This event has been canceled as part of SBMA’s response to the coronavirus (COVID-19).

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s curatorial support group Friends of Asian Art is proud to present its 2020 Curator’s Choice Lecture by Dr. Stephen Little, Florence and Harry Sloan Curator of Chinese Art and Head of Chinese, Korean, and South and Southeast Asian Art at LACMA.

Few artists in Chinese history have proven as enigmatic as the Ming dynasty painter Qiu Ying (c. 1494–c. 1552), whose life and art reveal a series of paradoxes. Though one of the most famous artists of the Ming period, almost nothing is known about his life. He is said to have been illiterate, yet surviving evidence demonstrates elegant writing. He is said to have had few followers, yet he was the most copied painter in Chinese history. LACMA’s exhibition Where the Truth Lies: The Art of Qiu Ying grapples with such issues as artists who cross social boundaries, degrees of literacy in Ming dynasty China, and the importance of connoisseurship in determining quality and authenticity. This lecture discusses the scholarly background to the first exhibition on Qiu Ying ever organized outside of Asia, on view at LACMA through May 17, 2020. In addition to masterworks by Qiu Ying, the exhibition includes works by his predecessors and teachers, his daughter Qiu Zhu, and followers from the early 16th through the mid-20th century.