Читать книгу Imperial Illusions - Kristina Kleutghen - Страница 7

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While attending the New Jersey Scholars Program (NJSP) in high school, I did not know that its topic for that year, “The Western Experience and Asia: The Collision of Cultures,” would provide the catalyst for my future career. Later, Allen Hockley and Sarah Allan helped me discover a passion for Chinese art at Dartmouth College, which my parents generously made possible. It is upon this foundation that Imperial Illusions was built.

As a graduate student in Eugene Wang’s landscape painting seminar at Harvard University, I rediscovered the complexity of China’s multicultural eighteenth century, and later benefited from his admonitions to firmly ground what began as a very ethereal study. Yukio Lippit actively encouraged my work on this subject, and, profoundly, taught me how to really look at paintings. Cheng-hua Wang of the Academia Sinica continually offered advice and mentorship, and provided an intellectual role model for investigating Chinese artistic responses to foreign contact. I owe these three a debt of profound gratitude. In addition, Irene Winter not only expanded my study of cross-cultural aesthetics, but also showed me how to improve the project. Philip A. Kuhn patiently suffered through my first naïve translations of the Wish-Fulfilling Studio Archives. Mark Elliott held me to the rigorous historical standard and meticulous attention to detail to which I aspired, and went above and beyond in his support of this project. Additional thanks are due to Melissa McCormick, Hao Sheng, Karen Hwang, Michelle Wang, Youn-mi Kim, Akiko Walley, Alan Yeung, Phillip Bloom, Jeffrey Moser, and Alison Miller. Anne Rose Kitagawa, Melissa Moy, Nozomi Naoi, Mark Erdmann, and Rachel Saunders deserve special mention for their friendship, as well as their material assistance, which was essential to completing this project. I truly could not have done it without them.

The generosity of the Blakemore Foundation enabled me to spend two uninterrupted years in Beijing, which coincided serendipitously with the Forbidden City events that made research for this book possible. At the Inter-University Program at Tsinghua University, I am especially grateful to my teachers Hua Kuoman and Liu Lu for their patience and expertise. Henry Ng of the World Monuments Fund and Nancy Berliner, now of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, generously allowed me to visit the Qianlong Garden twice during its conservation, an experience crucial to this project. Freda Murck not only facilitated access to the Palace Museum for research, but also graciously and generously offered mentorship in all areas, and provided the initial suggestion that led to chapter 4.