Hsueh-Man Shen

Ehrenkranz Associate Professor in World Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Hsueh-man Shen’s research on the art of medieval China is mostly concerned with materiality and object mobility. She is the author of a recent book entitled Authentic Replicas: Buddhist Art in Medieval China (2019), and editor of Gilded Splendor: Treasures of China’s Liao Empire (2006, German version in 2007). In 2016 she co-curated the special exhibition, Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China’s Silk Road, for the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Interested in positioning China on the atlas of world art, she is currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively titled Art, Space, and Mobility, to explore how maritime connectivity reconfigured the cultural boundaries of East Asia during the long twelfth century.

“Agents of Appropriation: Artifacts in Sino-Japanese Trade, ca. 1050-1250”

By the beginning of the eleventh century, trade under the Dazaifu (Japan) was replaced by a direct interaction between Japanese patrons and Song merchants. Whereas in China a system of supervised private trade administered by shibosi (Maritime Trade Office) was already well established. During this era, private maritime trade between China and Japan was conducted through networks of monks-merchants based in the port cities of Ningbo and Hakata. It was not uncommon for these Buddhist monks and merchants to take on multiple roles. For example, a patron monk sometimes took on the role of a trader; likewise merchants sometimes acted as interpreters. On the one hand, the physical properties of the objects dictated which goods were selected for a particular transport while on the other, the selection of goods for transport was driven by potential economic profits and social demands. This paper sets out to examine the role of the intermediaries in terms of theories of appropriation and construction of meaning. I will describe the variety of agents who took part in these trade networks, while examining the physical properties of the artifacts that influenced production and decisions concerning transportation.