Department of Art History

We invite you to join the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago for this upcoming lecture as part of the 2025-26 Smart Lecture series. The lecture is Thursday, April 16th in CWAC 157 at 5:00pm CT with a Q&A session and reception to follow. 

Comparative analysis across cultures has had a hard time in art history of late, in part because of the ways it has tended to essentialize individual cultures and unnaturally freeze them in place, while also locking in patterns of binary thinking. Yet, at times, we need ways to compare like with apparently like, as in the case of remarkable innovations in painting at either end of Mongol-ruled Eurasia. A case in point is the consummate art of the Mongol-Yuan court painter Wang Zhenpeng (active c. 1275–1330) in Daidu (modern Beijing), and that of his contemporaries in Mediterranean cities like Siena, including Simone Martini (c.1285 – 1344). In both situations, we find intriguing framing devices and systems of spatial virtuality used to manage or even unify the internal-external space worlds of picture and viewer. The question this lecture raises is, so what?

Shane McCausland is Percival David Professor of the History of Art at SOAS University of London. From 2018-22 he was Head of the School of Arts and a member of the university’s Executive Board. As an undergraduate he read Oriental Studies (Chinese) at Cambridge University and received his PhD in Art History with East Asian Studies from Princeton University in 2000. He has curated exhibitions in China, Europe and the North America and published widely on Chinese and East Asian, and more recently Inner Asian arts. His recent books include The Art of the Chinese Picture-Scroll (Reaktion/Chicago, 2024) and The Mongol Century: Visual Cultures of Yuan China, 1271-1368 (Reaktion/Hawaii, 2015). His new book, Arts Along the Great Wall: A Cultural Prequel and History of the Mongol Rise, 900-1400 (Reaktion), is to appear in January 2027. He is currently collaborating, as a Leverhulme Research Fellow (2024-26), on an exhibition entitled 'Genghis Khan and the Arts of the Mongol World', to be mounted at the Royal Academy of Arts in London from February to July 2027.

Accessibility
Persons with disabilities who need an accommodation in order to participate in this event should contact taiahw@uchicago.edu for assistance.

Support
The public lecture is sponsored by the Department Art History and generously supported by The Smart Family Foundation.