2022 Seminar

Sammy Yukuan Lee Seminar 2022

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Sammy Yukuan Lee Lectures on Chinese Art and Archaeology, the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies is pleased to present two days of seminar, lecture, and dialogues, featuring renowned artist Hongtu Zhang and Professor Wei-Cheng Lin.

The events are being held in-person in enclosed lecture rooms. We respectfully ask all attendees to wear masks if you have any symptoms of flu or other illness (cough, fever or feeling feverish/chills, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose …) [According to CDC: Regardless of vaccination status, you should isolate from others when you have COVID-19. You should also isolate if you are sick and suspect that you have COVID-19 but do not yet have test results. Please do not attend the events in-person at this time.] Thank you for your cooperation!


Schedule of Events:

Friday, November 4, 2022

Main Conference Room - UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library

1:00PM - 3:00PM Dialogue with Graduate Students “From Material Mao to Repainting Chinese Shan Shui" by Hongtu Zhang

Saturday, November 5, 2022

Lenart Auditorium - Fowler Museum

2:00PM - 3:15PM "Politics in Collecting Chinese art During the 1930s: “Chinese Temple” at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art" by Wei-Cheng Lin. [He will be presenting virtually]

3:30PM - 4:45PM From Tiananmen Square to Times Square: My Life, My Art by Hongtu Zhang

5:00PM - 6:00PM Outdoor Reception

Wei-Cheng Lin is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. Lin specializes in the history of Chinese art and architecture, with a focus on the medieval period, and has published on both Buddhist and funeral art and architecture of medieval China. Lin is currently working on two book projects: Performative Architecture of China explores architecture’s performative potential through history and the meanings enacted through such architectural performance. Necessarily Incomplete: Fragments of Chinese Artifacts investigates fragments of Chinese artifacts, as well as the cultural practices they solicited and engaged, to locate their agentic power in generating the multivalent significance of those artifacts, otherwise undetectable or overlooked.

A pioneering figure in contemporary art, Hongtu Zhang, was born in 1943 in Gansu, China and raised in a devote Chinese Muslim family. He graduated from the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts in Beijing in 1969 and studied the wall painting of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang in 1980. Zhang came to New York in 1982 and, over the course of the ensuing decades, launched a series of influential art projects. These include Chairmen Mao, which provided a satiric mash-up with pop art and the political art of the Mao era, and the Repainting Chinese Shan Shui, which juxtaposed the painting styles of Western artists like Cezanne, Monet, and van Gogh with classic works in the traditional Chinese landscape painting tradition. His work has been exhibited at major museums and galleries around the world, including the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hall for Contemporary Art, Israel Museum, Museu Picasso, and the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts.

About Sammy Yukuan Lee Lecture Series
First presented in 1982 in celebration of his 80th birthday, the Sammy Yukuan Lee Lectures on Chinese Art and Archaeology honors the life and philanthropy of respected businessman, art collector, and Chinese art authority, Sammy Yukuan Lee. This series is presented annually by the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies with support from the Sammy Yukuan Lee Foundation, and in partnership with the Fowler Museum at UCLA.

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Duration: 1:23:01