Art Education

American multi-ethnic arts organization based in New York’s Chinatown. The Asian American Arts Centre (AAAC) and its predecessors, the Asian American Dance Theatre (1974–93) and the Asian Arts Institute (1981–8), emerged from the milieu of the Basement Workshop, the first working group of the Asian American Movement on the East Coast, whose mouthpiece was the journal ...

Japanese painter, book illustrator and art educator. Born the fourth son of Yasuda Shirobei, a Kyoto moneylender, the young Bairei was adopted into the Kōno family. In 1852 he began his artistic training under the Maruyama-school painter, Nakajima Raishō (1796–1871). After Raishō’s death, Bairei studied with the Shijō-school master ...

Chinese painter and art educator . The most acclaimed Western-trained artist in modern China, he influenced the development of 20th-century Chinese painting through his role as art teacher and administrator as well as his painting.

Xu’s father was a village teacher and painter. Forced to support the family after his father’s early death, in ...

Artists’ club formed in 1926 in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The club was composed of Guangdong immigrants in their late teens and early 20s. Its headquarters, which also served as a studio, teaching center, exhibition space and quite possibly a shared bedroom, was located in an upper room at 150 Wetmore Place, an alley on Chinatown’s western fringe. The exact membership is unknown—probably a dozen members at any given time—and its composition fluctuated greatly during its 15 or so years of existence. Its most famous members were Yun Gee, a co-founder and leader, and Eva Fong Chan (...

Chinese painter and art educator. Huang studied both Chinese and Western painting, but he came to concentrate on Chinese art, studying and copying the works of old masters in public and private collections, including his own. He embarked upon an illustrious teaching career in 1923...

English architect, active in Japan. He was articled to Roger Thomas Smith and then entered the office of William Burges. In 1876 he was awarded the Soane Medallion by the RIBA. In the next year he was appointed the first professor of architecture at the Imperial College of Engineering (now Tokyo University) in Japan, in which role he taught every aspect of architecture and building construction. During this period he was also active as an architect, designing such buildings as the ...

Chinese art educator and painter. His grandfather was a carver of tombstones, as was his father, who also learnt to paint. He began carving and painting as a child, often copying from the Jiezi yuan huazhuan (‘Mustard-seed Garden painting manual’; 1679 and 1701...

American curator, scholar, collector, and educator. Fenollosa played a unique role in enhancing the appreciation of Japanese art in both its native country and within the USA. Educated at Harvard, after graduation he studied philosophy and divinity at Cambridge University, followed by a year at the newly founded art school at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He also formed important friendships with the collectors ...

American artists’ collective and support network formed in New York in 1990 by Ken Chu, Bing Lee and cultural critic, curator, and artist Margo Machida. The artists hoped to develop a network of artists and to document and build a discourse on Asian American art. The group disbanded in ...

Chinese painter and art educator . Wu trained at the Hangzhou National Academy of Art between 1936 and 1942, studying modern Western painting with Chinese artists returned from France, and Chinese painting with Pan Tianshou , from whom he gained a deep understanding of Chinese aesthetics. From ...

Chinese art educator and painter. He came from a merchant family that had supported the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64). He began to learn painting at the age of six by studying line drawings in the style of Yun Shouping. At the age of 13 he went to Shanghai, hoping to study Western painting. He did not find any established art school there but discovered the works of Velázquez and Goya, which he copied to learn Western oil and watercolour techniques. In ...

Chinese painter, calligrapher and art educator. Coming from a poor peasant family, Li took up hard labour to earn his way through art school in Beijing. He also studied with Xu Beihong and Qi Baishi; the latter considered Li his best student. Li was active as an art teacher in Beijing from ...

Japanese painter. He is best known for introducing the plein-air palette of French Impressionism to Japan. He was the most successful and politically influential advocate of Western-style painting (Yōga; see Japan, §VI, 5, (iv)) in Japan at the turn of the century. Born into a wealthy aristocratic family, Kuroda was adopted by his uncle Viscount Kuroda Kiyotsuna (...

Japanese-born American painter. Obata is known for his sumi ink paintings, watercolors and woodblock prints depicting California landscapes. After studying Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) at the Japan Fine Arts Academy in Tokyo, he moved to San Francisco in 1903 to pursue career in art, and soon began working as an illustrator for local publications for the Japanese American community. In ...

Japanese administrator, art historian and teacher. In 1880 he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University and entered the Ministry of Education. He later moved from administration to art education, and in 1886–7 he visited Europe and America as a member of an official art research team. In ...

Chinese painter, calligrapher, art educator and musician. A colourful and influential figure in the history of 20th-century Chinese art, he pioneered the introduction of Western arts, including commercial art, woodcut printmaking, modern drama and music, into China.

Li Shutong became interested in Western art at the Nanyang Public School in Shanghai. In ...

Chinese painter, poet, critic, Curator and art educator, active in Hong Kong and the USA. Wong settled in Hong Kong in 1946, becoming a pioneer in the avant-garde literary movements of the late 1950s. At the same time, he studied Chinese painting with Lui Shou-kwan...

Taiwanese curator and art historian. Yang immigrated to the United States at age 15. She received a BA in Art History from Yale University in 1984 that included a six-month sabbatical to Jinan University in Guangzhou to study Chinese in 1982. Yang was exposed to art from a young age through her mother, Suhwa Chou Yang, who ran the Hunglin Art Gallery in Taipei in the 1970s. Upon graduation Yang held internships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the ...