Le Lucien Sun Awarded 2024 Liu Cong Prize

Le Lucien Sun Awarded 2024 Liu Cong Prize

May 6, 2024

Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk
The opening section of Huizong’s (attr.) copy of Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk by Zhang Xuan, with a title and collecting seals by Zhangzong. Ink, color and gold on silk. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Image from the website of East Asian Scroll Paintings, Center for the Art of East Asia, The University of Chicago.

The Center for the Art of East Asia is pleased to award Le Lucien Sun the 2024 Liu Cong Memorial Prize for the Best Essay on East Asian Art and Visual Culture for his essay “For Our Own Sake: Writing about Northern Song Paintings by Jin Literati.”  

Lucien’s paper reexamines the role that Jin literati played in Chinese art history. It reveals the complexity within Jin literati in their understanding of and relation to Northern Song paintings, and how their viewing and collecting shaped the aesthetic ideals of Jin literati themselves.  

The Liu Cong Memorial Prize recognizes excellent scholarship in East Asian art and visual culture by graduate students at the University of Chicago and encourages the developing of writing skills for publishable essays. The Center for the Art of East Asia established the prize in 2010-11 in memory of former graduate student and Ph.D. candidate in the Art History Department, Liu Cong (1979-2008), a promising young scholar much admired for her talent and vitality of mind and spirit who was struck down by brain cancer. 

More about the Liu Cong prize