Stanley Abe, Associate Professor and Director of AMI

Contact Info:
Office Location: 
Email Address:   send me a message
Web Page:   http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/AAH/faculty/sabe

Teaching (Fall 2009):

  • ARTHIST 170.01, CHINESE BUDDHIST ART Synopsis
    East Duke 204A, WF 10:05 AM-11:20 AM
  • ARTHIST 272S.01, TOPICS CHINESE ART Synopsis
    East Duke 204A, W 02:50 PM-05:20 PM
Teaching (Spring 2010):

  • FVD 103.01, CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTARY FILMS Synopsis
    Nasher 105, Tu 01:30 PM-05:00 PM
Education:

PhDUniversity of California, Berkeley1989
Specialties:

Film Studies
Research Interests:

Stanley Abe has published on Chinese Buddhist art, contemporary Chinese art, Asian American art, Abstract Expressionism, and the construction of art historical knowledge. He is writing a critical study of how Chinese sculpture became a category of Fine Art during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This study pays special attention to the collecting, sale, and movement of objects; museum practices, aesthetic theory, and forms of knowledge organized by the disciplines of art history, ethnography, and religious studies in the context of colonialism, modernism, and the international art market.

Areas of Interest:

Chinese Art
Asian Film

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

  1. Collecting Chinese Sculpture: Paris, New York, Boston, in Journeys East: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Asia, edited by Alan Chong and Noriko Murai (2009), pp. 432-442, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum .
  2. China, The Buddha, and Modern Aestheticism, in Re-Imagining Asia: A Thousand Years of Separation, edited by Shaheen Merali (2008), pp. 124-133, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin .
  3. From Stone to Sculpture: The Alchemy of the Modern, in Treasures Rediscovered: Chinese Stone Sculpture from the Sackler Collections at Columbia University (2008), pp. 7–16, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University .
  4. To Avoid the Inscrutable: Abstract Expressionism and the "Oriental Mode", in Discrepant Abstraction, edited by Kobena Mercer (2006), pp. 52-73, MIT Press .
  5. Xu Bing de zhenshi de yishu 徐冰的真实的艺术 (The Genuine Art of Xu Bing), in Xu Bing -- Yancao jihua 徐冰 -- 烟草计划 (Xu Bing: Tobacco Project), edited by Wu Hong 巫鸿 (2006), pp. 106–114, Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin daxue chubanshe .
  6. Why Asia Now? Contemporary Asian Art and the Politics of Multiculturalism, in Shades of Black: Assembling the 80s, A transatlantic dialogue on Afro-Asian arts in post-war Britain, edited by David A. Bailey, Ian Baucom, and Sonia Boyce (2005), pp. 109-114, Duke University Press .
  7. Ordinary Images (2002), University of Chicago Press .
  8. A Freer Stela Reconsidered (2002), Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Occasional Paper .
  9. Review essay of Lukas Nickel, ed., Return of the Buddha: The Qingzhou Discoveries, Aribus Asiae, vol. 62 no. 2 (2002), pp. 293–99 .
  10. Provenance, Patronage, and Desire: Northern Wei Sculpture from Shaanxi Province, Ars Orientalis, vol. 31 (2001), pp. 1–30 .
  11. No Questions, No Answers: China and A Book from the Sky, in Modern Chinese Literature and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory: Reimagining a Field, edited by Rey Chow (2000), pp. 227–50, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press .
  12. Inside the Wonder House: Buddhist Art and the West, in Curators of the Buddha, edited by Donald Lopez (1995), University of Chicago, .
Selected Invited Lectures

  1. Circa 1909: Moving Japanese and Chinese Sculpture to the United States, October 30, 2009, "Circa 1909" Symposium, Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Köln    
  2. China and Japan in Early Rockefeller Collecting, September 18, 2009, Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity, Nation, University of the Arts, London    
  3. "Locating World Art", May 24, 2008, in the conference "(World) Art? Art History and Global Practice," Northwestern University    
  4. Figuring China: Sculpture, Authenticity, and the Native, December 06, 2007, Leiden University [scholarship.php]    
  5. Déjà Vu All Over Again” Old Collections and New Discoveries from Xi’an, October 21, 2007, Art and Practice: Buddhism in China from the 5th–9th Centuries Symposium, China Institute, New York    
Selected Public Lectures

  1. The Qingzhou Discoveries: Contexts and Questions, March 30, 2004, Inaugural Lecture, Return of the Buddha exhibition, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.