The Chinese Object Study Workshops program is receiving applications for 2025. The program is funded by the Kingfisher Foundation and administered by the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The program is open to graduate students enrolled in, or accepted to, a PhD program in the field of Chinese art history at a North American or European university. Graduate students from other art history–related programs and/or who are working closely with Chinese art objects are welcome to apply as well. Applicants may be of any nationality and may apply for more than one workshop. Housing, most meals, and a transportation stipend will be provided for each participant.
Title (Workshop 1): Materials & Methods in Calligraphy
Application deadline: 3 March 2025
Duration: 9 June to 13 June 2025
Location: University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Workshop Leaders:
Lihong Liu, University of Michigan
Qianshen Bai, Zhejiang University
Natsu Oyobe, University of Michigan Museum of Art
This workshop aims to engage participants in an immersive study of the materials, tools, and techniques used in writing and researching calligraphy. Participants will closely examine a rich collection of Chinese calligraphy from the Lo Chia-Lun Collection of Chinese Calligraphy at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, MI, alongside pieces from the museum’s longstanding collection of Chinese art. The workshop will cover all aspects of calligraphy as an art object as well as the writing process and methods. This includes materials and techniques for writing and mounting, seal placement, and para-matter and content (such as frontispiece, signature, colophon, etc.). Through the practice of close looking and group discussion in front of the pieces, the workshop helps participants understand the formation of styles and modes of display and reception. In doing so, the workshop encourages participants to master the skills necessary for researching any given piece of calligraphy within a historical context and to explore new possibilities for establishing research methodologies that expand the study of Chinese art history as a holistic field.
Title (Workshop 2): On Jewelness: Buddhist Materiality
Application deadline: 3 March 2025
Duration: 18 August to 22 August 2025
Location: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
Workshop Leaders:
Wen-shing Chou, Hunter College & The Graduate Center, CUNY
Ellen Huang, ArtCenter College of Design
Jeffrey S. Durham, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
This workshop explores the theme of jewelness through a selection of Sino-Himalayan objects in the collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Drawing on Buddhist objects from the 14th-19th centuries that highlight the connection between China and the Himalayas, the workshop will offer students the hands-on opportunity to study a range of media. They include stone carvings, glazed ceramics, glass, bronze images, precious stone inlays, illuminated manuscripts, relics and reliquaries, sculptures in dry lacquer and wood, as well as pigments and painted representations. Topics to be explored include luster, luminescence, and translucency; related ritual and technological processes; history of transcultural exchanges; broader aesthetics of opulence and splendor in Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism; and the dialectics of transparency and opacity, concealment and revelation.
What to expect
Participants in each workshop spend the week engaged in intensive object study, discussion, and research with a small group of other graduate students, faculty members, and curators and conservators from the host museum.
In addition, participants are required to:
- Complete assigned reading in advance
- Complete a research project based on an object or objects they encountered
- Present this project to fellow workshop students and leaders (often via Zoom)
- Follow the presentation with a written report shared with the workshop host museum
- Lodging, most meals, and a transportation stipend will be provided to each participant.
The program is open to graduate students enrolled in, or accepted to, a PhD program in the field of Chinese art history at a North American or European university. Graduate students from other art history–related programs and/or who are working closely with Chinese art objects are welcome to apply as well. Applicants may be of any nationality and may apply for more than one workshop. Each workshop is designed for around 10 students.
The deadline to apply is March 3, 2025.
For more information, please visit the website here.
Image: “The Orchid Pavilion Gathering,” 1621, Sheng Maoye, handscroll, ink and color on silk. Museum purchase made possible by the Margaret Watson Parker Art Collection Fund, 1974/1.244
