Concealing/Revealing: Depictions of the Enslaved in Late Antique Interiors
Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Mon, 9/29 · 4:30 pm—6:00 pm · 010 East Pyne
Program in the Ancient World
A large furnishing textile from late antique Egypt, now held at the MFA Boston, depict nearly life-sized people performing the work of entertaining and welcome, decorations in what would have once been a richly appointed household run through their enslaved labor. Contextualizing evidence from documentary texts, material culture, and architecture, this lecture situates these individuals and their representations in the late antique household, tracing the ways labor was revealed, concealed, parodied, and amplified in elite interiors.
Elizabeth Dospěl Williams is Penny Vinik Chair of Fashion, Textiles and Jewelry at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, responsible for global collections from ancient to contemporary. She was previously Curator of the Byzantine Collection at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C., where curated special exhibitions including Rich in Blessings: Women, Wealth, and the Late Antique Household (2023) and Woven Interiors: Furnishing Early Medieval Egypt (2019).
Dospěl Williams has authored numerous chapters and exhibition catalogue essays, with a focus on wearable arts, interior design, provenance history, and comparative art historical approaches. Her research is forthcoming or has appeared in Speculum, West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, and The Textile Museum Journal. With Eiren Shea and Patricia Blessing, she recently co-authored Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300-1500 for the Cambridge Elements in the Global Middle Ages Series (2023). Dospěl Williams holds a Ph.D. in Byzantine and Islamic art history and archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
