curtin? I'm part of the student council for the School of Education. The beach volleyball, into faculty, body events. Still a little bit of basketball. I'm not very good, but it is fun. The quiz night and things like that. If you're uni and you want to find friends, definitely try a club. What club did you guys meet at? A Japanese club. Yeah. Yeah.


So tell me, what are the common reasons that prevent the BF Cash from being used? The two main reasons are pages using Cash Control No Store or Unload Handlers. Setting No Store in your Cash Control header is a strong directive to the browser not to store it. For pages that you just want to be reasonably fresh, use Cash Control No Cash or even better, a short cash time, both of which still allows the BF Cash to be used. Unload Handlers are the other most common reason preventing BF Cash usage. Unload Handlers have a lot of other problems as well, especially on mobile. For sites that don't use Unload Handlers, they can enforce this with their permission policy, which is an HTTP response header sent with a document response. If you try and add an Unload Handler to this site, even in the console, the page won't let you. This is a good way of locking in the fact that you don't use Unload Handlers and also prevents extensions from adding them and thus slowing down your website.


Hello, I'm Emily Orr, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary American Design here at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Welcome to our Enid and Lester Morris Historic Design Lecture, a biannual series and always a memorable evening. With over 210,000 design objects spanning 30 centuries, our collection is a vital resource for design scholarship in the United States and throughout the world. Thanks to the tremendous generosity of trustee Deni Morris and her husband Lester, we invite the foremost design scholars and specialists to engage with our holdings of historic and contemporary design and impart their discoveries to our audiences. As a curator, this series is particularly valuable in its celebration of object-based study and contribution of new perspectives on distinct areas of Cooper Hewitt's rich and varied collection. So I am delighted that the Morces are here with us this evening for a lecture celebrating our superb works of American and European Japanism, a very special thanks to you both for making the Morse lecture series a cornerstone of Cooper Hewitt's educational programming. I hope everyone visited the teak room to view passion for the exotic, Japanism, an intimate experience of how imported and domestic interpretations of Eastern design were displayed at the movement's stylistic zenith. The exhibition's rare and important works, like the teak room itself, reflect the profound influence of Asia on Western designers in the late 19th century, a fascination accelerated by the opening of Japan to the West in 1854. In his classic text, Principles of Decorative Design, Christopher Dresser wrote, Japan can supply the world with the most beautiful domestic articles that we can anywhere procure. The great industrial designers' influential embrace of Japanese form, materials, and techniques, and Eastern art and design in general, is evident through the installation and two spectacular effect. To name just a few of its treasures, there are hand-painted mint and vases attributed to Dresser, several exceptional works manufactured by Cincinnati's Rookwood Pottery, and a rare Tiffany vase produced using the Mokume technique of mixing metals. From the outstanding craftsmanship of the Herder Brothers' tripartite bookcase cabinet to transfer printed ceramics, the passion for the exotic made its way through all rounds of design with lasting impact. Thrilled to have our recently acquired Hitomi Hisono porcelain vase at the entrance of the installation, with its elaborate carving, rooted in both European and Japanese traditions, the vase speaks to the continued flourishing of the cross-cultural interchange, first expressed in Japanism's ornamental grammar. For tonight's lecture, I am especially delighted to welcome one of the Musée des Arts Decoratives' most respected curators, Maude, as the Musée has recently been recoined, and Cooper Hewitt, both represent over a century of design education, scholarship, and stewardship. And when Cooper Hewitt Collection founders, Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt, first envisioned a museum for design and decorative arts, they looked to the Paris Museum. Beatrice Cutt is curator of Maude's Asian collections and head of education for student and adults at the museum. She has curated multiple exhibitions for Maude and other institutions, including de la Chine Ozar Decoratif for Maude, Cloisonet, Chinese Enamels from the UN, Ming, and Qing Dynasties for the Bard Graduate Center, and Imperial China, Splendor of the Qing Dynasty for the Boer Foundation in Geneva. Beatrice also serves on the faculty of L'Ecole de Louvre and has organized numerous scientific analyses of Chinese cloisonet enamels. She is presently curating Maude's upcoming exhibition, Japan, Japanism, 150 Years of Artistic Residence, which will open to the public on November 15th. For her lecture, Beatrice will draw from her research on the exhibitions, dealers, and collectors of Japanese art and design at the turn of the 20th century to illuminate the history of the works now on view that are a part of an inspired dialogue between Western designers and Japanese aesthetics. Please welcome Beatrice Cutt to the podium. Thank you very much, Emily, for this extremely nice introduction. First of all, I would like to thank and to tell Danny and Lester Morse how honored I am to be here tonight, and how impressed I am to talk to you in front of you today tonight. I want to thank Carolyn Bollman for her very warm welcome, Sarah Coffin who put me in contact with the institution, Emily Orr, Ruth Starr, and of course, I would like to thank them to have made anything easy for the organization of this lecture. I would also like to thank my colleague, Audrey Gemazuel, who is curator of the 19th century, who introduced me to Sarah Coffin. I am not a specialist of Japanese art, and I will talk to you about Japanese art on this aspect. Maybe you would have more liked the other way, but as we are now the Mads Museum, I would do it this way. It means a little madly. How does it work? Okay. To understand the event of the reopening of Japan in the mid-19th century, you have to recall we have to go back a little further in the 16th century. The 17th century is when Portuguese arrived on the southeast, southwest coast of Japan, and this is detailed of a folding screen where you have these barbarians from the south, which are the Portuguese, arriving, and you see how the Japanese right away describe those people with what they have so specific, big nose, huge trousers, black suits, the Jesuits, very bizarre people. Sorry, no, that's not what I wanted to do. You see? So right away, you understand how Japanese are taking lively details and transmit them in their art. This is something very specific to Japan, and this is also, you see here the composition, the very specific composition of these folding screens, it's a pair, using the clouds to organize the perspective. Don't try to find a mathematical perspective like we know it from the Renaissance period, but it's an isometric perspective, which means you have to first look at the bottom of the image and go up slowly to have the different plans of the decoration. This is something very specific from Asia, but also from Japan. We'll see that afterwards. When the Edo period was created thanks to this man, the Shogun of the Tokugawa family, Portuguese then Dutch people, Spanish, were installed partly in Japan and developed quite a lot of their relationship, their commercial relationship with Europe, as you know. Then Catholic, thanks to the Jesuits, Catholicism grew very quickly in Japan, and by the end of the 16th century, 150,000 people were already Catholics. Ieyasu Tokugawa's son found it was something dangerous, and suddenly, with the pressure of the Dutch people, decided to take all these people away from Japan and to close totally Japan and isolate the country for the rest of the, until Commodore Perry arrived. For more than 200 years, Japan was nearly totally isolated, not quite because they have only one arbor dedicated to the international trade with the Dutch people, and of course the Chinese also could come in at some arbor, but not at it. Just imagine what happened when the country was forced, the Tokugawa ancestor stopped it, and then the American steamers arrived in the arbor of Tokyo, today Tokyo. It was a great impression for the Japanese people, and it was very impressive for the Tokugawa to just know what they should do. Meanwhile, sorry, I'm forgetting to pass them. Meanwhile, the connection of course, were still by these little arbor, and you know the story of these amazing Indian companies that flourished all over Europe and made the fortune of some countries, and also the amazing collections in the 18th century, and one of the most amazing collection is the collection of August the Strong from Dresden, but also never forget the amazing collection of Japanese lacquer from Marie Antoinette, that she owns it from her mother, Marie Thérèse d'Autriche. But probably those objects didn't arrive directly from Japan, but probably through the Chinese trade, which is a little different. So when, at last, when the Meiji Emperor, after a little fight, well a big fight actually, civil war in Japan, finally the imperial government, the imperial Meiji Emperor, raised up back to them to their power, and the Tokugawa had to decline their power. This was in 1868. It was a great discovery for Europeans. This country was never invaded, had always had these same borders. It's probably one of the only country in the world that could say that, never invaded, and the same border. So when compared to the Chinese country, for example, China had been invaded, and China had to deal with the English, the French, the American, the Russian, all during the 19th century, which was not the case of the Japan country. So when the country opened, everybody wanted to hear from it. Everybody wanted to go and wanted to see those objects. Not the object that were made for the trade, but object that were made for the Japanese people, and specifically for the Japanese shoguns. First exhibition, World Affair, in 1862 in London, showed some of these Japanese art, but not from the Japanese government. It was a specific English collection that was on view, and you can see one of these images here with Japan and people staring and looking at these amazing porcelains and objects. Same, you know, I won't give you all the chronology of the World Affair, where Japan was represented, but the first one, very important, where the Japanese government was officially presenting objects, was in Paris, in 1867. Then in Vienna, as you can see, I will not deal with that, with the porcelain here. Porcelain was, don't forget, why porcelain was so impressive for Europeans. Do not forget that porcelain was made only in the Far East until, well, first German, and then French people finally found cowling in their country. Until there, we had to buy those porcelain from Japan and from China, from China first and Japan after, and all we had to imitate it in other materials like stoneware, like faience. So that's why everybody was looking for things that were very exotic, like porcelain and like lacquer. A few other exhibitions, very important also, the importance of the department store. Department stores, like the Bon Marché, were extremely important. They were not only importing new objects, but also antique objects, which sometimes we forgot. It's still the same like Liberty in London, has also still an antique department, but it was the case of many of those department stores, and the Bon Marché was very famous for that. And look how fascinated those two ladies are looking at this Japanese boat from James Tiso, a famous Japanese. The Musée des Arts de Coâtifs was very involved in this, how do you say, I knew I should have written my text, but then I can't read it, so I have a problem. The Musée des Arts de Coâtifs, sorry, the Musée des Arts de Coâtifs, the Union centrale des Beaux-Arts appliquée à l'industrie at that time, called MAD now, was already very mad about Asian art, and even if they didn't create already the museum, we were first a library, we had the opportunity to organize a huge show in the Palais de l'Industrie. The first show was a retrospective museum in 1865, and five years after we were created, we organized this amazing Musée Oriental, a huge exhibition showing 3,000 objects from the Middle East and Far East, and half of the exhibition was dedicated to Chinese and Japanese art. So here the Musée Oriental, so here's the Palais de l'Industrie, no, I didn't do that. This is the Musée Oriental, and behind this you have a wonderful piece of cloisonnée en amour, you have a huge space where all those objects were presented. We don't have pictures actually of the presentation, but we are very lucky at the library of the museum to have albums with pictures of some objects that were presented. They were not our objects, they were objects from collectors that we were in contact with, the board of the museum were already with a lot of collectors and industrials, and here what was exhibited, ceramic of course, a lot of ceramic, bronzes, furniture, and also to absolutely mention textile, very important, the textile was extremely important. And so all those objects are not at the Musée de l'Adicatif now, which I regret it very much, but definitely inspired artists from that period. You will, because you all, yes you did, also the amazing show a few meters up our head and if you didn't already, you must do it before the end of July, but you also, you already remember, just mentioned the importance of the crane motif, and so this is a Japanese plate, a porcelain plate with this amazing way of organizing the decoration into the white, onto the white surface of the porcelain. This is exactly what strike the critics at that time, and Ernest Cheneau, who was art critic, very famous, did a lecture in the same year in 1869 at the Musée de l'Adicatif and about Japanese art. And of course he compared it to the most amazing art, we decided that it was the perfect art, the Greek art, and he said that Japanese art offered three things, the nature, the way Japanese are transmitting nature, translating nature in their objects, on their objects, nature, color, and, of course, I'm sorry this is black and white pictures, but color and style, and he meant by style the way the decoration fits perfectly the shape of the objects. This is something that the Japanese had made indeed very extraordinary. This is exactly the things that strike those critics, and this is the reason why so many critics and so many artists fall in love with Japan and were inspired by Japan, and you can see here, well just imagine the color, but you can see how the decoration is perfectly organized in this circular shape of the plate. Of course some artists also promoted the Japanese art by collecting them, and you recognize I'm sure Claude Monet, he, no, here, Claude Monet, now you, Van Gogh after, Claude Monet here, and you notice on the back of the picture all his famous Japanese print collection. He was totally inspired and totally mad of Japanese print, and if you go to Giverny today, you could still see his amazing collection. Another person that was extremely important in the diffusion of these Japanese art is Edmond de Goncourt. You know, his word could be very hard when he didn't like something, but also very pleased when he liked it, something very much, and this is a picture of his house in Oteuil, and he liked to, he was a great collector of French 18th century Chinese and Japanese art, and he liked to mix everything, and he considered Japanese art at the same level as French art, and he used to exhibit now this, I really have a problem with this. This is textile, this is Fukusa, amazing textile that he framed like an oil painting, and he used to organize his decoration inside, putting together next to each other Japanese and eventually 18th century drawings from Boucher or very typical 18th century. He was a great collector of ceramic, as you can see here with those rows of tea ceremony bowls, but also of Chinese things where he mixed everything on the walls, on the shelves, on the chimney everywhere. We could do the whole lecture on painting and Japanese, but just to remind you, of course Vincent van Gogh was one of the great Japanese painters. Those two paintings are well-known, Le Pertongui and this courtesan, and you see here exactly what also strike these artists. The composition, this organization of the composition makes it flat with no perspective, and so the character of the Pertongui is facing you very close to you, like if we were projected nearly outside of the frame, and this is something so specific to Japanese art that changed totally the way of painting at the end of the 1870s. But we might speak more of objects here. Important figures of these diffusion of Japanese arts, of course, were the art dealer, and two of them were absolutely amazing, not only in France, but most generally in Europe and even in the United States. I wanted to say, of course, Siegfried Bing here, sitting in U Graf's house, that he bought U Graf made a trip to Japan in the early 1870s, and he bought a house, and he made it built in his garden in Nire-Jouin-Josas, south of Paris, and he invited, of course, his famous antique dealer and his wife, and Gonce Régonce, the famous Japanese writer, a historian on Japanese art, and they were all dressed with kimonos to feel more like Japanese, and having tea, and tea in this house. Very exotic. And another man extremely important in this history of diffusion of Japanese art, and the understanding of the Japanese art in France is Hayashi Tadamasa. Hayashi Tadamasa came with Mr. Wakai. Mr. Wakai was the organizer for the Japanese government, the Meiji government, of the Paris World's Fair in 1878, and he came as an assistant and finally he stayed in France and opened a shop and was one of the greatest antique dealer, and not only antique dealer because he really helped people to understand the real Japanese art, not only art that was made for exportation, but really, for example, the tea ceremony art. Of course, in the diffusion of art, you also have to think of important collectors, and among them we cannot not speak about Emile Guimet and Henri Cernouski. They both went to Japan, traveled to Japan, which was not very often the case in this period, one for interested in religion, and the other one interested in finally bronze. He came back with 1,500 bronzes in 900 boxes. This is his museum at the end of the 19th century, and his collection was exhibited at the Palais de l'Industrie right after he came back, and this was so important in the diffusion of shapes of patina after and of iconography in the decorative art fields, and among those artists that were very influenced by these Japanese bronze, first we have to say Theodor Dek.  We would say today, copy and paste, nearly, except that if it would be colored, then you would see the difference, because of course those vases are colored glazed with a very bright turquoise blue and a very deep purple. But you see how stunning those shapes and those decorations were, so they could mold directly on the object. Another person that was totally influenced by these Japanese bronzes was the exhibition of Cernowski when he came back, is Émile Rebert. Émile Rebert was the designer of Christophe, the Maison Christophe, from 1865 to 1874, and he designed, and the museum design decorative is very proud to have recently acquired a whole album of his own drawing, and he was drawing in all those exhibitions and making notes on the drawings and colored drawings to then use it for his own creation, I mean, his own creation, the creation he did for Christophe. So on the left you have the Japanese object, which is a petal in shape of a rabbit, bronze, Japanese, 18th, 19th century, and on this side you have Émile Rebert's creation for Christophe. Same history, the bronze here, this is interesting because they thought it was Japanese, but this shape is very inspired by Chinese, actually. So Chinese object inspired by China, inspired by Émile Rebert for Christophe to make a chandelier or the same foot organized for a petrol lamp. Gas, sorry, sorry. The little insert burner in shape of a rabbit again, inspired this time, another artist, very famous in ceramic, Ernest Chaplet, and you have here a museum design decorative piece with this amazing little rabbit with a ear, like, it's a very cute piece. You have to come to the museum if you didn't for a while, because this is on view for a few months, and you see how he really gets inspired by those bronzes, and the effect this collection from Henri Cernouski was so impressive and so important on the prediction of decorative arts in France at that time. Another artist interesting also in ceramic is Hippolyte Boulanger here, and he's mixing, he's not, he's using bamboo as a shape for this vase, and he's organizing his decoration all around as a plum tree flower, typical decoration from Japanese iconography, and he, of course, he transformed it as a vase. The colors are not very Japanese, but still it's another way of being a Japanese. Rebert, that's one of the most amazing piece that Rebert did for Christophe. It was exhibited in the exhibition of 1878 and then presented also to the World's Fair in 1878 in Paris, and it's interesting to see how he mixed the different influence he had on Japan, of course, but also China and in the Middle East, and the Middle East you can see with the palmettes here, the Arabesque. You see the Japanese woman, Geisha here, but also Chinese objects, so it's a kind of mixed thing with an interesting mixture, but for a Japanese curator it's a little bit bizarre. I'm not sure he understood the whole thing, but the result is totally amazing because, of course, Christophe has a prize for that. Oh, that big. It's an encoinure. It's a huge, yeah, it's a huge piece. Sorry, yeah, I should have. Object boats by the Innocentral in Paris. Also, I didn't have the time to present some of the lacquer, but also lacquer was very important, and a lot of artists, especially after 1900, not, for example, Junon in the Ardeco period, were a lot inspired by Japanese lacquer, using Japanese lacquer people, and they were also very important. But later on, metal, and we will talk about metal also, this is a screen that we acquired from the Japanese Imperial Commission with 16 planks. Each one is that big, showing a different technique of metal, and it's interesting because when you see the vase upstairs that I'm going to see right away, so these are objects from your exhibition, an amazing show, with different way of being Japanese. This one is more the style Ernest Cheneau was talking about, the way the decoration could fit to the shape, and here it's kind of all over naturalistic decoration. In that way, it's very Japanese. But it's not exactly the same way as this knife is interpreting, just the Japanese art. It's not an all over decoration, it's more Japanese in the spirit, taking the Kozuka. Kozuka is a little, you put your little knife on this sword, and you put the knife in this handle, thank you. Not the handle, no. Thank you. And you see the direct influence, the handle of this knife with this Kozuka, even if it's not the same colors, but Japanese artists, craftsmen, use extremely sophisticated technique with different metal, and was a very inspired object, like the Tsuba, also the sword handle, for artists. And here it's interesting that the knife handle is exactly like a Kozuka, same shape, same size, using, you know, leaving empty space, contrary of that one, as a real Japanese. And at the same time, following the decoration on a part of the blade, which is also very Japanese. So interesting to have those two different ways of being a Japanese. Another way of being a Japanese, it's not decoration anymore, but technique. First, the hammered silver, you know, silver was developed in western art, and the goal of this technique was to have the most plain and flat, and perfectly, how do you say this? Thank you. Surface. And this was considered as totally a default, really. But in Japanese art, this hammered surface is really used as a type of decoration. And it's interesting to see that here, the artist, the craftsman, use this hammered surface as a type of decoration, and it's interesting to see that here, the artist, the craftsman, use this way of doing it as a source of inspiration. The rest is more a nouveau, but using also the very, the soft lines of the Japanese art. And here you have a pure Japanese art. And here you have a pure Japanese art. And here you have a pure Japanese art. And here you have a pure Japanese art. And here you have a purely technique inspiration with a very sophisticated technique, where you put several layers of different metals, and then you work on it so you can see the different layers with the different colors of the metal. It's a masterpiece, and really it's an amazing piece you have here. Print. Oh, do I have to finish in five minutes? Yes, okay. Print. You know how, well, again, interesting, copy and paste. But in an interesting way, because in this vase, like a brush pot, Chinese brush pot, the artist really developed the whole print all around the vase. So if you want to have the view of it, you have to really turn around to have the impression of this whole scene of this Japanese scene, but totally directly inspired by a Japanese artist. Fan, of course, fan is Japanism. And you see here the interpretation and the use of fan by Claude Monet. And you see, well, and you see here the interpretation of the meeting of the Western people, French couple. Maybe when you see those two pieces, you're sure that there were a lot to do to understand each other still, but they were trying to see what was specific on each way. And for French, for Westerns, it was fan and kimono. Fan as a shape.  Extremely, I would like to have tea with that. And this is the way Lüneville organized his production, doing this fan shape that was so unfashioned at that time. Different ways of integrating Japanese art. Here it's more, you have Japan here, but more inspired by Kakemon, which is, we're known personally from Arita, known from the late 17, early 18th century, with this little fence and the tree. And actually the outside is really more Chinese. But it's a mix. It was easy to, when you have to sell, you want to be the first. And in this economical fight of international affairs, you had to be the first to have prices and to sell your production. And of course it was much easier to create new motif on a very classic European shape than to create new shape, because new shape means new mold. It's a long process. And it was faster to pay designers to invent new design that you would just print on old classic French shape. That's what happened. It was another way of creating the new. It was to give names, Japanese names. So this is the set called Kyoto. What does it have from Kyoto? Well, not that much, except the organization of the decoration that is really very Japanese, using those little frames, the snow shape frame, the fan frame to organize and to separate the decoration. So that's the Kyoto set. You also have this famous, very famous. You notice I didn't put it in a chronological order. Very famous and maybe the most impressive Japanese decorator was Braquemont, Felix Braquemont, was really stunning. And you have wonderful plates upstairs. But here you see, again, this is a shape known and produced in France from the 1760s, 1770s. So neoclassical shape, French neoclassical shape. This decoration blew around, very classic also in the 18th century. But then he used Rousseau, Ask Braquemont, to organize the decoration differently. And I think Braquemont is probably the most inventive creator that in this production of ceramic, because he really understood the spirit of Japan, of Japanese artists and Japanese decoration. Look, before you had to have the decoration here, and generally it was white in the middle. Here he used the bottom of them, the center. But you see the motif is running out, like in the cartoon, if the figure goes out and goes back. And it's interesting, because if you have food in this plate, then you can just see a part of the decoration. And when you finish your plate, then you discover the whole decoration. And this is exactly the same spirit in this Japanese bowl, where you see the langoust, this antenna, are inside the bowl. So you have to look inside to have the complete view of the decoration. And Braquemont perfectly understood that. And I think he's one of the best Japanese decorators that ever happened in this period, and very early, as you noticed. And again, Braquemont, look, the way he... Now you have to come to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. After you see the show here, then you have to go to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. We're very mad there. And look, Braquemont also take famous Hiroshige print and transform it in a very Parisian view, a view of Paris. But using the movement also, this is something also the critics noticed. The way Japanese artists had to give movement in this decoration on a two-side object. And I think this is also a masterpiece of Japanism. I'm having to run now. Another way of organizing the decoration is to get inspired by these porcelain from Japan. You see, using those little frames, circle, shape of a flower, a square, and separate the decoration, sometimes nothing to do to each other, to organize the decoration like that. You find this same idea in Hokusai book. It's a book for inspiration, motif for textiles. And you see here the way he presented it in square shapes. Sometimes using also this perspective thing. Look, the birds are seen behind something. But the thematic is not this fence. It's really the bird. This is also something that strikes a lot painters and artists. Gauguin, of course, used it as a reminder, even if we're supposed to talk about decorative art. But also look, Albert Damous, when he worked for Sevres, he also used this very Japanese way on a typical 18th century plate. Again, faster to do a new decoration than to create a new shape. Of course, in the important thing that promotes Japanese art and Japanese motif, the extremely famous magazine created by Siegfried Bing between 1888 and 1891 called Le Japon artistique. He promoted Japanese art. He published each time 9 to 12 plates reproducing textiles, stamps, prints, catagami, ceramics, bronzes, lacquer, of course. And look how this creator, to promote a feast in Geneva, used and copied the exact print from this artist, Utamaro. And again, copy and paste. Another important way of knowing those Japanese prints was also, of course, exhibition. And we have to mention, because it was extremely important, the exhibition that the School of Fine Arts in Paris organized in 1890. It was a stunning exhibition and a lot of collectors get into the Japanese art thanks to this exhibition. And one of our board members of that time, Raymond Coeclin, who was a curator at the Louvre and became a member, a vice president of the board, discovered Japanese prints thanks to this exhibition. Of course, books also. And not only prints, but also something else. Stencils, very important. Pochoir. And Stencils also, through a different publication, the one from Verneuil or from Théodore Lambert, very famous, were extremely important. And when we speak about Japanese and we always speak about prints, but we often forget about Katagami. These Stencils, called Katagami in Japan, were used to print, to dye silk and then fabric cotton. And those motifs were very important and inspired a lot of famous artists like Félix Valoton, for example. René Lalique. See how they, you know, really, sometimes it's really so close. So prints, but also Katagami, very important. And look here, a fern, a motif of fern, inspired grasset. But I dare doing that, maybe could have inspired also this amazing rock chair you have, rocking chair you have on the top floor. And maybe these motifs were inspired by a kind of decoration like that from Katagami's. That's my proposal. Coloman Moser, of course, very important because Katagami, important collections of Katagami were built in Vienna, in Dresden, in Hamburg. The director of the Hamburg Museum was a close friend from Siegfried being and actually was the translator of the review Japan Artistik in German and built a very important collection. And all collections, all Decore of Art museums collected at one point Katagami's. But often they were considered as document. And sometimes you don't even know when they entered the collection. And at the Musee des Alicottes, that is the case. And we very recently digitized them and put them in the inventory because they were considered as document and no one cared about it unlike prints that were, of course, cherished. Coloman Moser very inspired, as you can see, by Katagami's. Again. Again. Or maybe by this amazing box that you have in your collections with the famous Chrysanthemum motif. Another direct cat. Last but not least, I would finish with this in two minutes. The importance of technique in ceramic. We look at the motif, but also in the fair of, actually in Philadelphia first and then in Paris, 1878. There was an important collection of tea ceremony, ceramic. A lot of critics just hated it and said, how can we like that kind of ceramic? That is, how do you say? Not well done. Asymmetrical. Like it was, you know, some default that you have in the oven and generally throw away. But of course that was made on purpose. And it made time, it took time for us to understand the beauty of that kind of piece thanks to those art dealers, like Hayashi Tadamasa and also like Sifrik Bing. And this is also something after the motif that will also be extremely important in the production of ceramic and that renew the art of ceramic. Look, the fish, classic, but here very interestingly impressed in the stoneware. Stoneware was totally forgotten, was only dedicated as a very vulgar vessel. And thanks to the Japanese, stoneware were again regarded as a noble material and inspired artists in shapes and also in sculpture. Of course, the same motif by Gallet or by Rousseau in glass. And again, ceramic. This is the two Japanese, Japanese made for a little incense box and this is a little tea powder box and you see the relationship, obvious relationship between these objects, Japanese objects with these creation in stoneware with all the glaze, the running glaze that stunned so much this artist but mostly after 1900. And also the guilting is coming from when the important pieces were damaged, they were repaired with golden lacquer, Kintetsu technique. And this also struck the artist like Enchelle and it was reproduced and inspired here. And you see the shape of this vase and you see the direct relationship between the two. And last but not least, artist like Rodin was very important or like Ariès were much inspired by this stoneware and used it as this time on the same level as marble or bronzes. Thank you very much. Sorry for being late.


As a parent, I recognize that the overdose crisis that issues surrounding mental health are things that my children will be faced with at some point in their lives. My wife and I have this conversation often about how do we continue to build an environment of trust and honesty, and I think empathy goes a long way. So much of the moral judgment comes from a lack of understanding, and I do think that's where we have an opportunity to progress the conversation forward, and make it more of a healthy conversation, more of one where we're open to listening, we're emotionally available. Oftentimes we get caught up in saying, I have to say, just the right thing, I need to provide the perfect answers. When really we need to take a step back and recognize that just being there, just opening the conversation, provides the honest space that gives our young people a chance to trust us. Sometimes we sell young people short, and thinking that they're not ready to have that conversation, I think young people are, and I think they're yearning for it. Conversations like that, difficult conversations, are where we often grow the most. It's continually providing examples to our kids, letting them know things came up in our life when I was young. This happened to me, here's one of my experiences, and I've recognized that even in my young kids, when I draw on past experiences or say something that happened, kids are all ears, and they want to hear about that, and so I think it starts at a young age to recognize maybe mom and dad are okay with having a tough conversation and won't think I'm crazy or being a bad kid if I tell them about something that happened. We want to talk to kids in our lives about drugs, but we don't always know how. If we shift our role into asking questions and truly listening without judgment, it can go a long way. Keep these conversations going. We are all in this together.