Virginia Bower, Rutgers Art History Adjunct Professor
- September 1, 2026
Virginia Bower died in Princeton, Dec. 13, 2025, after an extended illness. Virginia was an adjunct associate professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and a visiting instructor at Bryn Mawr, Kean University, Rutgers, and Franklin and Marshall.
Her special interests were Chinese ceramics and the arts and culture of the early Chinese imperial dynasties.
Virginia visited Asia numerous times — first as a student of Chinese in Taiwan, and later while conducting research and serving as a tour lecturer in China for groups sponsored by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the Princeton University Art Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution.
A frequent lecturer at galleries and museums, Virginia contributed to numerous museum catalogues, including em>Brush, Clay, and Wood: The Nancy and Ed Rosenthal Collection of Chinese Art (Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2008); Recarving China’s Past: Art, Archaeology, and Architecture of the “Wu Family Shrines” (Princeton University Art Museum, 2005); and Asian Games: The Art of Contest (Asia Society, New York, 2004).
Virginia was the primary author of From Court to Caravan: Chinese Tomb Sculptures from the Collection of Anthony M. Solomon (Harvard University Art Museums, 2002). She also contributed an essay on Chinese art to Sunnylands: Art and Architecture of the Annenberg Estate (2010) in Rancho Mirage, California, and was one of three co-editors of and a contributor to the ground-breaking volume Chinese Ceramics: From the Paleolithic Period through the Qing Dynasty, published by Yale University Press (2010).