Upcoming Events

Professor WANG Tao: Wu Zhang’s Flower Album and Visual Convergence at the Qing Court (2026/5/21)

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Lecture 14 Lecture 14

With the generous support from the Eurasia Foundation (from Asia), the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology will organize a new lecture series “Encounters in the Old World, East and West: From a Transdisciplinary Perspective” from October 2025 to June 2026. The series will feature 15 lectures, focusing on early interaction, connectivity, and relationships across time and space between European and Asian civilizations. The 14th session will be delivered by Professor WANG Tao, all are welcome. The event details are as follows:

 

Wu Zhang’s Flower Album and Visual Convergence at the Qing Court

Speaker: Professor WANG Tao
Pritzker Chair, Arts of Asia, and Curator of Chinese Art
Executive Director, Initiatives in Asia
The Art Institute of Chicago

Date: 21 May 2026, Thursday
Time: 10:30–12:00
Venue: SWT702, Level 7, Shaw Tower, Shaw Campus, Hong Kong Baptist University
Language: Putonghua
Registration: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/rw3TX4gqKr

 

Abstract: The eighteenth century witnessed an unprecedented convergence between image-making and knowledge production across Eurasia. In Europe, natural history emerged as a systematic enterprise grounded in observation, classification, and visual documentation. The development of illustrated botanical and zoological treatises—culminating in the taxonomic system of Carl Linnaeus—transformed images into indispensable tools for organizing the natural world. At the same time, in Qing imperial China, court painting reached a new level of refinement under the Yongzheng and Qianlong emperors, producing works of extraordinary precision and visual subtlety. By proposing the framework of dual natural histories, this paper highlights the plurality of ways in which humans have sought to understand the natural world. Wu Zhang’s flower paintings, far from being marginal or purely decorative, emerge as vital contributions to a global history of knowledge. They remind us that images can do more than classify and control; they can also connect, resonate, and bring the world into presence.

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