Wei-Cheng Lin

Biography

Wei-Cheng Lin specializes in the history of Chinese art and architecture with a focus on medieval periods. His primary research interests concern issues of visual and material culture 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 (University of Washington Press, 2014). He has additionally published on a variety of topics, including collecting history, photography and architecture, the historiography of Chinese architectural history, and contemporary Chinese art.

Lin is currently working on two book projects: Performative Architecture of China explores architecture’s performative potential through history and the meanings enacted through such architectural performance. Necessarily Incomplete: Fragments of Chinese Artifacts investigates fragments of Chinese artifacts, as well as the cultural practices they solicited and engaged, to locate their agentic power in generating the multivalent significance of those artifacts, otherwise undetectable or overlooked.

Lin is on the steering committee of the Center for the Art of East Asia and has worked closely with the UChicago Center in Beijing for art exhibitions, conferences, and publications. Lin is the Faculty Director for the Dispersed Chinese Art Digitalization Project (DCADP), a digital humanities initiative supported by the Cyrus Tang Foundation. In addition to the digital projects, Lin also manages the DCADP publication series, including Beijing Zhihua Temple (forthcoming 2024) and Exhibiting East Asian Art in a Global Context (co-edited with Chelsea Foxwell, forthcoming 2025).

Publications

The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China (with Orianna Cacchione)

University of Chicago Press
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2021

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

University of Washington Press
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2014

“Building Modern China: In the Vision of the First Female Chinese Architect, Lin Huiyin (1904-1955),” Women in the Arts and Archaeology of Asia, eds., Allysa Peyton and Ling-en Lu (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2023), 181-205.

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“神明之所的尺度问题:中国古代的小建筑” [Scale Issues of Sacred Architecture: China’s Small Architecture], Journal of Peking University 60, no. 5 (Spring 2023): 48-61.

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“Religious Spaces and Places in Premodern China,” in Oxford Handbook of Religious Space, ed. Jeanne Halgren Kilde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 147-162.

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“材质与工艺——中国中古佛像材质的思考” [Material and Techniques: Rethinking Materials of Buddhist Statues in Medieval China], Art Research, no. 4 (2022), 66-79.

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“闸口白塔:吴越佛塔的“微缩模型” [Zhakou White Pagoda: A Miniature Model of the Wuyue Pagodas], Journal of Architectural History 2 (2022): 24-41.

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“Materiality of Buddhist Icons in Medieval China,” in The Allure of Matter: Materiality Across Chinese Art, ed. Wei-Cheng Lin and Orianna Cacchione (Chicago: The Smart Museum, University of Chicago Press, 2021), 33-63.

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“唐代墓俑的制度与想象” [Regulations and Imagination of Tang Funerary Figurines], Studies on Ancient Tomb Art 5 (2021), 51-80.

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“What Did ‘Architecture’ Do in Visualizing Dunhuang,” in Visualizing Dunhuang: Seeing, Studying, and Conserving the Caves, ed. Dora C. Y. Ching, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), 185-206.

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“Collectable Artifacts: Beijing, the Former Capital, of the 1930s in Photographs,” in Photography in East Asian Art, ed. Wu Hung and Chelsea Foxwell (Chicago: The Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago, 2021), 299-326.

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“Flying Mañjuśrī and Moving Mount Wutai Towards the Xi Xia Period: As Seen from Dunhuang Caves,” The Transnational Cult of Mount Wutai: Historical and Comparative Perspective, eds. Susan Andrews, et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 420-464.

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Profiles

Andrei Pop
Andrei Pop
Modern Art and Aesthetics
Department Chair
CWAC 162 | Tuesdays 1-2pm or by appointment.
773.702.0278
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
Megan Sullivan
Megan Sullivan
Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art
CWAC 272
773.702.5126