Algemene Ledenvergadering en lezing ‘Art, Knowledge, and Politics in the 18th-Century Qianlong Court’

Op zaterdag 21 april vindt in het Rijksmuseum de jaarlijkse Algemene Ledenvergadering plaats, traditioneel gevolgd door een interessante lezing. Het bestuur zal verslag doen over 2017 en we zullen uitgebreid stilstaan bij het jubileumjaar 2018. Na het formele deel van het programma zal visiting Hulsewé-Wazniewski Professor Yu-chih Lai een boeiende Engelstalige lezing houden getiteld ‘Art, Knowledge, and Politics in the 18th-Century Qianlong Court’.

13:15-13:30      Inloop en registratie
13:30-14:45     Algemene Ledenvergadering
14:45-15:00     Pauze
15:00-16:00     Lezing Yu-chih Lai ‘Art, Knowledge, and Politics in the 18th-Century Qianlong Court’

Visiting Hulsewé-Wazniewski professor Lai Yu-chih will hold a lecture on her book project “Visual Governance: Art, Science and Politics at the Qianlong Court”. In the book she explores how the unprecedented production of various kinds of images at the High Qing court of the 18th century represented a form of imperial governance, shaped by both the traditional discourse of Chinese politics, and contemporary forms of globalization.

The lecture focuses specifically on three albums as a set. The first is an encyclopedic work of image-compilation embarked upon by the Qianlong emperor: Official Tributes (Zhigong tu 職貢圖), a visual documentation of the peoples the Qing empire ruled, both physically and symbolically. The second album, Album of Birds (Niao pu 鳥譜), is an encyclopedic collection of images on birds. The third is the Album of Beasts (Shou pu 獸譜), featuring zoological depictions of animals.

All albums present the triadic elements in forming the Chinese cosmos, i.e., Album of Birds as heaven, Album of Beast as earth, Official Tributes, or we may say, Album of People, as humanity. All three compilations were initiated and completed around the same time (1750 and 1761 respectively) and shared the same size and format; they show the impact of globalization processes during the 18th century.

Visiting Hulsewe-Wazniewski professor Lai Yu-chih is an art historian of Chinese art and visual culture and currently an associate research fellow at the Institute of Modern History at the Academia Sinica in Taipei.

Datum: Zaterdag 21 april 2018, 13:30-16:30

Locatie: Auditorium Rijksmuseum Amsterdam