Announcing a Symposium
at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

THE ZOOMORPHIC IMAGINATION IN CHINESE ART AND CULTURE

Saturday, 28 October 2006
9:30 am to 5 pm, followed by a reception for the participants

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition A Bronze Menagerie: Mat
Weights of Early China (October 5, 2006 to January 14, 2007) this
conference will consider the role of animals in Chinese art and culture.
Themes include animal imagery in mortuary ritual and art, the cosmological
and political significance of animals, and animals as didactic images. Our
goal is a broader understanding of the pervasive presence of animals in
Chinese art and culture.

Roel Sterckx, University of Cambridge
Zoomorphism and Early Chinese Sacrificial Religion

Guolong Lai, University of Florida
Zoomorphic and Anthropomorphic Imagery in Warring States and Han China

Michelle Wang, Harvard University
Hybridity in Representations of the Twelve Calendrical Animals

Eugene Wang, Harvard University
Animals and Metamorphosis in Medieval Chinese Art

Henrik H. Sorensen, Copenhagen Seminar for Buddhist Studies
The Didactic Use of Animals’ Images in Southern Song Buddhism: The Case of
Mount Baoding in Dazu, Sichuan

Jennifer Purtle, University of Toronto
Rain, Rain Come Today: Painting Dragons to Summon Rain in Song China

Robert Harrist, Columbia University
Animal-shaped Rock Formations and Tourism in Imperial China

Conference ticket includes museum admission.
$25 adults; $18 seniors; $15 members; students free.
To order tickets: online at www.gardnermuseum.org or at the museum\'s box
office: (617) 278-5156.
For further information, please visit
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/announcements/menageriesymposium.pdf.