Workshops

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, profound changes in political, economic, and social systems occurred in China, Japan, and Korea. Across the region, artists, collectors, scholars, educators, and institutions contested the categories of “art,” with terms such as meishu/bijutsu/misul carrying distinct historical weight and nuances. They reclassified objects as “fine art,” “craft,” or “heritage.” The increasing mobility of artists and objects across transnational networks also changed local modes of artistic practice. Emergent media such as photography, pictorials, and cinema furthermore reshaped how images were created, circulated, and viewed. In this shifting landscape, East Asian artists engaged in a complex interplay of persistence and transformation.

This workshop investigates East Asian art within this critical milieu. How were categories of “art” constructed, translated, and contested across national boundaries within and beyond East Asia? In what ways did the emergence of new mediums and institutional frameworks alter artistic practices and viewers’ experiences? How did the intra-Asian and transcontinental networks of people, ideas, and objects reshape artistic practices and ecosystems? More broadly, how might we narrate this period without defaulting to oversimplified binaries such as “tradition versus modernity” or “East versus West,” while attending to tensions and asymmetries both within and across China, Japan, and Korea? 

Bringing together scholars working on this transformative period, this workshop aims to open new avenues for understanding East Asian art in all its complexity. 

Contesting Categories: East Asian Art at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Workshop organized by Yixu Eliza Chen and Shing-Kwan Chan
With support from the P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art

Saturday, 22 August 2026

Check-in & Coffee
8:30 am – 9:00 am      

Morning Session
9:00 am – 12:30 pm                                                      

Welcome
Dora C.Y. Ching, Princeton University

Opening Remarks
Yixu Eliza Chen, Princeton University

Panel I: Scale and Space
Chair: Dora C.Y. Ching, Princeton University

Almost Immersive: A Scale/Screen that Transcends
Tingting Xu, University of Rochester

A Strange Flower and a Beast None Could Name: Painting Foreign Plants and Animals in Late-Qing Guangdong
Shing-Kwan Chan, Princeton University

Constructing the Landscape of Taiwan: Art, Expansion, and Exploration
Chinghsin Wu, Rutgers University, Camden

Discussant’s Remarks & Discussion
Kit Brooks, Princeton University Art Museum

Coffee Break    

Panel II: Photography and Visual Experience
Chair: Mia Liu, Johns Hopkins University

Multiplying Place, Space, and the Stereoview: Negretti & Zambra’s 1859 and 1861 Views of China
Roberta Wue, University of California, Irvine

Photography and Art/Photography as Art in Meiji Japan
Karen Fraser, University of San Francisco

On the Nude and Photography in 1920s China
Stephanie Tung, Peabody Essex Museum

Discussant’s Remarks & Discussion
Mia Liu, Johns Hopkins University

Lunch
12:30 pm–2:00 pm                                                                

Afternoon Session
2:00 pm–5:30 pm

Welcome
Kit Brooks, Princeton University Art Museum

Panel III: Time and Historicity
Chair: Jeannie Kenmotsu, Portland Art Museum

Translating Textures: Photolithography, Yingta, and the Mediation of Egyptian Antiquities
Yixu Eliza Chen, Princeton University

Concreteness and Historicity: The Role of Abstraction in Early Twentieth-Century Korean Art and Design 
Mina Kim, The University of Alabama

Out of Time: Lin Fengmian’s Lost Paintings, Crisis, and Restoration
Lisa Claypool, University of Alberta

Discussant’s Remarks & Discussion
Jeannie Kenmotsu, Portland Art Museum

Coffee Break

Panel IV: Print and Modernity
Chair: Kit Brooks, Princeton University Art Museum

Painting, Print, Design: Rongbaozhai’s Decorated Letter Papers 
Ren Wei, Dickinson College

Contesting Bijutsu: Buddhism and the Category of Art in Modern Japan
Stephanie Su, University of Colorado Boulder

Discussant’s Remarks & Discussion 
Kit Brooks, Princeton University Art Museum

Closing Remarks
Shing-Kwan Chan, Princeton University

Reception & Dinner
6:00 pm