The decorative style we know as chinoiserie is a European fantasy of the East. As the esteemed interior designer Michael Greer wrote in his book Inside Design, “Much of the charm of chinoiserie lies in the fact that the artist (a) doesn’t succeed in accurately copying the real McCoy and (b) doesn’t want to anyway.” That was written in 1962, 16 years before Edward Said’s landmark Orientalism was published and examinations of “otherness” took center stage. There is no question that chinoiserie in porcelain, furniture, and textiles delights the eye. But does our affection for it ignore racism and reinforce false cultural constructs? At the Met Museum, “Monstrous Beauty” looks at chinoiserie through the prism of feminism, and with a focus on porcelain—nearly 200 pieces from the 16th century to the present day. “Fragile, delicate, and sharp when broken,” reads text from the Met, “it became a resonant metaphor for women, who became the protagonists of new narratives around cultural exchange, consumption, and desire.” —Laura Jacobs