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Notes from the Chair Angela Howard Adventures in Asian Art
I have been teaching Asian art in the Department of Art History, Rutgers University, since 1990. In the past decade, I have developed
a program of courses in East Asian art on a wide range of subject matters: archaeology, Buddhist art, sculpture and painting of both China and Japan. I have taught these courses chiefly to undergraduates. I have also taught graduate courses in Buddhist art history as a visiting professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, (1988, 1992, 1887) and participated in doctoral dissertation committees at NYU and Princeton University. I received a Ph.D. in Asian art history, in 1982, from the Institute
of Fine Arts, New York University. During my graduate years, under the
guidance of Professor Alexander C. Soper,
In the early 1980s I became deeply committed to the study of the Buddhist cave temples of southwest China that were then rather unknown to western scholars. I carried on fieldwork in Sichuan and Yunnan from October 1985-July 1986, funded by the NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities China). A grant from the Asian Cultural Council, New York, allowed me to return to the same area in December 1988-January 1989. A third grant from jointly the NEH and the Department of Education enabled me to complete the investigation of Buddhist cliff sculpture in China's Southwest. The book Summit of Treasures: Buddhist Cliff Sculpture of Dazu, Sichuan, published this fall by Weatherhill, New York, is the outcome of fifteen years of research in this geographic area. Several articles, catalogue essays, and presentations at international symposia were, moreover, the result of that fieldwork. To mention a few, the 1988 Stockholm Bulletin article, "Tang Buddhist Sculpture of Sichuan: Unknown and Forgotten," and the 1997 Artibus Asiae article, "The Dharani Pillar of Kunming, Yunnan," are especially important because they record and analyze sculpture not previously published.
Since I have always believed in the necessity of expanding one's area of specialization and tackling new issues, in recent years I began investigating other regional developments of Chinese sculpture. I have become very interested in the issue of multi-culturalism as reflected in the Buddhist art of the Gansu corridor and its relationship to earlier model along the Silk Route in Xinjiang. Once more the NEH granted me a fellowship for University Teachers, August 1998-January 1999. I traveled extensively in Gansu and Xinjiang visiting the sites together with Professor Li Chongfeng, Department of Archaeology, Beijing University. I presented the first-hand evidence of this research trip at the University of Chicago, Department of Art History, at the international conference, Between Han and Tang, Fall 1999 and last November 10 at Asia Society, New York, at the symposium China's Silk Road: People, Places and Luxuries.
In recognition of the experience I have acquired doing fieldwork in China and collaborating with Chinese colleagues, I received this year The Asian Cultural Council-Henry Luce Foundation China On-Site Seminar Program grant. According to its requirements US based scholars (myself as director of the project and Dr. Yu Chun-fang of Rutgers,
Chair Religion Department), and Dr. Li Chongfeng, Archaeology Department, Beijing University, PRC, will teach ten graduate students (five American recruited nationally and five Chinese) in a four-week seminar Buddhist
Art of the Kizil Cave Temples on location in Kizil, Xinjiang, PRC. This
prestigious grant provides honoraria, traveling and living expenses for
all the participants support for a conference, and administrative fees
paid to Rutgers. Based on my studies and extensive fieldwork I have completed a textbook for undergraduates. The volume Chinese Sculpture, in the Culture and Civilization of China Series, (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming 2002) is a collaborative effort with American and Chinese scholars (Wu Hung, Yang Hong, and Li Song). Presently I am
the editor of Art of the Buddhist Caves and Temples of China (300-1800)
(New Haven and Beijing: Yale University Press and Waiwen Press). This is
also a collaborative work between Western scholars and Chinese scholars and the first all-embracing survey of Chinese Buddhist art in a Western language. Lastly, I have had the good fortune of combining my independent research and teaching with museum work. In the fall of 1982, I helped organize the exhibition Chinese Buddhist Sculpture from the Wei through the T'ang Dynasties, National Museum of History, Taibei, Taiwan. From September 1987-April 1988, I participated in organizing the Charlotte
C. and John C. Weber Galleries, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
From February 1991-February 1992, I was co-organizer (with Buddhist art
curators) of the Pan-Asian Buddhist Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, DC. In 1998 I was hired by the Asian Department,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, as Special Consultant in Buddhist
Art, to organize with other curators the exhibition Early Imperial China: The First Millennium, Han Through
Tang Dynasties, scheduled to open March 2004. In this capacity, I have traveled twice to China (January and May-June 2001) to visit the museums of different provinces to select Buddhist art, mainly sculpture.
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