Sasha Rossman is an art historian based in Basel whose work focuses on material culture and intersections between objects, politics, and boundaries in various epochs from the 16th century to today. He studied fine arts and art history in New York, Berlin, UC Berkeley, and the University of Konstanz. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern in the SNSF project The Inheritance of Looting: Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums. His book On the Table: Episodes in the Life of an Early Modern Object is forthcoming with Taylor & Francis / University of Amsterdam Press this year. His writings have appeared in journals ranging from the African Studies Review to Texte zur Kunst and Journal 18. His artistic practice takes the form of merchandise, or accommodating vessels such as notebooks, tote bags, or plates.

In this Art Taaalkssss, Rossman will discuss how tables and related furniture did far more than serve practical purposes. He will reflect on how they structured rituals of power, mediated diplomatic encounters, and operated as visual and material agents in the articulation of authority and negotiation across seventeenth-century Europe. Drawing on case studies from gaming tables to treaty-ratification scenes, Rossman’s research reframes “decorative” objects as central participants in the politics of their age.