謝謝 Michael Fei 的訪談！
A Conversation on Princeton with Hui-Wen Lu 盧慧紋 *03
Hui-Wen Lu 盧慧紋 *03 is a Director and Professor of the Graduate Institute of Art History at National Taiwan University (NTU). She is also the Director of the Art Museum of the Graduate Institute of Art History at NTU. She graduated from NTU in 1993 with a B.A. in Economics and in 1996 with a M.A. in Art History. Her Master’s thesis advisor was Shen Fu 傅申 *76. She received a Ph.D. in 2003 from the Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University where she studied under Wen C. Fong 方聞 ‘51*58. Her dissertation is titled, A New Imperial Style of Calligraphy: Stone Engravings in Northern Wei Luoyang, 494–534 and is a study of calligraphy’s role in the construction and reinforcement of political cultural values in early medieval China. Through a historical, archaeological, and stylistic reconstruction of Luoyang calligraphy, the dissertation uncovers an ancient imperial tradition of Chinese art that has largely been overlooked.
Before we talk about Princeton, I want to start by asking, how did you go from majoring in economics in college to going into Chinese art history for your graduate studies?
I wanted to go into the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at NTU. But my father said no, and that I should do something more rewarding. He made me sign up for the Department of Economics. It was interesting. I met some good friends and great professors. I also did a National Science and Technology Council Fellowship (國科會大專生計劃) with one of the professors. I was not completely against economics nor uninterested; I was actually pretty devoted. I took a lot of courses with very few students, which were like seminars. We had to do a lot of readings in English. But economics requires a lot of math that I could not do. A lot of my friends were preparing for a MBA or for a career in banking. I just decided that was not what I wanted. So I took a lot of random courses in my senior year, such as on the history of Chinese music and the history of Chinese painting.
I still remember the course on the history of Chinese painting was taught by Ms. Tsui-Hsing Hou 侯翠杏. She was a painter herself and from a well-to-do family. The class took place outside of the main campus. She would arrive in a huge black Mercedes and her driver would be waiting for her outside. She was always dressed like a princess for class and then just read from the book. We didn't have any slides. A lot of my friends and classmates were not listening. One time I decided that I wanted to try to understand what she was talking about, but I just couldn’t. It seemed like a disaster.
But Ms. Hou took us to the National Palace Museum, and back then every fall there was a big show of national treasures. She would show us Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountaisn 富春山居圖 by Huang Gongwang 黃公望 and works by Fan Kuan 范寬 and Guo Xi 郭熙. She asked us write essays on the artworks. To do the assignments, I had to do a lot of readings which I found quite interesting.
How we were taught in art history is very different from how we teach now. Lillian Lan-ying Tseng, who graduated from NTU before me and is now teaching at Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, also took Ms. Hou’s class in college. We used to talk about how we were educated yet we turned out okay.
I also sat in undergraduate and graduate classes by Professor Shou-Chien Shih 石守謙 *84 and Professor Pao-Chen Chen 陳葆真 *87. I didn’t learn art history in any systematic way before graduate school. But I think that the education of art or art history has two tracks: one is in the academics and the other is in the museum. As long as one of these tracks is open, you can have a way out. My own experience taught me to believe in museums and in making art accessible to all. I decided to prepare for the exam to get into graduate school. My English score on the exam was very high, and I think that was what got me into graduate school. So that was how I started.
What did your father think about the change in your career?
I did finish four years of economics so he didn't say anything. But many years later my mother told me that they were really worried about my decision to go into art history. She went to Xingtian Temple 行天宮 to ask about my fortune. Luckily she got a good result so they didn't say no you cannot do this. But when I was working on my Ph.D., my father urged me to take the civil service exam; he was still worried about my future. It is just very typical of Asian parents. Now that my daughter is going to college this year, it has given me more perspective and understanding of where my parents were coming from.
Did you come from a family with interests in the arts or this was something you developed on your own?
Not on my father’s side as they are mostly doctors, lawyers, or in business. But on my mother's side, my grandfather was very interested in art and one of my uncles was a painter. They were very into a lot of the do-it-yourself things, such as painting the walls and fixing things at home. They had these huge toolboxes in the house and they would tell me that I should get one as well. They liked working with their hands. My family is really traditional, so I just had to get good grades and go to good schools.
You studied with Professor Shen Fu for you graduate studies. What was he like as a teacher?
I got into the graduate program in 1993 and Professor Fu came back in 1994, my second year. In the first year, I took a lot of courses with Professor Shih. If Professor Fu didn't come back to Taiwan I probably would have just studied with Professor Shih. But Professor Shih encouraged us to study with Professor Fu and to concentrate in calligraphy, which I was interested in doing.
After his recent passing I wrote an essay in remembrance of him. ‘94 was his first year back in Taiwan and he didn't have much experience in teaching. As students we were a bit nervous. At that time I didn’t feel he was nervous, but looking back I feel he was learning how to be a teacher. He was always dressed in a suit with shiny shoes and his hair was always well coiffed. He would come to class with loads of slides and ask us to talk about the images. He didn't say much, instead he just asked students to try our best to come up with something.
Because you have to say things in class you have to be prepared — read before the class, flip through the catalog, or at least remember some names. There are many kinds of teachers. Some of them would just hold your hands and show you things. Others would just have you try yourself and if you have questions just ask; the results of the students would be very different with some being very good and others very bad. With Professor Fu, it was really up to the students to decide their own standards.
What was your idea of Princeton before you went?
My teachers all went to Princeton, therefore I felt that was where I should go if I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in painting and calligraphy. But in the late 90’s Princeton was probably not the most popular choice. A lot of students got into Princeton but decided not to go. Instead, they went to Harvard with Wu Hung 巫鴻, Stanford with Richard Vinograd, or Yale for Richard Barnhart *67. Back in the late 90’s Princeton seemed so old school. There were more trendy things happening elsewhere. At Princeton, Professor Fong was still talking about the dating of early paintings from Song and Yuan dynasties. The trend back then was to go into archaeology with a lot of these new discoveries in mainland China or study the later periods such as, Ming, Qing or even 19th and 20th centuries, or to approach Chinese art and visual and material materials with social theories.
Were you thinking about going to other universities?
I didn't get in to other schools because no one would take me with my proposal in Chinese calligraphy. I felt like I was on the margin of the field. People were doing studies on painting, archaeology, and Buddhist sculptures. With these fields, you have a lot of people to talk to even in the western academic world, but not so much with calligraphy. So I think Princeton was the only place I could go, but I was very lucky to have the opportunity to study with Professor Wen Fong. I am also very grateful to Professor Shih for encouragement and for his recommendation.
Did you have some expectation before you go to Princeton and did anything surprise you when you got to Princeton?
Do you know Freda Murck *95? She and her husband were living in Taipei in the 90’s. When she found out I was going to Princeton she invited me to her house for a party. She said, Now you're going to Princeton we have to prepare you. I didn't know what to expect. After I got to Princeton, I still received letters and cards from her encouraging me; it was really heartwarming. I think she was really worried if I would survive. Li-Chiang Lin 林麗江 *98, who was a few years ahead of me, told me that when you are facing Professor Fong, you can never back down and you have to earn his respect.
In my first year at Princeton, there were a lot of cultural shocks. I learned how to do small talk, which I didn’t know before. I had to learn how to cook for myself. I was not on a meal plan because I did not live in the graduate college. I lived in the Hibben-Magie Apartments, which were pretty far from the art history department. I often stayed at the library until it closed at midnight and then walked home; Princeton was very safe. I had two roommates who were both first-year graduate students. I didn’t cook much and often opted for Burger King on Nassau Street. I didn't have a car. If I needed to shop for groceries I had to take the shuttle.
In Taiwan I thought my English was pretty good. But if I had to make a presentation in English I had to do a lot of preparation. Writing was really difficult for me as well since I never really learned how to write in English. I was invited to write some entries for the exhibition catalogue, The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection, and it was a challenge. The format and the requirements for a catalogue essay or entry were something I was not prepared for. Robert Harrist 89 at Columbia University was the editor of the book and really helped me a lot. Dora Ching 11, currently the Executive Director of the Tang Center for East Asian Art at Princeton, also helped me with my writing. If one of my students are going to start graduate school in the U.S. now, I would tell her to take some writing courses.
In my second year I moved to Butler Apartments down by Lake Carnegie. My second year roommate was my classmate Christine Tan *01. She's from Canada and a native English speaker, so that helped with my English speaking and fluency. We also had The New York Times delivered to our place. In the morning I would make coffee for myself and read the Times. Reading the Times gave me so much pleasure and I learned from the writing. I also liked the sections on art and architecture or exhibition and dance reviews. I would notice how they described the buildings and art exhibitions. I would write down specific sentences to analyze and learn from their writing styles.
Criticism in the public domain is one thing that we don't really have in Taiwan. A year before you arrived at Princeton, the National Palace Museum had a show at the Metropolitan Museum. A few years after there was a symposium on authenticity based on the painting Riverbank 溪岸圖 by Dong Yuan 董元. Chinese art was very much in the news in the U.S. and much of that involved Princeton because of Professor Fong. Did these things have an effect on you as a student?
The debate was indeed one of the most noteworthy events during my Princeton years. We discussed the painting in class. We all attended the symposium as well. Some scholars say the painting is from the 10th century and others say it is from the 20th century by Chang Dai-Chien 張大千, and yet some others say it’s in between. It's not a difference of a hundred years, but a thousand years. These scholars in the debate were very established in the field, so it was not like a random person off the street. So you can imagine it could have been a crisis in our field.
All his life, Professor Fong was trying to establish step-by-step the dating of paintings. You can take a painting and according to its formal features you can decide on its date and attribution. I remember one time he took us to the storeroom at the Metropolitan Museum and brought out the Riverbank 溪岸圖 and asked us for our opinion. I said that this looks very similar to a work by the 11th century painter Guo Xi 郭熙 at the Palace Museum in Taipei. He was not satisfied with the answer because he thought it was a 10th century painting. I thought it was just another discussion in class, but many years later he still remembered that moment. He would ask me if I still thought it was an 11th century painting. He cares so much about the difference between the 10th and 11th centuries because he believes there is a significant distinction in the development of Chinese painting history. The 10th century still belongs to the previous stage, characterized by the visual habits and ways of depicting nature that have been in place since the Tang Dynasty, while the 11th century marks the beginning of a whole new era.
I didn't realize it was sort of a crisis. I just thought it was kind of interesting that they had a whole symposium on one painting, I thought it was open ended and the question was not determined that day. I still remember the collector, Chi-Chien Wang 王季遷, said at the end of the day in Chinese that 真金不怕火煉 (true gold doesn’t fear fire).
You were at the symposium?
Yes. At that time I was living and working in New York City. I was free for the weekend so I went and stayed for the whole day. Actually my classmate at Princeton, Joseph Cho ‘94 *97, was the graphic designer for the book, Issues of Authenticity in Chinese Painting.
People outside of the field thought if the experts could not even agree on the date of a painting, and the difference was between the 10th and 20th century, there must be something wrong with the discipline. Professor Fong and his team at the Metropolitan Museum were directly tackling this challenge. They extensively collected examples of early paintings, both from museum collections and archaeological finds, utilizing the stylistic analysis methods that the Princeton School excels at for analysis and comparison. They also employed scientific testing methods to conduct a thorough examination of the painting Riverbank. For us graduate students, witnessing all of this has been an unforgettable learning experience. Today, almost no one claims that it is a work by Chang Dai-Chien. As Fu Shen said, those who claim that this painting was done by Chang Dai-Chien neither understand ancient paintings nor have a proper understanding of Chang Dai-Chien himself. Fu was an expert of both. However, there are still some disagreements regarding whether Riverbank is a piece from the 10th, 11th, or even 12th century, as well as whether it is an authentic work by Dong Yuan. Professor Fong often said that he felt like a dinosaur when he listened to some lectures by other professors and scholars at conferences. He thought that he was outdated. But in fact his beliefs and methods have always been effective.
Professor Fong has been described as a formalist and a stylist. Was he more interested in the development of styles rather the the individuals?
It's not exactly like that. He talked about the style, technique, composition, and brushwork. You can follow certain elements to understand a Chinese painting, that includes its date, authenticity, and attribution. He believed that there's a history of painting. He also talked about the background of the painter, the meaning of the painting, and the symbolism of the elements. But in the 90s, the field was no longer satisfied with this, and turned toward more complex things, such as putting more emphasis on the social context of the artwork. For archaeology, scholars are interested in how the entire arrangement of the tomb reflects the views on life and death of people at that time. Professor Fong would try very hard to communicate with the wider community. He used a lot of Western philosophies and theories in his articles. He would also show his articles to his western colleagues and ask them for comments and feedback. But for us, those theories make his articles hard to read and to understand and sometimes irrelevant to what he wanted to say. But his later articles, such as Art as History, were more clear.
For us to go on job market, I was somehow lacking confidence. I didn’t think people would be interested in my Princeton background, in my specialty in calligraphy, or in the problems I solved in my thesis. But looking back on that I feel that it was my own problem. My excessive humility and self-doubt came from an Eastern society where you would always feel that you are not good enough. In America you really have to learn to promote yourself and convince others of your expertise.
What Professor Fong was like in class? Based on what I read, he sounded like a very demanding teacher.
We always had our seminars on Monday afternoons. We started at around 2 o'clock and we would go on to around 6 o'clock or even later. When I was there, he was working on a large essay and some sections for The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliot Collection (1999). He would take his drafts to class and read them to us. We would just sit there and listen and take notes. Afterwards he asked for our comments and input. We also had to do presentations. I remember my first presentation was on Zhao Menfu 趙孟頫. After the presentation I just went back to my apartment and lied down on the couch. I couldn't do anything else because I was so exhausted. It was partly a language issue and also the pressure I felt with presenting for the first time in front of my professor and my peers. There were around five or six students in the class.
Professor Fong spent a lot of time working with individual students. When he was working with the students on their dissertations, he would ask the students to bring in all the images and they would talk in the seminar room. There were always a lot of books, catalogues, and photographs mounted on cardboard. The photos were kept in the drawers and we would lay them out on the tables. We would organize the images by putting one next to another and shuffling things around. Everything was centered around the artworks, and arguments would come with the moving of the images. He would help you develop your ideas by moving the images. In doing so you would come up with new ideas and arguments. I realized this was where my professors at NTU got their ideas on how to teach us.
There is a Chinese translation of a long article by Professor Fong on Chinese calligraphy. I was asked to write an introduction* to Professor Fong’s research, and I talked about this process. I said the process usually involved rising tempers where either the professor or the students would get mad. Inevitably someone would be disappointed over the failure of someone else not seeing the concept. Because the process took long hours, it had a tendency to get people to lose their confidence. Now we only have PowerPoint files and everything is fixed and linear. It will be great if one day we can have a big screen as a table to shuffle images around.
* Hui-Wen Lu, “Introduction: Wen Fong’s Research on Chinese Calligraphy,” in Wen C. Fong, Chinese Calligraphy: Theory and History (translated into Chinese by Hui-Wen Lu and Che-ying Hsu) (Shanghai: Shanghai Shuhua Chubanshe, 2019), pp. 7-20. 盧慧紋，〈導讀：書為心畫──方聞的中國書法史研究〉，收入方聞著，盧慧紋、許哲瑛譯，《中國書法：理論與歷史》（上海：上海書畫出版社，2019），頁7-20.）
Tell us a little bit how you decided on your dissertation topic or what are some other ones that you considered but rejected.
My dissertation topic was on the Northern Wei engravings and calligraphy. If you look at all the other topics by Princeton graduates, mine is not a typical one. A typical Princeton dissertation topic would be about a piece from the Metropolitan Museum collection or the Princeton collection. It would be one piece that you study thoroughly. You focus on how the trees, the rocks, and the mountains are done, study the inscriptions on the painting, the inscriptions attached to the painting, and all the seals. Then you study about the artist and his purpose; at what stage of his life and to whom he was trying to communicate with his art. Ultimately the focus is on one single piece where you start with small things to argue for a bigger picture. For mine, I have always been intrigued by how Northern Wei calligraphers and craftsmen made these great calligraphy pieces. There are these very sharp carved traces, not written, in very tectonic and robust styles, which I have always liked. I suggested this topic to Professor Fong and he didn't say anything. But we decided that the larger meaning of this topic could be how Chinese calligraphy transformed from Clerical script to Standard script around the 5th century. My dissertation will contribute to our understanding of one of the most important events in the history of Chinese art: the formation and development of regular script before it took its modern form under Tang court calligraphers in the seventh century. For him it was important that the topic served a larger purpose. The topic only worked if it was about the big picture, here being a transformative stage in the development of calligraphy.
The pieces from Northern Wei were anonymous as opposed to specific artist. This seems to fit with Professor Fong’s idea about developing a period or style.
He did care about individuals, but he also focused on the collective. You wouldn’t want to focus on one tree instead of the forest. However, in Northern Wei there were many anonymous pieces.
There were many steles in your dissertation. How many trips did you take to China?
My trips served all different purposes, not just for my dissertation. For my dissertation, the main trip I took was in the summer of 1999. I went to Henan 河南 and Shanxi 陝西 provinces; to the big cities and also some remote areas with caves. Being at a prestigious university in the U.S. made mainland China accessible to me. If I wanted to visit a particular institute, Princeton would open the door for me. That was something I appreciated about the Princeton education. Taiwan in the late 90’s was not that open to mainland China. The U.S. and China had more connections between the people and the objects and that made things a lot easier. With Professor Fong’s recommendation letter I would be well received by the heads of the various art and archaeology institutes.
Let’s talk a little bit about Northern Wei. One part of your dissertation was about the political and historical background of that period. Professor Ying Shih Yu 余英時 has described that time as one of the freest periods in Chinese history. Was that one of the factors that attracted you to that period of time?
The first thing that drew me to this topic is the calligraphy itself. If you think about the entire period, all these different political centers had their own way of visual expressions, and these engraved calligraphies were a part of it. One of the major arguments I make is what we called Northern Wei style 北魏體 was a product of very high, concentrated political power. The style appeared in 494 when the Northern Wei relocated its capital to Luoyang in central China, and then when the Northern Wei regime fell apart this style went away too. I believe the crisp, angular edges of strokes and the reduction of three-dimensional turns into flat shapes are effects that were deliberately pursued by the Northern Wei Luoyang calligraphers. It arose from a collaborative effort between the calligrapher and the carver. But it was only present for 40 years. Even within the 40 years, which was not very long, you could still see the development. You see the interplay of the chisel and the brush. And at the end of the Northern Wei, around the late 520s and early 530s, it was a mess. It echoed the political situation at the time.
Hui-Wen Lu, A New Imperial Style of Calligraphy: Stone Engravings in Northern Wei Luoyang, 494–534, 2003, p.364
Is it fair to say that the styles are always driven by politics or by a larger force?
This is just one aspect of it. If you look at the long history of Chinese calligraphy, you can make a very rough division between the emphasis on the monumental with a concern for publicity, demonstrativeness, and political authority, and what served the ideology of self-expression. This philosophy was also from Professor Fong, who thought that there is a dynamic relationship between the two. These two divisions impacted each other. If you have a very strong government and political power, it will overpower the private segment. During the Northern Wei period, it was chaotic. But during those 40 years, it was a very tightly controlled government where you would have a specific calligraphic style made for it. Every period and every government had its own public and private styles. It's our job to chart how the styles developed and how they varied across different time periods.
I find the time you were at Princeton to be quite interesting because it seemed to be a period of transition. Professor Fong retired in ‘99, and the Department brought in a new professor, Jerome Silbergeld. Was it really a time of transition and were things changing between the start of your Princeton school career and the end of your dissertation?
I was the last student that studied with Professor Fong, but I was not the last one to finish. I said this earlier that in the late 90’s, we all felt that Princeton was so old-schooled. However, it was not like what you imagined. It was not like this powerful figure left and chaos ensued. We always had a sense of crisis as if we had to work hard to avoid being wiped out.
Wen Fong Retirement Party on June 6, 2000 (from left Ping Foong, Wen Fong, Anna Suh, Hui-Wen Lu, Christine Tan, Dora Ching)
I assume you had to take another language for the Ph.D. program. What did you take? What were some of the courses you took outside of your department?
Japanese and French. My field of specialty required Japanese. The Department of Art and Archaeology required us to take a Western language other than English. I took Japanese in Taiwan. But at Princeton they asked me to take Japanese again. I said that would be too much for my first year. I told the Japanese professor that I took many years of Japanese in Taiwan, and I asked for a waiver. The professor was not too happy and as a means of discouragement, he asked me to read a Japanese article on the spot. Even if I could do it with perfection, I knew it’s best for me to retake the language. Eventually I agreed to take Japanese over the summer and actually went to Hokkaido for my Japanese course. If you wanted to study Japanese, Princeton could send you to Japan. I couldn’t imagine that. The top one percent of the universities do this. It was so luxurious to be able to travel for a language course. In Hokkaido I had a host family and I took a Japanese course every day for the summer, which really helped me improve.
Another summer I had to take French which was mostly for reading. I couldn't speak a word of French, but I could do translation. For a summer I had to translate documents from French to English and we learned the basic rules of grammar. You would look up the French words in the dictionary then rearrange them into English. I took a lot of courses in the East Asian Studies Department with Yu Ying Shih 余英時, Yu-kung Kao 高友工 and Yang Lu 陸揚 *99. I also took a class with Susan Naquin, who focused on material culture, and Qing history and culture. She was very strict but helpful. I remember once I showed her my grant proposal and asked what she thought. She just said it’s different. I didn't know it meant bad. I didn’t know how to write a grant proposal.
I took Professor Robert Bagley's course and it was really interesting. He asked the graduate students to take his lecture that was for undergraduates. At first I thought I already knew bronzes from my courses at NTU, why did I have to take a course with the undergraduates? Bagley’s course was totally different. He was a really great lecturer and his students love him. He would show a bronze on the screen and when he described it, your eyes would open. I was very familiar with the names of the objects, where they were found, and the dates. But I realized I never really looked at them so closely before. For example there was this Four-Goat Square Zun 四羊方尊, a 11th-c. BCE vase with four rams from southern China. He would say here’s the ram’s head, body, and feet, and show you how they transformed to something else. It was really a shock to me. I felt like I was blind before. He would also take us to the Princeton Art Museum to look at the works. I held an oracle bone in my hand. Although I was not unfamiliar with oracle bone inscriptions, I had never held a piece of oracle bone in my hand before. It was another huge shock for me as a student from Taiwan.
One of my biggest regrets at Princeton is I didn't take the course with Professor Bagley. I took many art history courses, but mostly on Western art.
My regret is I didn't take any Western art history course. One reason was I was too busy with the rest of my courses, but another reason was that I was overthinking. I was worried about the language barrier and insecure about my knowledge.
We all seem to have some regrets. Tell me a little bit about what your typical day was like? Earlier you said you spent many hours in a library until the library closed.
I usually would go to the library at around 10 o'clock in the morning. If I had class in the afternoon, I would go earlier in the morning to cram. Besides my carrel in Marquand, sometimes I would go to Firestone Library and find a spot in the basement with the beautiful skylight. I remember there was just so much reading, especially for the class by Professor Naquin. I had to learn how to skim: read the introduction, read the conclusion, look at the structure of the book, read at least one chapter carefully, remember to see who the author mentioned in the acknowledgment, and then try to come up with one or two questions.
In my first year at Princeton, Li-Chiang Lin came back to finish her dissertation. She would come by around noon and we would go out for lunch. I also often had lunch with Cary Liu ‘78 *97, Dora Ching, and other graduate students at Chancellor Green. After lunch we would have coffee and then went back to our work. With Li-Chiang, sometime she would ask me to afternoon tea at around three o’clock. She would then do a little shopping and I would sometimes go with her. Afterwards, we would work late into the evening.
I want to talk a bit about the Princeton Art Museum mainly for two reasons. First, I assume it was very much part of your coursework at school. Second, you now run a museum at NTU. How does your time at the Princeton museum influence the way you use or run the museum here?
Back then in Taiwan we didn’t have anything like the Princeton Art Museum. The art history department and the museum is in the same building. When I got to Princeton, I couldn’t believe such a museum existed. There was a lot of interactions between the professors and the staff in the museum. I heard about this beforehand, but seeing it in person was still something else. The students had a lot of chances to see the artworks.
For Bagley’s precepts we had a lot of sessions in the storeroom. I was amazed that students and professors could go into the storeroom and take the things out for a class. While Princeton’s museum is related to the department, it is also independent with its own staff. For students like us it was very helpful if we needed anything. And if we had visitors to the Department who wanted to see an artwork we could just go together.
For us back then the Metropolitan Museum was the same. We would have classes in the galleries and also in the storeroom. For my third year I received a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Met. I believe every student of Wen Fong got this fellowship. The funding helped students finish their dissertations, but you had to help the museum with some work. So I went to the museum once or twice a week, just day trips. That year was very meaningful for me because the Met had a visiting scholar, Lianqi Wang 王連起, from the Beijing Palace Museum. Mr. Wang didn't speak English so the museum assigned me to be his translator. They provided us with easy access to the storage room. It was a very nice experience. Aside from working closely with him for an extended period, there is no other way to learn about how a traditional connoisseur does his work. My friendship with Mr. Wang continued even after he went back to China and I came back to Taiwan. At that time I also arranged trips for him to visit other museums and we went together to see many Song and Yuan paintings in various US collections. All of that was unimaginable for me if I just stayed in Taiwan. I didn’t know as a graduate student you could do all of that.
In the late 90’s the Palace Museum in Taipei was more bureaucratic. Things were not so accessible. What I love about the U.S. is if you can prove that you can do something or you are an expert or becoming one in the field, you can have access to what you need.
So back to what I'm doing now. The museum at NTU is not a separate entity from our department. Therefore I have much more freedom. If I want to do something I can choose the students to be involved accordingly. In this way I think it probably works better for us here than an established museum like at Princeton, because everything is still mixed together. But more freedom usually also means more work. When I do a show here, not only do I have to do the academic work, I have to worry about the lighting, the paint, etc. The museum is indispensable to an education in art history.
The Art Museum of the Graduate Institute of Art History at NTU
One thing I read about Professor Fong was his emphasis on just looking at the objects.
Yes, Professor Fong used to say objects never lie. Whether something is from the 10th or 20th century, you just have to ask the right question. Sometimes he said objects are like rocks from the moon. If you want to know about the moon you can ask the rock. The rock won’t lie to you but you have to ask the right question. I think everybody would agree on this but the tricky thing is we have different ideas on what’s the right question.
Since you talked about your students, recently there are very few students from Taiwan going to Princeton to do graduate studies. Are the students here going to other universities or simply not going abroad? Do you encourage your students to study abroad?
Of course I do. But it’s becoming more and more difficult for Taiwanese students because the requirement for English proficiency is higher than when I was a student. A lot of the newly admitted students in the U.S. programs are either native English speakers, went to college in English speaking countries, or already have a master’s degree from an English-speaking country. This makes a lot of difference. I think that's one of the primary reasons that is holding back the students from Taiwan. Back when I was applying, of course, English was important. But for someone like Professor Fong he also wanted to make sure that the student had enough knowledge. The students from Taiwan had a lot of advantage. Now the ability to make a compelling argument is much more important, especially in the humanities.
In the acknowledgment of your dissertation you thanked a few of your fellow students such as Yujun Yang *03. Did you hang out with other Taiwanese students?
We had an association of Taiwanese students. For one year I was actually the President of the association but we only had around a dozen students. We would play badminton every Saturday afternoon at Dillon Gym and have Chinese food at Lee’s Castle afterwards. It was really comforting after a whole week of hard work and eating Burger King or my own terrible cooking. The psychological support from fellow Taiwanese students was precious.
Was funding during graduate school difficult? Did you have to teach?
I was not on a scholarship from Princeton, I had the national scholarship from Taiwan for three years and then I had to apply for other grants. I remember we would compare the national scholarships from different countries, I think Singaporeans got the most and we were all envious. Back then, if you took the scholarship, you would have to come back to Taiwan for at least two years.
There was no chance for graduate students to teach in my department because all the professors did everything themselves. Professor Bagley did all the precepts by himself for 50 students with five groups of ten students. We would envy others who had more teaching experience, but for them it was more of an obligation.
I taught at Oberlin College in Ohio for a year before I finished my dissertation. But it was a challenging year because I was simultaneously trying to finish my dissertation while teaching for the first time, and searching for a job for the next year. People warned me about this but I was eager to do something to prove myself. I applied for this one year teaching position at Oberlin. I taught two courses each semester and it was my first time teaching in English. The winter there was so gray and cold. It was only after I finished everything in late May, I took a walk on campus and for the first time realized the Oberlin campus was pretty. At that time my husband was studying at Ohio State University in Columbus. We didn’t get married until after I finished my Ph.D. We actually had the wedding ceremony at the Princeton Chapel. I remember my mom had a dress made for me and it cost less than my graduation gown. At that time I only cared about my work. For my post-doc I went to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD for a curatorial position. I worked for one year before I moved back to Taiwan.
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