Word: hung
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After several years of organizing exhibitions, and researching and writing catalogues and books for the Palace Museum, Wu Hung decided to return to Beijing's Academy of Fine Arts to get his Master's in Chinese art history. "It was a personal choice to leave the museum and go back to school. My work had stimulated an interest in Chinese art and I was tired of just dealing with ancient objects; I wanted to talk to people again," he says...
...soon as the doors were open between China and the West, Wu Hung applied to the graduate program at Harvard, where his father had studied in the 1930s. Wu Hung wanted to continue his work in art history. "In China we don't really have art history; we only have works of art," explains Wu Hung...
Arriving in the United States in 1980 with no knowledge of English, Wu Hung plunged right into classes in the Anthropolgy Department. "Of course it was a culture shock," he says. "That first year I worked very hard, day and night, to learn the language." Wu Hung eventually elected to write his doctoral thesis on bronze funerary ornaments of the Han Dynasty for an ad hoc committee of members from both the Anthropology and Fine Arts departments...
...Hung says he finds the Western style of teaching to be very different from the learning by rote method of China. He explains, "The Chinese education is taking notes. You listen, you take notes, you memorize. Here each person contributes. People raise questions; they argue...
...intellectual atmosphere is also quite a change for Wu Hung. "Here there is an urge to make your knowledge more up to date. There are more chances to challenge arguments," he says...