Sonia Coman
Sonia Coman’s research focuses on cross-cultural exchanges in the long 19th century, the history of ceramics, and the history of collecting. Coman received a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia, where she wrote her dissertation on a set of Japanese aesthetic principles that spurred a reinvention of French and Japanese ceramics in the late 19th century. At Columbia, she designed and taught an undergraduate seminar on the soft power of ceramic arts across world cultures. In 2018-19, Coman will prepare a book manuscript on the social circles and collecting choices behind Charles Lang Freer’s Japanese ceramics as the Anne van Biema Fellow at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.