Lecture by Joseph Scheier-Dolberg—“Truth and Image: Portraits in China 1000–1900”

Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 4:30pm
Boger Hall, Room 112, 41 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown

Free and open to the public

Wesleyan students, faculty, and staff can RSVP on WesNest, but reservations are not required.

A lecture by Joseph Scheier-Dolberg, Oscar Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang Curator of Chinese Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, entitled “Truth and Image: Portraits in China 1000–1900.”

Portraiture has long been treated as a minor branch of Chinese art history, understood for its functional role in ancestor veneration but rarely considered along stylistic or intellectual lines. This talk will offer pathways toward reimagining the study of portraiture in premodern China, arguing that portraits were deeply integrated into the lives of elite intellectuals and that they stimulated and mediated a rich discourse on questions of selfhood, identity, and representation.

Joseph Scheier-Dolberg has been working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art since January 2013. The exhibitions he has curated include The Art of the Chinese Album (2014) and Streams and Mountains without End: Landscape Traditions of China (2017–18). Scheier-Dolberg has published on a wide range of subjects, including the Qing imperial art collection, contemporary ink painting, the history of Chinese albums, and the appreciation of rocks in premodern China.