One or Two? Emperor Qianlong’s Mirrors and Mirror Images

The Pauline and Joseph Degenfelder Distinguished Lecture in Chinese Art

Lecture

Sunday, April 2, 2023, 2:00 p.m.

Location: Gartner Auditorium
Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center

About The Event

Starting from a famous portrait of Emperor Qianlong (r. 1735–96) in the Cleveland Museum of Art, this talk explores the interconnected fascinations of this “art-obsessed monarch” with trompe l’oeil, the full-length glass mirror, and notions of illusionism and metamorphosis. Two special places in the Forbidden City, the Hall of Three Rarities (Sanxi Tang) and the Lodge of Retirement (Juanqin Zhai) provide the best examples to conduct this examination.

Wu Hung is the Harrie A.Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor in Art History and the director of the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago. He has written numerous books and articles on both traditional and contemporary Chinese art. Among his many awards and honors, he was selected as the 2018 Distinguished Scholar by the College Art Association (CAA) and received an honorary degree from Harvard University in 2019 for his contributions to the arts and the CAA 2022 Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art.

Lecture Recording

Sponsors

This lecture is made possible by the Pauline and Joseph Degenfelder Family Endowment Fund.

All education programs at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Education. Major annual support is provided by the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Generous annual support is provided by Brenda and Marshall Brown, Florence Kahane Goodman, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, and the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation. Additional annual support is provided by Gail Bowen in memory of Richard L. Bowen, the M. E. and F. J. Callahan Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., Char and Chuck Fowler, the Giant Eagle Foundation, the Logsdon Family Fund for Education, Roy Smith, and the Trilling Family Foundation.

The Cleveland Museum of Art is funded in part by residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.

Education programs are supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.