2025 Workshops

Workshop 1

Materials and Methods in Chinese Calligraphy

Host: University of Michigan Museum of Art

Workshop Leaders:

• Lihong Liu, University of Michigan

• Qianshen Bai, Zhejiang University

• Natsu Oyobe, University of Michigan Museum of Art

Dates:  Monday, June 9–Friday, June 13, 2025

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.

Workshop 2

On Jewelness: Buddhist Materiality in Sino-Himalayan Art, 1400-1800s

Host:  Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

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

Dates: Monday, August 18–Friday, August 22, 2025

Jewels are a ubiquitous presence in Buddhist literary and material culture. From the Three Jewels of Buddhism to the visual and material instantiation of the wish-fulfilling jewel, the frequent appearance of jewels as metaphor and material inspires cross-disciplinary inquiries into Buddhist world-making. How might a close study of objects shed new light on jewelness in Buddhist discourse and visual culture?

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.