Mei Mei Rado
Research Associate

I am an Assistant Professor at Bard Graduate Center in New York, where I teach dress, fashion, and textile history, and also decorative arts and global art history. Previously an Associate Curator of Costume and Textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, I specialize in textiles and dress of both China and France from the eighteenth- to early twentieth centuries, with a focus on transcultural exchanges. Prior to joining LACMA, I have held research and curatorial positions at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (Paris), the Textile and Costume Division at the Palace Museum (Beijing), as well as the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts and the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have published widely in academic journals such as the Burlington Magazine, Fashion Theory, and Perspective: actualité de la recherche en histoire de l’art, and in edited volumes including Materials, Practices and Politics of Shine in Modern Art and Popular Culture (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021) and Arachné: un regard critique sur l’histoire de la tapisserie (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2017). My research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Society, the Society of Antiquaries of London, and the Beishatang Foundation, among other organizations. My forthcoming book is titled The Empire’s New Cloth: Western Textiles at the Eighteenth Century Qing Court.