Wen-chien Cheng
Senior Curator, Louise Hawley Stone Chair of East Asian Art
Exhibitions & Galleries: Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Gallery of China, Bishop White Gallery of Chinese Temple Art
Bio
Dr. Cheng joined the ROM in October 2011, as the Louise Hawley Stone Chair of East Asian Art. She is an affiliated faculty in the Department of East Asia Studies at the University of Toronto. Her Ph.D. is in the History of Art from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where her specialty was Chinese painting. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at the J. Paul Getty Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution. Curatorial work, research, and teaching have been the three major parts of her academic training and experience.
Before joining the ROM, Dr. Cheng taught courses in Asian art history at the University of Michigan and Pennsylvania State University at University Park. She served as guest curator and catalogue author for a special exhibition, Tradition Transformed: Chang Ku-nien, Chinese Master Painter of the 20th Century, on view in 2010 at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. She was the co-curator and catalogue co-author for the exhibition Looking Both Ways: A Contemporary Art Exhibition Coinciding with the Centennial of the Xinhai Revolution (2011), organized by the Eastern Michigan University Art Galleries in collaboration with the Confucius Institute and the North Campus Research Complex at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Cheng co-curated the exhibition, The Forbidden City: Inside the Court of China's Emperors, on view from March to September 2014 at ROM and traveling to the Vancouver Art Gallery in October 2014. She was the main contributor to the catalogue accompanying the Berlin 2017-18 exhibit, Faces of China: Chinese Portrait Painting of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In 2019, she co-curated the ROM original exhibition, Gods in My Home: Chinese New Year with Ancestor Portraits and Deity Prints, and co-authored the accompanying catalogue.
Her major area of research is premodern Chinese painting, including the genre subject of Song dynasty painting, images of women, and ancestor portraits and prints in late imperial periods. Her recent research focuses on the ROM’s George Leslie Mackay Collection (Taiwanese folk religious sculptures), the George Crofts Collection (the formation of ROM’s early Chinese collection), and the artistic hybridity in the female images of the Qing dynasty.
Books/Catalogs:
Gods in My Home: Chinese Ancestor Portraits and Popular Prints, co-authored with Dr. Yanwen Jiang. Royal Ontario Museum, 2019. (peer-reviewed)
Faces of China: Portrait Painting of the Ming and Qing Dynasties 1368-1912, 2017, contributor of catalogue entries; author of the essay, “The Chinese Portrait Collection at the Royal Ontario Museum: Reconsidering the Portraiture Status of Ancestor Portraits.” Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Stattliche Museen zu Berlin. Michael Imhof Verlag, Berlin, 2017.
紫垣擷珍：故宫博物院藏明清宫廷生活文物 The Forbidden City: Inside the Court of China’s Emperors, exhibition bilingual catalogue (Chinese and English), co-editor with Chen Shen, ROM and Palace Museum, Beijing, The Forbidden City Publishing House, 2016.
The Forbidden City: Inside the Court of China’s Emperors, exhibition guidebook, co-authored with Chen Shen and contributions from Sarah Fee, Royal Ontario Museum, 2014.
Looking Both Ways: A Contemporary Art Exhibition Coinciding with the Centennial of the Xinhai Revolution, co-authored with Tom Suchan and Guye-Meei Yang. Ypsilanti, Michigan: Eastern Michigan University Art Galleries, 2011.
Tradition Transformed: Chang Ku-nien, Master Painter of the 20th Century, University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2010.
Journal articles and book chapters:
“What to Remember Her By? A Case of a Female Effigy Portrait in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912)”, Ming Qing Yanjiu, 25 (2021), 55-97. (peer-reviewed)
“Pictorial Portrayal of Women for Didactic Messages in the Han and Six Dynasties.” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China, Vol. 19: 2 (2017): 155-212. (peer-reviewed)
“Paintings of Traveling Bullock Carts (Panche Tu 盤車圖) in the Song Dynasty (960-1279).” Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 66: 2 (2016): 239-269. (peer-reviewed)
“醉僧之意不在酒—宋代醉僧圖的意涵” [Beyond Drunkenness: Song Paintings of Drunken Monk]. 故宮學術季刊The National Palace Museum Research Quarterly, Vol. 33:4 (2016): 1-32. (peer-reviewed)
“千面美人： 加拿大皇家安大略博物館藏明清美人畫” [The Many Faces of Meiren hua: Ming-Qing Period Beautiful Women Paintings at the Royal Ontario Museum Collection]. 《美成在久》 (Orientations, Chinese edition) No. 7 (2015): 44-57.
“Idealized Portraits of Women for the Qing Imperial Court.” Orientations, Vol. 45 no. 4 (2014): 87-99.
“Making ‘The Forbidden City’: An Introduction to the Exhibition.” Co-authored with Chen Shen, Orientations, Vol.45 no.4 (2014): 68-75.
“吳彬十六羅漢圖—晚明佛教的意象” [Sixteen Lohan Paintings by Wu Bin—Visualizing the Late Ming Buddhism]. 《故宮文物月刊》 The National Palace Museum Monthly of Chinese Art no. 357 (2012): 52-61.
“Antiquity and Rusticity: Images of the Ordinary in the Farmers’ Wedding Painting.” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, Vol. 41 (2011): 67-106. (peer-reviewed)
“李迪〈雪中归牧图〉主題之再商榷” [Reconsideration of Li Di’s Returning in the Snow from Ox-herding] 《千年丹青—細讀中、日藏唐宋元绘画珍品》Essay included in Masterpieces of Ancient Chinese Paintings from the Tang to Yuan Dynasty in Japanese and Chinese Collections, edited by Shanghai Museum (Peking University Press, 2010), 245-256.
“古法新裁傳墨韻—張榖年繪畫” [Old tradition made new in the lyrical expression of ink—Chang Ku-nien’s paintings]. 《大觀月刊》 Daguan Monthly, no. 4 (2010): 34-41.
“化外醉鄉—〈春酣圖〉試析”[The Drunken Dreamland: Study on Tipsiness in Spring Painting]. 《故宮文物月刊》National Palace Museum Monthly of Chinese Art no.308 (2008): 112-125.
“Drunken Village Elder or Scholar-Recluse? The Ox-Rider and Its Meanings In Song (960-1279) Paintings of Returning Home Drunk.” Artibus Asiae, Vol. 65:2 (2005): 309-357. (peer-reviewed)