Cynthia Kok

Cynthia Kok studies the material culture of trade and empire. Her dissertation focuses on sensorial engagement in making and craft experiments with mother-of-pearl in the early modern Dutch world. Other research interests include history and specimen collecting, crafting under European colonial governance, and mimetic material practices. Cynthia received her MA in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from Bard Graduate Center and her BA in History and Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley. She has held curatorial internships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, the Frick Collection, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum and she is the 2021-2023 Kress History of Art Institutional Fellow at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS).