Digital Chinese Art History and the Beijing Zhihua Temple Project

The wooden coffered ceiling now installed inside the Chinese Temple Room originally covered the ceiling above the Vairocana Buddha in Beijing’s Zhihua Temple, built in 1444. The Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago, in collaboration with the Nelson-Atkins, started the Beijing Zhihua Temple Project to create a new virtual experience that allows visitors to see, imagine, and appreciate the ceiling in its original context. Dr. Wei-Cheng Lin, associate professor of art history at the University of Chicago, will demonstrate how digital technology has critically reshaped the studies of Chinese art history by engaging new issues and raising different questions.