Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China

Thursday, April 30
1:00–3:00 p.m. PT
Speaker: Phillip Bloom, PhD, June and Simon K.C. Li Curator of the Chinese Garden and Director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies at The Huntington
Virtual Event

Modern writings often describe Chinese scholars’ gardens as sites of aesthetic reclusion—spaces filled with architecture, waterways, and rockeries intended to facilitate the garden-owner’s retreat from the mundane world. Plants rarely appear in such accounts, except as culturally sanctioned signifiers of the garden-owner’s character or virtue. A look at paintings and books that depict gardens from the Song to Qing dynasties offers a different view: plants were central to these gardens, for practical purposes and for contemplating humanity’s place within the cosmos. This talk will explore these themes through a discussion of the exhibition Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China, displayed at The Huntington in fall 2024.

Speaker bio:  Phillip E. Bloom is the June and Simon K.C. Li Curator of the Chinese Garden and Director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies at The Huntington in San Marino, CA. A specialist in the history of the art and gardens of China’s Song dynasty (960–1279), he received his A.M. and Ph.D. in Chinese art history from Harvard University and his B.A. in art history and French from Middlebury College. Prior to joining The Huntington in 2017, he served as assistant professor of East Asian art history at Indiana University, Bloomington, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Tokyo. At The Huntington, he has curated or co-curated projects including Tang Qingnian: An Offering to Roots (2019), A Garden of Words: The Calligraphy of Liu Fang Yuan (2021), Crafting a Garden: Inside the Creation of Liu Fang Yuan (2022), Wang Mansheng: Without Us (2025), and edmund de waal: The Eight Directions of the Wind (2025). His catalogue for Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China (2024) was awarded the Bei Shan Tang Catalogue Prize by the Association for Asian Studies.

Please note, this session will be conducted virtually via Zoom.

Save your spot. All participants will be sent the Zoom link via confirmation email with instructions once you secure your place.

Sponsored by the Asian Arts Council.

Featured at top right: Pursuits of a Scholar 1 (detail), 18th century, China. Ink on silk. Gift of the Asian Arts Council, 1954.30.1.