Announcements

A biweekly member newsletter includes: upcoming events and exhibitions; calls for papers and participation; opportunities for fellowships, grants, prizes, and internships; jobs and positions for post-docs; recent publications and dissertations; ACAH members’ research and curatorial projects; and the latest news from the field.
If you have news and announcements to share on the ACAH website or newsletter, please let us know via this Google Form.

Bei Shan Tang Prizes in Chinese Art History

Congratulations to the winners of this year’s Bei Shan Tang Prizes!
The Awards Ceremony to celebrate the prize winners will take place at the AAS 2026 Annual Conference in Vancouver on Friday, March 13 (Vancouver Convention Centre, Ballroom C), following the Presidential Address by Nancy Peluso that begins at 5:30pm. A reception for AAS Members will begin after the Awards Ceremony concludes.
Bei Shan Tang Monograph Prize
Shih-shan Susan Huang, The Dynamic Spread of Buddhist Print Culture: Mapping Buddhist Book Roads in China and Its Neighbors (Brill, 2024)
Bei Shan Tang Catalogue Prize
Phillip E. Bloom, Nicholas K. Menzies, and Michelle Bailey, editors, Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China (The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 2024)
Honorable Mention
Yang Xu, editor, YUAN MING YUAN: Art and Culture of an Imperial Garden-Palace (Hong Kong Palace Museum, 2024)
Many thanks to the 2026 Bei Shan Tang Prize Committee:
De-nin Lee (Emerson College), Chair
Adriana Proser (Walters Art Museum)
Stephen Whiteman (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Learn More

Upcoming ACAH Webinar

Demystifying Letters of Recommendation

Date: Tuesday, February 24, 2026
4:30-6:00 pm PST / 6:30-8:00 pm CST / 7:30-9:00 pm EST

Panelists: Jeehee Hong (McGill University),
Kate Lingley (University of Hawai’i at Manoa),
and Jeffrey Moser (Brown University)

Moderator: Michelle C. Wang (Georgetown University)

Letters of recommendation are critical elements of applying for opportunities in academia and in the art world. This ACAH webinar will provide a forum for participants to hear from the expertise of three faculty panelists and to ask questions and discuss best practices regarding asking for, writing, and evaluating letters of recommendation in graduate school and beyond.

In the first half of the program, the panelists will engage in a roundtable discussion regarding approaches to asking for, writing, and evaluating letters of recommendation across institutional cultures and in an international context. This will be followed by Q & A with the audience in the second half of the program. We warmly invite the participation of scholars at all career stages to discuss this important aspect of professionalization and mentoring in our field.

Please register for the Zoom link.

ACAH Small Grants

Congratulations to the 2025-2026 recipients of the ACAH Small Grants program!
Research grants
  • Michael Norton research at the National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) for the dissertation, “The Universe Incarnate: Cosmic  Diagrams and Embodied Soteriology in Medieval China”
  • Mo Zhang research at the Art Institute of Chicago for the dissertation, “Pushing Up the Thatched Awning: Painting, Vision, and Mind in Fifteenth-Century China”

Conference travel grants

  • Filippo Grassi, “Nature, Human, Crisis, Tradition: Ecological perspectives in the work of Chuang Che and Huang Chih-yang,” Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies, Pittsburgh, PA
  • Henning von Mirbach, “Fresh Water and Tender Leaves: Tea Drinking in Ming China amid the Limited Availability of Natural Resources,” International Conference on Ming–Qing Studies, Taipei
  • Sizhao Yi, “Melancholic Things: Sensing Time in Early-Qing Paintings,” Sixteenth Century Society, Portland, OR
Learn More

ACAH Visiting Speaker Grant

Congratulations to the 2025-2026 recipients of the ACAH Visiting Speaker Grant program!

Ruiying Gao (Wake Forest University), for a public lecture by
Elizabeth Kindall (University of St. Thomas), “Fame and Filiality: Huang Xiangjian Paints the Sublime Southwest,” March 25, 2025

The China Project Workshop

The China Project Workshop, founded in 2011, is open to anyone interested in premodern Chinese art or archaeology. It takes place monthly at the Institute of Fine Arts, 1 East 78 Street. The Workshop meets eight times each year, from September to December and February to May, attracting on average an audience of around 40 people. Presentations are usually in English but are occasionally in Chinese.

Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia Workshop

The Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia Workshop (VMPEA) is oriented toward the study of visual and material objects, built environments, and the relationship between text and image from East Asia. It explores a plethora of visual and textual materials across a variety of historical periods and geographic locations in order to understand socio-political, cultural, and historical aspects of China, Japan, and Korea. While being based in art history, the Workshop is committed to interdisciplinary inquiries and perspectives, including but not limited to archaeology, anthropology, architecture, literature, religious studies, cinema and media studies, and museum studies.

Learn More