This course examines how some of the objects we find in museums and collections came to be regarded as art. More specifically some objects and styles of painting are associated with the literati, a highly educated group of scholars who established certain forms of culture as their own from the Tang and Song to Yuan dynasties. By looking at the contexts of when ceramics, bronzes, calligraphy and some forms of painting were first assigned as art we can see the literati mind guiding the process in the construction of these objects as literati art.