Women across Asian Art
Women across Asian Art
Selected Essays in Art and Material Culture
The role of women artists, collectors, archaeologists, and architects in Asian art history
Filled with exquisite color illustrations, this volume examines an underserved aspect of Asian art history by discussing women artists, collectors, archaeologists, and architects. The essays in Women across Asian Art cover a wide geographical area, from Japan to Pakistan, as they draw attention to people whose efforts have largely been left out of scholarship.
The volume begins by looking at iconography representing the goddess Marici in Chinese art as well as ancient Chinese characters related to gender roles during the Shang dynasty. Contributors then discuss topics including women’s participation as hangeul (Korean alphabet) calligraphers, artists in Japanese Saison culture, and early archaeologists in China. Shedding light on individuals such as poet and painter Luo Qilan, collector Brenda Zara Seligman, architect Lin Huiyin, neo-miniaturist Saira Wasim, painter Tseng Yuho, and sculptor Tayeba Begum Lipi, these essays represent a broad range of contributions from pioneers in their respective fields to current-day activists.
Using primary sources, museum collections, and archival material, the contributors—curators and independent scholars—investigate their collections and fields with new strategies and present original research. As museums are intentionally turning their attention to overlooked narratives of women, this volume continues the important work of uncovering their stories in Asian art history.
Contributors: Melia Belli Bose | Sati Benes Chock | Shana J. Brown | Janet C. Chen | Insoo Cho | Wei-Cheng Lin | Ling-en Lu | Nick Pearce | Allysa B. Peyton | Junko Uchida | Midori Yamamura | Saleema Waraich
“Shines an important light on women’s roles in art historical scholarship, collection, and artistic practice in Asian art through time.”—H-Net
“This book is unique in its broad focus: addressing the feminine as a subject in art as well as women in the art world, including living artists, and reaching from the present back to the Bronze Age. Several of the essays tell stories that are long overdue, and they are likely to encourage further scholarship into the role played by women as collectors, archaeologists, and literati poets.”—Joan Cummins, author of Indian Painting: From Cave Temples to the Colonial Period
“A welcome addition to the small but growing corpus of literature on women artists across a wide range of Asian cultures and artistic traditions. The impressive collection of well-researched and thoughtfully written essays makes a significant contribution to the critical study of the varied and complex roles of women in the arts of Asia that will continue to encourage further research and discussion in a burgeoning and evolving field.”—Jennifer Casler Price, curator of Asian, African, and ancient American art, Kimbell Art Museum
Ling-en Lu is curator of Chinese art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Allysa B. Peyton, former assistant curator of Asian art at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida, is coeditor of Great Waves and Mountains: Perspectives and Discoveries in Collecting the Arts of Japan; Arts of South Asia: Cultures of Collecting; and Arts of Korea: Histories, Challenges, and Perspectives.
