Stephen Whiteman is Professor of the Art and Architecture of China at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ and Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Art Bulletin.
My research and teaching focuses on the visual and spatial cultures of early modern China in their global contexts, and on the application of computational methods and digital media in the research and publication of art and architectural history. I write about the art, architecture, and landscape in early modern and modern China and Southeast Asia; recent work includes (Washington UP, 2020) and Landscape and Authority in the Early Modern World (Penn UP, 2023), a collection of ten essays published as part of Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture.
I am currently working on several major projects:
My current monograph, Under Heaven and Within the Seas: Mapping China Since 1000 (Reaktion), draws on art history and cultural geography to explore the changing political and cultural stakes of landscape and territory in China from the perspective of a transcultural history of cartography.
With Hedren Sum (National University Singapore), I am developing X-Sheds: An Interactive Art History of Experience, which engages the potential for deep modelling of multi-sensory environments as means for critically reconstructing spatial and sensorial experiences of the past. We are completing production of our first X-Sheds project, (Power), which uses archivally-based virtual reality models to reconstruct the experience of an early eighteenth-century imperial garden.
Finally, working with Sussan Babaie (The Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ), I am co-series editor of A Cultural History of Asian Art (Bloomsbury). This six-volume history employs a ¡®trans-Asias¡¯ approach to the study of the arts of Asia, seeking to bring local and the transculturally connected into dialogue with one another. The largest such project to be published in English, it also incorporates the Islamic world into a history of the arts of Asia for the first time.
I am the Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Art Bulletin, published by the College Art Association. For questions regarding or to arrange an editorial workshop at your institution, please contact me and my co-editor, Prof Maya Stanfield-Mazzi (University of Florida), at artbulletineic@outlook.com.
I serve as a Trustee of the and an Elected Governor of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ, and I am an Honorary Associate in the Department of Art History at the University of Sydney.
Research Interests
- Connected histories of art and architecture in early modern China
- Garden and landscape studies in Asia
- Technologies of art and visuality in early modern China
- Mobility and artistic transmission in the Indo-Pacific world
- Digital and computational methods in art and architectural history.
Teaching 2025-2026
On research leave 2025¨C26.
PhD Supervision
Current
- Ricarda Brosch, ¡°The Intervening Years: Court Painting between Fluorescence, Death and Revolution (1790s-1840s).¡± Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Art (CHASE DTP Scholarship).
- Corrina Ellis, ¡°An Edo-period provincial garden in pictures, poetry and prose: the case of Shukkei-en, Hiroshima.¡± Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Art (CHASE DTP Scholarship/Sasakawa Foundation Scholarship).
- He Junyao, ¡°Imperial Performance: The Pictorial Fiction and Conceptual Reality of Emperor Qianlong¡¯s Costume Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century China.¡± Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Art (Smithsonian Fellowship/Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Scholarship).
- Ji Yi, “Filial Piety in Practice: Empress Dowager Chongqing and Qing Court Arts.” Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Art (Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Scholarship).
- Su Wenjie, ¡°Machines of Time, Towers of Knowledge: Miniature Architectural Spaces and the Design of Timepieces in Sino-European Encounters, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.¡± Art and Archaeology, Princeton University (Kress Predoctoral Fellowship advisor, 2020¨C2022; supervisor: Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann [Princeton]).
Recently Completed
- Pu Lan, ¡°Connections in the Making and Meaning of Bhutanese Wall Painting: Tango Utse, 17th¨C20th century.¡± Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Art, 2023 (co-supervisor, with Christian Luczantis [SOAS]).
- Chen Shuxia, ¡°The Grey Zone: The Emergence of Self-Organised Photography Groups in Post-Mao Beijing, 1977¨C1988.¡± Australian Centre on China in the World, Australian National University, 2019 (co-supervisor, with Claire Roberts).
- Minerva Inwald, ¡®¡°Drawing on Each Other¡¯s Strengths to Overcome Each Other¡¯s Weaknesses¡±: Professional Artists, the Masses, and the Artistic Culture of the People¡¯s Republic, 1962¨C1974.¡¯ University of Sydney, 2019 (associate supervisor, with Andres Rodriguez).
- Simon S. Y. Soon, ¡°What is Left of Art?¡± University of Sydney, 2015 (associate supervisor, with Adrian Vickers).
Selected Research
Books
- . Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020. (, UNM School of Architecture and Planning, 2022; , UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes, 2022; , Society of Architectural Historians, 2022; , Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, 2021)
- . Beijing: Zhongxin chuban jituan, 2021. (Simplified character translation of Where Dragon Veins Meet: The Kangxi Emperor and His Estate at Rehe)
- . Washington, DC and Cambridge, MA: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection and Harvard University Press, 2016. With Richard E. Strassberg. (, Foundation for Landscape Studies, 2017)
- . Sydney: Power Publications, 2016. Edited and co-authored with John Clark, Minerva Inwald, and Bingqing Wei.
Edited Volumes
- . Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023.
- . Special issue,?Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 42.4 (Dec., 2022). Co-edited with Kathleen John-Alder.
- . Singapore and Sydney: National Gallery Singapore and Power Publications, 2018. Co-edited with Sarena Abdullah, Phoebe Scott, and Yvonne Low. (, Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, 2019)
- . Special issue,?Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 37.2 (Apr., 2017).
- .?Special issue,?Australia and New Zealand Journal of Art?16.2 (Dec., 2016). Co-edited with Olivier Krischer.
Research collaboratives
- , London School of Economics and Political Science and the British Academy. PIs: Leigh Janco (LSE) and Hasan Karrar (Lahore University of Management Sciences). Funded by the British Academy Global Convening Programme (2023¨C2025).
- , University of Sydney, and National Gallery, Singapore. Co-PI, with Mark Ledbury and Adrian Vickers. Funded by the Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories Initiative (2017¨C2022).
- , University of Sydney, Institute of Technology, Bandung, and National Gallery, Singapore. Co-PI, with Mark Ledbury and Adrian Vickers. Funded by the Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories Initiative (2014¨C2016).
Digital anthologies
- Sussan Babaie, Fresco Sam-Sin, and Stephen Whiteman, eds., . A collaborative student research project published via Things That Talk. (2020¨C2023)
Essays and articles
- ¡°.¡± Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 84.1 (2025): 145¨C151.
- ¡°.¡± In Stephen J. Campbell and Stephanie Porras, eds., Routledge Companion to the Global Renaissance. London: Routledge, 2024, pp. 677¨C697.
- ¡°.¡± Ars Orientalis 53 (2023), Article 11.
- ¡°Connective Landscapes: Mobilizing Space in the Transcultural Early Modern.¡± In S. Whiteman, ed., Landscape and Authority in the Early Modern World. Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023, pp. 1¨C28.
- ¡°.¡± International Journal of Digital Humanities 4:1¨C3 (2023): 5¨C39.
- ¡°.¡±?Art Bulletin?103.2 (June, 2021): 8¨C23.
- ¡°.¡±?Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes?33.4 (2013): 249-279. (Society of Architectural Historians (US) Landscape History Essay Prize, 2015)
