The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Greater China Research Grant offers the grantee a one-year fellowship to conduct research on contemporary art from China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. The grantee is awarded 15,000 USD and is expected to research on-site at AAA for up to two months in addition to conducting fieldwork in the region relevant to the project.

Selected from an open call of 34 applications, Lu’s research will take two 1999 art exhibitions, Post-Sense Sensibility and Art for Sale, as case studies to reconstruct the development of contemporary art in mainland China during the late 1990s. Despite frequent references in critical and historical texts, extensive archival material on these two exhibitions is not yet available. By conducting a comprehensive survey of Post-Sense Sensibility and Art for Sale—analysing historical backgrounds, exhibition formats, and organisation methods; researching their impact on subsequent artistic practices, exhibition strategies, and the art market—Lu will examine how the two exhibitions influenced participating artists and raised fundamental questions around contemporary Chinese art during a period of rising commodification.

Based on their relevance to current artistic, social, and intellectual issues relating to contemporary art in mainland China, Lu’s selection of Post-Sense Sensibility and Art for Sale responds to the present “emphasis on individual practices and modes of artistic production” instead of “attention to the impact of exhibitions on institutions and artistic invention.”

Lu Mingjun holds a PhD in History from Sichuan University (2011). He is currently Associate Professor of Art History at Art College, Sichuan University. Lu’s research interests include history of modern and contemporary Chinese art, and art historiography in Europe and America since the 1960s. His academic essays have been published in Wenyi Yanjiu, Meishu Yanjiu, Twenty-first Century, Art Criticism in Taiwan, and Tianya. His recent books include Writing and Narrating of Vision: The Vision of History and Theory (2013); Visual Cognition and Art History: Michel Foucault, Hubery Damisch, Jonathan Crary (2014); and On Meta-Painting: An Art Institution and Cognition of Universality (2015).

Exhibition floor plan, Art for Sale (video still). Courtesy of Yang Zhenzhong

Panel of judges:

Chiang Poshin, Associate Professor of Art History at Tainan University of Arts

Jane DeBevoise, Chair, Board of Directors, Asia Art Archive

Liao Wen, independent critic and curator

Shen Kuiyi, Director of Chinese Studies and Professor of Asian Art History, Theory, and Criticism, University of California, San Diego

Anthony Yung, Senior Researcher, Asia Art Archive