A Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges to Promote Asian Studies
Luce Foundation Asian Art in the Undergraduate Curriculum Grant, 2005-2009
Example of image: "Hong punch bowl" (Detailed annotation)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gerry Lenfest
The Reeves Collection, Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA
ASIANetwork received a $370,000 grant from the Luce Foundation to support our 2005-2009 consultancy and publication project, Asian Art in the Undergraduate Curriculum. This project seeks to tap the Asian art and items of visual culture that exist on the campuses of ASIANetwork member institutions, and to help faculty who are teaching about Asia integrate these resources into their courses. The end product of the project will be a book to be entitled Reading Asian Art: Windows to Asia in College Collections. The book will have two foci. The first is to clarify how to utilize Asian art effectively in classroom instruction. The second is to identify and make the Asian art and objects of visual culture discovered through this consultancy useful in classes ranging across the liberal arts curriculum.
Serving on the Steering Committee for the project were: Stan Mickel as Project Administrator, Joan O.Mara and Paul Nietupski as editors of Reading Asian Art: Windows to Asia in College Collections, Karil Kucera as editor of the online Image Database to Enhance Asian Studies (IDEAS), and Mary-Ann Milford as Board liaison.
Program Outline
- Asian Art in the Undergraduate Curriculum is a four year project (Fall 2005 - Summer 2009) with three rounds of on-campus consultancies in 2005-2006 2006-2007, and 2007-2008.
- The core of the project is identification of a diverse selection of Asian art and items of visual culture useful in creating pedagogical materials.
- Pieces from China, India, Southeast Asia, Korea, Japan, Tibet and the Himalayan region are included.
- An on-campus coordinator was identified at each school to prepare the groundwork for a consultant visit by identifying potentially useful items at their school and compiling a list of holdings to be examined during the consultancy.
- Asian art consultants visited campuses to assist in analyzing collections and identifying items of aesthetic and pedagogic value to the project.
- On-campus coordinators arranged for quality digitization of the works the consultants selected during their visit.
- Our Selection Committee reviewed consultant and coordinator reports and decided which items are to be included in the book that are the end-products of this project.
- Schools granted copyright permission for use of their materials in the book, and contributed photographs and data about their collections.
- Public access to the images is provided through the on-line, searchable database IDEAS.
- Writers for individual chapters in the book project were selected from among the consultants and members of the Steering Committee for their expertise on Asian art.
- A pre-writing conference was held during the Labor Day weekend of 2007 at the House Mountain Inn, located near Lexington, Virginia.
- The manuscript for Reading Asian Art: Windows to Asia in College Collections has been completed and is being copy-edited as of November 2009.
ASIANetwork Member Institutions That Received Art Consultancy Visits |
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| 2005-2006 | Beloit College, Connecticut College, DePauw University, Dickinson College, Earlham College, Eckerd College, Guilford College, and Wittenberg University |
| 2006-2007 | College of Wooster, Fairfield University, Luther College, Marietta College, Ohio Wesleyan University, St. Lawrence University, Union College, and Washington and Lee University |
| 2007-2008 | Berea College, DePauw University (second consultancy), Lake Forest College, Mills College, Swarthmore College, Valparaiso University, and Willamette University |
For more detailed information on the progress of the Luce Art Consultancy Project, please see the following reports in ASIANetwork Exchange in PDF format:
- Stanley L. Mickel, “Asian Art in the Undergraduate Curriculum”: An ASIANetwork Project Funded by the Henry Luce Foundation (Winter 2006 issue)
- Karil Kucera, Paul Nietupski, and Joan O.Mara, Asian Art in the Undergraduate Curriculum: An ASIANetwork Initiative (Winter 2007 issue)