USC Fisher Museum of Art

Kucha and the Silk Road

Saturday November 13, 2010, 9:30 AM - 5:00 PM

Location: Waite Phillips Hall (WPH) B27 on USC's University Park Campus

This one-day symposium explores the cave temples of Kucha, which rank among some of the most significant monuments along the Silk Road.

Located in what is now the westernomst part of China, these sites were once major centers of buddhism and repositories of rich artistic practices sponsored by the Central Asian Kingdom of Kucha. Their later history was intertwined with the dissemination of Islam and the great game of empire-building across the region. This conference brings together scholars from around the world to discuss a wide range of issues related to the study and preservation of major cave temples such as Kizil and Kumtura, as well as the place of Kucha in world history.

Panel 1: Visual Culture of Cave Temples

9:30 a.m. Speakers:

Li Zhao, Kucha Academy of Xinjiang

Tailaiti Wubuli, Kucha Academy of Xinjiang

Angela Howard, Rutgers University

Discussant: Lothar von Falkenhausen, UCLA

Panel 2: Past, Present, Future

2:30 p.m.

Speakers:Valerie Hansen,

Yale UniversityLilla Russell-Smith,

Asian Art Museum of Berlin

Bruce Zuckerman,

USCDiscussant: Sonya Lee, USC

The conference is organized by Department of Art History at USC, with support from the Fisher Museum of Art International Museum Institute, the Visual Cultures of the Ancient World Initiative, East Asian Studies Center, Interdisciplinary group of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture, Departments of Art History and East Asian Languages and Cultures. It is also is part of the Kucha Research and Database Project, a multi-year, multi-institution consortium based at Yale University, UCLA, and USC that promotes the study and preservation of cultural sites in the Kucha region.