Julia F. Andrews, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History of Art at Ohio State University, presents a lecture reflecting on two intersecting themes: the rise of women as artists and as subjects for art, in the context of the evolving status of women in twentieth-century China. Against the backdrop of the nascent modern education for women and the emergence of feminism between 1910 and 1940, her presentation interrogates, in light of contemporary art world patterns and current definitions of feminism, the slowing and even regression in recognition of women as artists in subsequent years.

Andrews’s book Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979 won the Joseph Levenson Prize for modern China, and her Art of Modern China (with Kuiyi Shen) was awarded the Humanities Book Prize of the International Convention of Asia Scholars. Exhibition catalogs by Andrews and Shen include A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth-Century China and Painting Her Way: The Art of Fang Zhaoling. Andrews studied with the late professor James Cahill for her PhD at UC Berkeley.

This program is the second annual BAMPFA Lijin Collection Lecture.