Wu Hung

Biography

Wu Hung has published widely on both traditional and contemporary Chinese art. His interest in both traditional and modern/contemporary Chinese art has led him to experiment with different ways to integrate these conventionally separate phases into new kinds of art historical narratives, as exemplified by his Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture (1995), The Double Screen: Medium and Representation of Chinese Pictorial Art (1996), Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square: the Creation of a Political Space (2005), A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture (2012), and Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China (2016). Several of his ongoing projects follow this direction to explore the interrelationship between art medium, pictorial image, and architectural space, the dialectical relationship between absence and presence in Chinese art and visual culture, and the relationship between art discourse and practice.

Wu Hung has received many awards for his publications and academic services, among which he is most proud of the Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching at the University of Chicago (2007) and the Distinguished Teaching Award from the College of Art Association (2008).

Wu Hung is Director of the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and sits on the boards and advisory committees of many research institutes and museums in the United States and China.

Wu Hung delivered the Andrew W. Mellon Lectures at the National Art Gallery in 2019.

Exhibitions

Suyuan Stone Generator1 Hour Equals 100 Million Years, new work by Zhan Wang, Today Art Museum, 2010

From Gaza to Beijing: Photographs by Gao Lei, Walsh Gallery, Chicago, 2010

Re-imagining the Real: Photographs by Gao Lei, Shi Guorui, Yang Fudong, and Zhuang Hui, Yuz Museum, Jakarta, 2010

Motion/Tension: New Work by Sui Jianguo, Today Art Museum, Beijing, 2009

A Conversation with Chicago: Sculptures from China, Millennium Park, Chicago, 2009

Conversing with the Ancients: Photographs by Hong Lei, Lentz Center for Asian Culture, University of Nebraska, 2009

Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2008

Microscopic Narrative: Social Images by Zhang Xiaotao and Li Yifan, (co-curator), Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2008

2D and 3D: Negotiating Visual Language, PKM Gallery, Beijing, 2008

Fire His Breath, Jade His Bones: New Work by Shi Jinsong, Platform China, Beijing, 2008

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