KEYNOTE SPEECH

“Cosmic Flight in the Dark,” Professor Eugene Y. Wang, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art, Harvard University.

Throughout history, the meeting of images and architecture has generated spaces of imagination, devotion, and meaning. From murals and sculpture ensembles in Buddhist cave temples to digital projections and immersive installations, images and architecture have long collaborated in the making of worlds. Yet the relationship between images and architecture in artistic worldmaking is anything but monolithic. Architecture does not merely contain or frame images, but situates and conditions their visual expressions and interpretations. Conversely, images transform the built environments that hold them, reconfiguring space into realms of vision, ritual, and belief. Harvard Visual China’s 2026 Graduate Symposium presents two panels on how images and architecture in Chinese and East Asian art at large construct, sustain, and reimagine worlds.

Schedule

1PM Welcome Remarks

April Peng (President, Harvard Visual China; Ph.D. candidate, History of Art & Architecture, Harvard University)

Keynote Speech “Cosmic Flight in the Dark“
Eugene Y. Wang (Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art, Harvard University)

2:30PM Panel I

Chair: Sophie Lei (Ph.D. candidate, Inner Asia & Altaic Studies, Harvard University)

Yining Zhu
University of Pennsylvania, “Elevation and Eschatology: A Case Study of the Qingzhou Pagoda during the Liao Dynasty”

Yingxin Li & Dong Han
University of Chicago, University of Warwick, “Centering the Empire: Qianlong’s Spatial Reconstruction of Mount Meru in the Xumi Fushou Temple”

Panel I Discussion and Q&A

Discussant: Xiaotian Yin (Assistant Professor of Art History and Studio Art, Williams College)

4:15PM Panel II

Chair: Menglan Chen (Ph.D. candidate, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, Harvard University)

Sun Zhijian
National University of Singapore, “Reimagining Chinese Tropics: Climatic Zoning Maps, Thermal Imagination, and Socialist Reconstruction in Decolonizing Dar es Salaam and Maoist Canton”

Eli Troen
University of Kansas, “Illumination Nation: Electric Light and the Making of the Modern World at Japan’s 1903 and 1907 Industrial Exhibitions”

Panel II Discussion and Q&A

Discussant: Shigehisa Kuriyama (Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University)

Event Info

This event is generously sponsored by the Department of History of Art & Architecture and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Innovation Fund at Harvard University, Harvard FAS CAMLab, and the Yin-Cheng Distinguished Lecture Series.

2026 Harvard Visual China Symposium Committee
Menglan Chen
Natasha Coleman
Sophie Lei
Icey Lin
April Peng (President)