From Mundane to Magnificent: Chinese Ceramics at Home and Abroad


Visiting Guest Lecturer:
Professor Virginia Bower

Thursday, January 26, 2012
7:00 p.m.

UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI MUSEUM

An Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and frequent visiting instructor at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia as well as at Kean University and Rutgers University in New Jersey, Virginia L. Bower did her graduate work in Chinese art and archaeology at Princeton University. Ms. Bower has visited China numerous times, first as a student of Chinese in Taiwan, and later doing research as well as acting a tour lecturer for groups sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, Princeton University Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution and other educational and museum institutions. Her special interests are Chinese ceramics and the arts and culture of the early imperial dynasties. A frequent lecturer at galleries and museums, in October, 2011 Ms. Bower presented “Trash and Treasure? An Inside Look at Chinese Ceramics,” at the Museum of Red River in Idabel, Oklahoma. She has contributed to numerous museum catalogues including: Brush, Clay, and Wood: The Nancy and Ed Rosenthal Collection of Chinese Art, an exhibition at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio in 2008; Recarving China’s past: Art, Archaeology, and Architecture of the “Wu Family Shrines,” an exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum in 2005, Asian Games: The Art of Contest, The Asia Society, New York, 2004, and was the primary author of From Court to Caravan: Chinese Tomb Sculptures from the Collection of Anthony M. Solomon, at the Harvard University Art Museums in 2002. Ms. Bower has contributed an essay on Chinese art to Sunnylands: Art and Architecture of the Annenberg Estate in Rancho Mirage, California published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2010 and was one of the three co-editors of Chinese Ceramics: From the Paleolithic Period through the Qing Dynasty published by Yale University Press in 2010.

This lecture is presented by the Croft Institute for International Studies, the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, and the University of Mississippi Museum

Questions? Contact Emily Dean at museum@olemiss.edu.

Exhibition Image Courtesy of The Norton Museum of Art.