Organizers: Ellen Avril, Cincinnati Art Museum; Ann Barrott Wicks, Miami University
Discussants: Richard Barnhart, Yale University; Ann Behnke Kinney, University of Virginia;
Miriam Levering, University of Tennessee; Stephen L. Little, Honolulu Academy of Arts;
Catherine E. Pease, Western Washington University; Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota
Representations of children in Chinese art is the subject of "One Hundred Children at Play: Childhood in Chinese Art and Society," a roundtable comprised of representatives from art history, social history, literature and religious studies. The title refers to one of the most popular visual metaphors for family in traditional China: baizi tu, a reference to the family of King Wen, an early Chinese patriarch whose male progeny numbered one hundred. Children appear in Chinese art in many contexts, often serving didactic functions as paragons of Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist virtue, as embodiments of adult aspirations and as amuletic images that articulate adult concerns regarding prosperity, longevity, status and well being. Furthermore, images of children evoke important human qualities such as purity and simplicity that are associated with childhood and which contribute to self cultivation, societal advancement and spiritual enlightenment. Images of children in the context of family life, rituals and festivals, play, work, education, and religion will all be considered. Special emphasis will be given to the construction of gender in Chinese representations of childhood.
This roundtable is an outgrowth of NEH funded interdisciplinary planning sessions for a proposed future exhibition of Chinese art of the same title. The participants were selected from a larger team of consultants retained by the Cincinnati Art Museum to plan the exhibition. The roundtable presentation will include slides of images of children in Chinese art selected from potential loans to the exhibition. The purpose of the roundtable is to provide a forum for current research on childhood in pre modern China, to solicit audience response to the images and to generate discussion regarding their interpretation. Ideas emerging from the roundtable discussion will contribute to ongoing development of the project.
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