Monday 13 October 2025 – NTU London Confetti Campus, Whitechapel, London
An all-day workshop on Traditional Chinese Painting Materials and Techniques will take place on 13 October 2025 at the NTU London Confetti Campus. The event will bring together heritage scientists, art historians, and curators to explore how recent material studies are deepening our understanding of Chinese painting traditions and their global connections.
The workshop forms part of the international research project From Lima to Canton and Beyond: An AI-aided Heritage Materials Research Platform for Studying Globalisation through Art, funded by the AHRC (UK) and NEH (US). The project investigates the circulation of paintings between Asia, the Americas, and Europe in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and how their materials and techniques can shed light on wider networks of exchange.
The day will open with an introduction to the project and its interdisciplinary approach, followed by a presentation by Dr Blythe McCarthy of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art on the detailed study of Chinese artists’ paintings through pigment analysis. Case studies of AI-aided workflows for heritage material research and comparisons of pigment use in Chinese and Japanese paintings of the 18th century will also be presented.
In the afternoon, Professor Haida Liang (Nottingham Trent University) will discuss painting treatises, artist materials, and pigment use in East Asia from the 18th to 19th century, before Dr Xiangjie Wang from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, offers a live demonstration of traditional Chinese painting techniques on silk and paper. The workshop will conclude with a roundtable discussion, allowing participants to reflect on the broader implications of these studies for conservation, curation, and art historical research.
The registration fee is £25 and includes lunch. Registration is available through the NTU Online Store
