Qiang Ning: "Buddhist Art in the 10th Century Dunhuang: The Politics of Patronage and Image-making"
Abstract:
This presentation examines the politically motivated pictorial programs at the Buddhist site of Mogao in the local/historical context of 10th century Dunhuang. The interactions among art, religion and politics will be analyzed with case studies of the cave-shrines built by the local government and elite clans. Why did local people at Dunhuang build Buddhist cave-shrines in the 10th century? How did they represent their socio-political ideology on the walls and alters? Did the art works actually function as they wished? These and other questions will be answered with visual and textual evidence in the presentation.
Speaker's Bio:
Qiang Ning, Connecticut College
Ning Qiang worked at the Dunhuang Research Academy for 7 years as a researcher of Buddhist art in the Gobi desert in northwestern China before going to Harvard University for his Ph.D. degrees in art history in 1991. He has been teaching Asian art at Yale, San Diego State and the University of Michigan since 1997 and now he is the Chu-Niblack Associate Professor of Asian Art at Connecticut College.