Wei-Cheng Lin

Biography

Wei-Cheng Lin specializes in the history of Chinese art and architecture with a focus on medieval periods. His primary interests of research are visual and material cultural issues in Buddhist art and architecture and China’s funerary practice through history. He is the author of Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount Wutai, published by the University of Washington Press in 2014. He has additionally published on a variety of topics, including collecting history, photography and architecture, historiography of Chinese architectural history, and contemporary Chinese art.

Before joining the University of Chicago in fall 2015, Lin taught at Iowa State University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was the recipient of the Carter Manny Award (Graham Foundation) and Millard Meiss Publication Award (CAA), and has held fellowships from the Academia Sinica in Taipei and International Academy for China Studies at Peking University. He is currently serving on the editorial board for the Archives of Asian Art.

Lin’s current book project, titled Performative Architecture of China, investigates the ways in which Chinese architecture can be considered as actively engaging its users by structuring, affecting, evoking, or shaping their spatial senses and imagination. It explores architecture’s performative potential through history and the meanings enacted through such architectural performance. Other ongoing projects examine re-appropriations of traditional architecture in contemporary China, history of Chinese mortuary architecture, and the politics of Chinese art collection during the 1930s and 1940s. 

Publications

Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China's Mount Wutai

University of Washington Press
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2014

“Screening the Chinese Interior: Architectonic and Architecturesque,” in The Screen in East Asia and Beyond, ed. Ping Foong and Chelsea Foxwell (Chicago: The Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago, forthcoming)

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“Performing Center: Multistoried Pagodas in China’s Middle Period,” Ars Orentalis 46 (2016)

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“Structural, Visual, or Iconic: The Transmutation of Wooden Brackets in Modern China,” Frontiers of History in China 10, no. 2 (2015)

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“Untranslatable Iconicity in Liang Sicheng’s Theory of Architectural Translatability,” Art and Translation 5, no. 2 (2013)

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Relocating and Relocalizing Mount Wutai: Vision and Visuality in Mogao Cave 61, Artibus Asiae 71, no. 1 (2013)

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2013

“Replicating the Past: Ink Rubbing and Its Related Ideas in Contemporary Chinese Art,” in Original Intentions: Essays on Production, Reproduction, and Interpretation in the Arts of China, ed. Nicholas Pearce and Jason Steuber (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2012)

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“Underground Wooden Architecture in Brick: A Changed Perspective from Life to Death in 10th through 13th Century China,” Archives of Asian Art 61 (2011)

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“Preserving China: Liang Sicheng’s Survey Photos from the 1930s and 1940s,” Visual Resources 27 no. 2 (2011)

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06/01/2011

“Sign,” Material Religion 7, no. 1 (2011)

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展示中國:1930年代美國那爾遜博物館的中國藝術典藏, Diancang [Art and Collection] 219 (2010)

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Profiles

Niall Atkinson
Niall Atkinson
Medieval and Renaissance Architecture and Urban History
CWAC 260
773.702.0270
Wei-Cheng Lin
Wei-Cheng Lin
Chinese Art and Architecture
Architectural Studies Advisor
CWAC 268 | Office Hours: Wednesdays 9-10am and 12-1pm
773.702.0268
2006-07
Iowa State University
Assistant Professor, East Asian Art and Architecture
Potters Wheel
Richard Neer
Ancient Greek Art and Architecture
CWAC 259
773.702.5890
Andrei Pop
Andrei Pop
Modern Art and Aesthetics
Department Head
CWAC 162 | Tuesdays 1-2pm or by appointment.
773.702.8410
Megan Sullivan
Megan Sullivan
Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art
CWAC 272
773.702.5126