29 May 2007 | Asia
In the latest issue of Late Imperial China (27:2), Susan R. Fernsebner writes on the Nanyang Exposition of 1910, “China’s first nation-wide exposition”: “expo organizers pursued not only an inventory of empire and a systematic evaluation of its material components (objects, artwork, products, and technologies), but also intended, through the use of both material pedagogy [...]
2 May 2007 | Asia, Conferences
This MediaNews article was published in advance of the James Cahill symposium last weekend: “Fourteen of the world’s greatest experts on Chinese painting, coming from as far away as Australia, Hong Kong and Japan, will descend on Berkeley this weekend … to honor the man who taught them, James Cahill, professor emeritus in the history [...]
4 April 2007 | Asia, Contemporary
In the Dec. 2006 issue of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Paul Gladston writes: “The publication of Nine Lives: The Birth of Avant-Garde Art in New China, by Karen Smith, a British-born art critic and a longtime resident of China with extensive firsthand knowledge of the contemporary Chinese art world, is … an extremely [...]
22 February 2007 | Asia
From the University of Chicago Chronicle: “The Rev. Henricus ‘Harrie’ Vanderstappen … who was a pioneering scholar of Chinese art and one of the first Catholic priests to hold a professorship at a secular university, died Thursday, Jan. 25 … An expert in the art of the Yuan and Ming periods, Vanderstappen was part of [...]
16 February 2007 | Asia, Conferences, News
About fifty people attend “The Middle Path? Between Style and Cultural History in Chinese Painting Scholarship.” Is “theory” applicable to Chinese art? Can westerners understand Chinese art at all? Do Chinese observers necessarily do better? How important is it to study Chinese texts? These questions have long bedeviled Chinese art history, as the redoubtable Julia [...]
8 February 2007 | Asia
From The New York Times: “[Beijiing] archaeologists excavated 700 ancient burial sites and recovered 1,538 artifacts, including porcelain urns and jade jewelry, while collecting more than 6,000 ancient coins … Construction zones across the country are uncovering so many antiquities that it might be considered a golden era for archaeology — except that sites and [...]
18 January 2007 | Asia, Conservation
The official China Daily writes on efforts to save frescoes and statues in the Dunhuang Mogao Caves: “Artisans began working on the caves in the Mingsha Mountain in AD 366, or 1,641 years ago. The more than 3,000 Buddha statues and the frescoes that together can add up to 30 kilometers are a treasure trove [...]
27 September 2006 | Asia
Dietrich Seckel is “The Nestor of East Asian art history,” writes I. Schaarschmidt-Richter in the Frankfurter Allgemeine. Seckel has just published the second volume of his study of East Asian portraiture, which concerns typology. He defines two main portrait types: the formal portait, an objective expression of a social type set within the bounds of [...]
20 April 2006 | Asia, Books, Teaching
Leeds University lecturer Ashley Thompson reviews Helen Ibbitson Jessup’s Art & Architecture of Cambodia in the April issue of Orientations: “a thorough and nuanced presentation … an invaluable contribution to the field of Khmer studies in particular, as well as to the broader study of Asian art … the first of its kind in the [...]
16 March 2006 | Asia, Islamic, Museums
From the New York Times: “What is Islamic art? Can it embrace art and artifacts from Southeast Asia, where Islam has been a dominant religion since the 15th century but whose lush tropical lands were largely cut off from the inspirations of the Ottoman, Persian and Mughal empires? … Absolutely, say the curators of a [...]
1 March 2006 | Asia, Conferences
Blogger “Moksha” writes about her CAA experience: “it was a fabulous conference for Asianists – there were more papers and panels relevant to this field than at any other CAA that I have attended over the last six or seven years [...] Another positive sign [was] the number of interviews that South Asianists were racking [...]
