RAS Art Focus

in collaboration with the Consulate General of India in Shanghai

Understanding Buddhist Iconography

Saturday, 14 November 2026

Registration 1:45 pm

2:00 pm to 4:00 pm

We continue our autumn Art Focus series, presented in collaboration with the Consulate General of India in Shanghai and convened by art historian Julie Chun. The series explores the transmission of Buddhism, and with it, Buddhist imagery from India to China. This vast and fascinating topic provides our speakers an opportunity to share their areas of expertise and distinctive perspectives, offering insight into how religious ideas and visual traditions traveled across geographies and were circulated, transformed, and interpreted along the way.

For the third lecture in our four-part series, please join Art Focus Convener Julie Chun as we explore the emergence of Buddhist images. Buddhism, a philosophical doctrine transmitted from South Asia throughout East Asia and beyond, taught the life and teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, who lived around the 6th to 5th century BCE. The historical significance of this doctrine across civilizations was aided by compelling visual imagery and material culture, especially in societies that were largely illiterate at the time.

Please be invited to a museum talk as we examine the trajectory of image-making in China, initially as ancient funerary markers, reliquaries, monuments, and the subsequent adoption of Buddhist images. This talk will also explore what the artifacts reveal about the context in which they were created, utilized and venerated. We will also discuss how Buddhist iconographies incorporated a diverse range of foreign and local elements, often according to standardized requirements, in assisting devotees grasp a highly abstract concept as a personal and collective belief system.

In a broader context, we will also ask the rarely-asked question of how image-making ultimately became established as a form of "art" and the ways in which these site-specific objects - originally located in sacred caves, religious temples, and even personal tombs - found their way into museums and private collections as the meaning of art continues to evolve.

This event is opened to members of the RAS China and guests of the Consulate General India in Shanghai. For nonmembers, please subscribe as an RAS member to register for this museum talk.

https://ras-china.org/memberships​

About the speaker:

Julie Chun is an art historian and art critic based in Shanghai since 2011, serving RAS China as a Council Member in various capacities as the Vice President, Journal Editor, Librarian, and Art Focus Convener. She lectures about the state of art and museums in Shanghai for diverse foreign associations, including for the foreign Consulate General offices. She has taught East Asian art history as an Adjunct Professor at global programs in Shanghai, and is a regular contributing writer for Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. Her art reviews and criticisms have been published in academic journals and online art journals in China and internationally. She currently divides her time between Shanghai and Los Angeles as a researcher at the Getty Research Institute.