Scholarly programs, designed for experts, students, and enthusiasts, share groundbreaking research and provide a deeper look into Asian and American art and culture. Symposia are open to the public and available to watch online.
Scholarly Programs
Anyang: China’s Ancient City of Kings Symposium
Thursday, March 7–Friday, March 8, 2024
Keynote and reception: Thursday, March 7: 6–8 p.m.
Symposium: Friday, March 8: 10 a.m.–5:15 p.m.
Meyer Auditorium, Freer Gallery of Art
To celebrate the National Museum of Asian Art’s centennial in 2023, the museum organized Anyang: China’s Ancient City of Kings, an exhibition devoted to the art and archaeology of the last capital of the Shang dynasty. Occupied between roughly 1250 BCE and 1050 BCE, the Anyang site is associated with the earliest surviving corpus of Chinese writing; palatial building foundations; immense underground royal tombs; large-scale human sacrifice; the arrival of horses and chariots in China; and an extensive system of urban factories, where sophisticated goods in a variety of materials, including bone, jade, ceramic, and bronze, were manufactured at an industrial scale. Drawn exclusively from the museum’s collections, the exhibit features over two hundred remarkable artifacts that can be linked with Anyang and other material cultures contemporary with the Shang, including ornaments, ritual vessels, bells, weapons, and chariot fittings.
In conjunction with this exhibition, the museum is holding a two-day international symposium in Washington, DC. Bringing together specialists from a range of disciplines, the program will speak to the primary topics addressed in the exhibition, including the twentieth-century discovery of the Shang city and the advent of Chinese archaeology, the infrastructure that supported daily life at Anyang, the role of writing in its bureaucratic administration, and the evolution of design and technology reflected in the products created in the city’s various craft workshops.
Speakers include:
- Robert Bagley, Princeton University
- Cao Dazhi, Peking University
- Yung-ti Li, University of Chicago
- Ariel O’Connor, National Museum of Asian Art
- Kyle Steinke, National Museum of Asian Art
- Donna Strahan, National Museum of Asian Art
- Tang Jigen, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen
- Wang Haicheng, University of Washington
- Keith Wilson, National Museum of Asian Art
For more information, email AsiaScholarlyProgram@si.edu.
Chinese Object Study Workshops
2013–2024
Sophisticated visual analysis is a hallmark of art history and depends on skills acquired through the direct study of objects. These skills must be taught and practiced. Yet as graduate art history curricula have expanded to include training in methodology, historiography, and theory, training in object study has lessened. The problem is exacerbated for students of Chinese art history, whose graduate curricula include intensive language courses, as well as courses on religion, literature, and history.
Chinese Object Study Workshops is a program that provides graduate students in Chinese art history an immersive experience in the study of objects. The week-long workshops will help students develop the skills necessary for working with objects, introduce them to conservation issues not readily encountered in typical graduate art history curricula, and familiarize them with important American museum collections.
Postponed – Symposium: Japan in the Age of Modernization: The Art of Tomioka Tessai and Otagaki Rengetsu
This event has been postponed
This symposium gathers scholars from the United States, Japan, and Europe, who look beyond Japan’s Western industrialization to examine China’s role in forming the nation’s modern identity. It accompanies a major retrospective of the modern Japanese painter Tomioka Tessai (1836–1924) on view from March 28 to August 2, 2020, at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. A curator-led sneak preview of the exhibition concludes the symposium.
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Provenance and Asian Art: A Collaborative Workshop and Symposium
November 1–4, 2023 -
Freer Medal Lecture and Award Ceremony: Honoring Gülru Necipoğlu
Friday, October 27, 2023 - A Moment in Time: Egyptian Antiquities and the Early 20th Century
Tuesday, January 31, 2023, 12 pm - Hidden Networks: The Trade of Asian Art
2020–2022 - The Sasanians in Context: Art, History, and Archaeology
October 21–22, 2022 - Translocation of South Asian Art: Provenance and Documentation
Thursday, October 6—Friday, October 7, 2022 - Ancient Korean Architecture in Context
July 26, 2022 - Untold Stories: Women and the Asian Art Trade
September 30, 2021 - Miniseries: Illustrated Woodblock-Printed Books of the Edo Period
August 10, 17, 24, 2021 - Virtual Symposium—East Asian Painting Conservation: Perspectives on Education, Research, and Practice
June 29, June 30, and July 1, 2021 - Yamanaka & Co.: Early Pioneer of the Global Asian Art Trade
Thursday, April 15, 2021 - Honoring Esin Atil
Saturday, February 20, 2021, 9 am–1 pm EST - C.T. Loo Revisited: New Sources & Perspectives on the Market for Asian Art in the 20th Century
8:30 a.m. –12 p.m., Thursday, December 3, 2020 - Symposium: AfricAsia: Overlooked Histories of Exchange
9–11 a.m., September 14–16, 2020 - Goryeo Art and Culture Study Day
Thursday, February 20, 2020 - Symposium: Korean Buddhist Images and Dedication Practice
Thursday, February 20–Friday, February 21, 2020 - Goryeo Buddhist Painting: A Closer Look
Friday, March 10, 2017 - The Word Illuminated: Form and Function of Qur’anic Manuscripts
December 1–3, 2016 - Sōtatsu’s Times: Perspectives on the Culture and Politics of Kyoto
December 5, 2015 - Sōtatsu in Washington: Insights, Discoveries, and Reflections
October 24, 2015 - In the Dig House: Behind the Scenes in Archaeology
April 25, 2015 - Whistler and Kiyochika: Modernity, Melancholy, and the Nocturne
May 14, 2014 - Whistler Object Study Workshop
June 9–12, 2014 - Medical and Modern Yoga
January 11, 2014 - Yoga and Visual Culture: An Interdisciplinary Symposium
November 21–23, 2013 - The Legacy of Cyrus the Great: Iran and Beyond
April 27, 2013 - Crossroads of Culture: The Archaeology of Saudi Arabia
November 17, 2012 - The Art of Itō Jakuchū
March 30, 2012 - Imperial Exposure: Early Photography and Royal Portraits across Asia
December 5–6, 2011 - Palaces of Art: Whistler and the Art Worlds of Aestheticism
October 27–28, 2011 - Art and Material Culture of the Northern Qi Period
June 3–5, 2011 - Piety, Poetry, and Politics: Sufi Muslims in South Asia
April 28–30, 2011 - Historians Of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) Second Biennial Symposium: “Objects, Collections, And Cultures”
October 21–23, 2010 - Forbes Symposium
October 28–29, 2010