Event Details

WHAT: RASBJ on-line event — a discussion of feasting in Liao, Song and Yuan dynasties, led by Zoe Kwok, moderated by Joanna Waley-Cohen, followed by Q&A


WHEN: April 26 Wednesday , at 8.00 pm Beijing (not 7.00pm)


MORE ABOUT THE EVENT:

.Feasting was, and still is, a central part of Chinese culture. This talk will focus on the feast as depicted in art and as an occasion for the use and display of objects. Crafted as a two-course presentation, the first course will be an introduction as to why and how feasts became a major site of production of art from the Bronze Age onwards in China.


The second course will focus on art from the 10th to the 14th centuries by way of presenting three paintings – one example is actually a set of paintings – and will start with images of a banquet made for a tomb during the Liao dynasty (907-1125). The figures and the objects depicted in the tomb paintings narrate the importance of dining in the afterlife. The next painting dates from the Song dynasty (960-1279) and captures a rare scene of women banqueting. Here we will explore how ladies banqueted in seclusion. The last painting is a lively handscroll depicting gentlemen at an evening feast from the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and demonstrates how this class of elite men viewed their feast activities as scholarly business.


At the conclusion of this talk, you might feel a bit peckish, although the topics of food and drink are not the focus. However, you should gain a sense of the visual richness and symbolic depth of art, both paintings and objects, that relate to feasting from different time periods, for different purposes, and serving different types of guests.


Image caption:

Palace Banquet, early 12th century. Detail. Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010.473.


HOW MUCH: Free for RASBJ MEMBERS, RMB 50 for members of partner RAS branches; RMB 100 for non-members.

HOW TO JOIN THE EVENT: please click "Register" or "I will Attend" and follow the instructions. After successful registration and payment, you will receive a confirmation email. If you seem not to have received it, please check your spam folder.

Members of partner RAS Branches: Please register 72 hours in advance to allow time for membership verification. You'll received three emails from us: the first confirming receipt of your registration request, the second requesting payment, and the third confirming receipt of your payment, with a link to join the event. Please check your spam folder to ensure you see all RASBJ emails.

Interested in becoming an RASBJ member? Please sign up at https://rasbj.org/membership/​​​


REFUND POLICY: If the organizer/s decide to cancel or postpone the event, registrants will be refunded. Registrants who find they cannot attend for personal reasons will be refunded if they notify RASBJ 72 hours before the start of the event. No refunds will be available for cancellations less than 72 hours before the event

Speakers

  • ZOE SONG-YI KWOK (SPEAKER)

    ZOE SONG-YI KWOK

    SPEAKER

    Zoe Song-Yi Kwok joined the Princeton University Art Museum in 2013 and is the Nancy and Peter Lee Associate Curator of Asian Art. At the museum she oversees the collections of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Central Asian, and Islamic art.
    In 2019 she curated the exhibition The Eternal Feast: Banqueting in Chinese Art from the 10th to the 14th Century that was accompanied by a scholarly catalogue. Zoe also co-curated the 2015 exhibition Sacred Caves of the Silk Road: Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang and oversaw the Princeton installation of the 2016 exhibition Epic Tales from India: Paintings from the San Diego Museum of Art. She has overseen numerous gallery installations, does research on the collections, makes acquisitions in Asian art, and occasionally teaches in the Department of Art & Archaeology.
    Zoe’s main field of specialization is Chinese painting from the Tang and Song Dynasties (618-1279), in particular, paintings of architecture and court women. She has academic interests in Chinese ceramics and early lacquerware, Heian period Japanese painting, Indian miniature painting, and Southeast Asian sculpture.
    Prior to her appointment at the Princeton University Art Museum, Zoe was an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She has worked at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan and received a Fulbright Fellowship (2007-2008) to study in China. Zoe received a B.A. from Wellesley College in history and art history, an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Harvard University, and received her Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University in 2013.

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  • JOANNA WALEY-COHEN (MODERATOR)

    JOANNA WALEY-COHEN

    MODERATOR

    Joanna Waley-Cohen is Provost of NYU Shanghai, the first Sino-US joint venture in
    higher education, which is currently preparing to graduate its third cohort of
    students. As chief academic officer, Provost Waley-Cohen is responsible for setting
    the university’s academic strategy and priorities, and overseeing academic
    appointments, research, and faculty affairs. Prior to being appointed Provost, she
    was NYU Shanghai's founding Dean of Arts and Sciences. She is also Julius Silver
    Professor of History at New York University, where since 1992 she has taught the
    history of China, serving as Chair of the History Department from 2009-2012.
    Provost Waley-Cohen was educated at Cambridge University (BA and MA in Chinese
    Studies) and Yale University (PhD in Chinese history). Prior to earning her PhD, she
    worked as a lawyer in London. She is the author of The Culture of War in China:
    Empire and the Military under the Qing (2006); The Sextants of Beijing: Global
    Currents in Chinese History (1999); and Exile in Mid-Qing China: Banishment to
    Xinjiang, 1758-1820 (1991) as well as many essays on the history of Chinese legal,
    political, military, and culinary cultures and on China’s interactions and exchanges
    with the West.

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