U.Va.’s Fralin Museum of Art To Host Weedon Asian Arts Lecture on Sept. 20

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia will host David Ake Sensabaugh for an Ellen Bayard Weedon Lecture in the Arts of Asia on Sept. 20. His lecture, “Gardens and Gatherings in Qing Dynasty Painting,” will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 153.

Sensabaugh’s lecture will accompany museum’s new exhibition, "Ancient Master in Modern Styles: Chinese Ink Paintings from the 16th-21st Centuries," on view through Dec. 16.

This exhibition of Chinese ink paintings from the museum’s collection and the Lijin Collection examines the influence of this long tradition on later artists and how they sought to balance reverence for the art of old masters with their own impulses for artistic expression. The exhibition demonstrates the rich variety of ink painting in China over many centuries and the continuing relevance of tradition to Chinese artists today.

Depictions of gardens and gatherings have long histories in China. During the Qing dynasty, both genres of painting flourished, sometimes combined as in Wang Su’s “Drinking Wine in a Garden of 1750. Sensabaugh’s talk will put Wang Su’s picture into the broader context of the history of Chinese painting, particularly of depictions of gardens and gatherings.

Sensabaugh is the Ruth and Bruce Dayton Curator of Asian Art and head of the Department of Asian Art at the Yale University Art Gallery. He was assistant professor in the McIntire Department of Art in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences and adjunct curator of the U.Va. Art Museum from 1979 to 1984. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in Chinese and Japanese art and archaeology from Princeton University, and his bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University. His research interests are in Chinese painting of the 14th and 15th centuries; Chinese pictorial art of the Han and Southern and Northern Dynasties period; and Chinese gardens. His most recent publications include: “Fashioning Identities in Yuan-Dynasty Painting: Images of the Men of Culture” (2009), and “The Lion Grove in Space and Time” (2011).

The Weedon Lectures are made possible by support from the Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For information, call 434-243-2050 or e-mail museumoutreach@virginia.edu.

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Jane Ford

U.Va. Media Relations