PhD Stanford University

Yu-chuan Chen is an art historian and curator specializing in eco-art history in East Asia, with a focus on Chinese art and visual culture from the 10th to 14th centuries. His research examines how the visual and material entanglements of humans, natural organisms, and sacred environments shape cultural imaginaries and artistic expression. His curatorial projects—A Mushroom Perspective on Sacred Geography (2017) and Earthly Hollows: Caves and Kiln Transformations (2018)—investigate how spiritual agents and topographies animate artistic production. His recent article in Monumenta Serica (2024) analyzes Neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi’s sustained engagement with the Wuyi Mountains, revealing how fengshui practices informed his artistic, educational, and ecological interventions in the landscape. His current book project, Boating through the Sacred Landscape: Artistic Visions of the Wuyi Mountains, uses the boat journey as a critical lens to explore how this sacred Daoist mountain has been imagined and represented since the twelfth century. Chen’s research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and other institutions.