Funded by the European Union through an ERC Consolidator Grant (project no. 101043504 – ERC-COG-2021)

Freie Universität Berlin, Department of History and Cultural Studies, Institute for Art History

Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Juliane Noth

Art academies played an essential role in shaping modern art in China. They were the sites where European methods of art education were introduced; where the social role of the modern artist was defined; where the importance of traditional art forms and training methods was negotiated; where art history as a modern field was established; and where political and ideological changes in artistic practices were first implemented. Today, art academies incorporate laboratories of innovation as well as academic curricula inherited from the socialist period. Thus, they are emblematic of the dynamics within the Chinese cultural sphere and society at large, and of the tensions between a rapid globalization on the one hand and the preservation of cultural heritage and national identity discourses on the other.

By studying art academies, their global histories and institutional practices, as the most significant actors in modern Chinese art, CHINACADEMY offers new understandings of the aesthetic, social, and political conditions of artistic creation in modern and contemporary China.