PhD Candidate in Art History and Asian Studies

This project examines the transnational trade of Chinese objects as both material and epistemological interventions in the reconfiguration of Chinese art in the early twentieth century. Employing Social Network Analysis to trace and reconstruct a hitherto neglected network of market-based agents across national, ethnic, and class boundaries, my project visualizes the fluid dynamics of interconnected local and global art markets through digital tools. Probing into the polycentric and interactive networks of four historical figures—Chinese scholar-painter Huang Binhong 黄宾虹 (1865-1955), American federal administrator Edward B. Bruce (1879-1943), Francophone antique dealer Paul Houo (1880-?), and German-Chinese art collector/dealer Abel William Bahr (1877-1959), I demonstrate how their multivalent and at times clandestine interactions with the art markets facilitated the global translocation of Chinese objects as well as the intercultural transmissions of both aesthetic canons and cultural misconceptions of Chinese art. I reinterpret their transnational dealings as culturally, aesthetically, economically, and diplomatically