Petals and Plumage: Peacocks in Javanese batik

This talk is free. Registration (with $10 refundable deposit) is required. 

Peacocks have always fascinated artists, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries they became an especially popular motif in art and design, from London to Japan. Paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts of all kinds featured this distinctive bird.

This talk examines peacock imagery on Javanese batiks from this period, tracing its roots in earlier Javanese art, as well as the cross-cultural connections between these designs and those of the Art Nouveau movement and Japanese print and painting traditions.

Natasha Reichle is a curator of Southeast Asian Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, with a BA in literature from Yale University and an MA. and PhD in the History of Art from UC Berkeley. Her recent exhibitions examine the provenance and circulation of works of art.
Her exhibition Weaving Stories looked at how textiles play a role in the formation of status and identity. Other exhibitions include the first major US exhibition on the arts of Bali, Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance. She is also the author of Violence and Serenity: Late Buddhist Sculpture from Indonesia (2007).

Diane Chee is curator (Peranakan) at the Asian Civilisations Museum and the Peranakan Museum. She worked on the revamp of the Peranakan Museum’s permanent galleries in 2023 and curated the special exhibition Peacock Power: Beauty and Symbolism Across Cultures. Her current research focuses on expressions of Peranakan identity and intangible cultural heritage across Southeast Asia. She holds an MA in Asian Studies from Leiden University, the Netherlands.

This talk is organised in conjunction with Peacock Power: Beauty and Symbolism Across Cultures, on view at the Peranakan Museum until 30 August 2026.