Center for East Asian Garden Studies
Research Fellowship
The June and Simon K.C. Li Fellowship in East Asian Garden and Landscape Studies supports research in East Asian garden and landscape studies by scholars at any stage of career. Visit Available Fellowships to learn more.
Resources
The Center for East Asian Garden Studies was founded to fulfill the educational potential of The Huntington’s Chinese and Japanese Gardens. The gardens themselves offer significant botanical and historical resources to researchers and to the public. The Chinese Garden, for example, preserves a collection of nearly 200 medicinal plants, many of which are rare outside of China; the Japanese Garden, meanwhile, is home to landscapes that document 100 years of American responses to Japanese aesthetics.
CEAGS maintains a scholarly reference library of approximately 8000 volumes, drawn primarily from the collections of Wan-go H.C. Weng and Ju-hsi Chou. It has particular strengths in Chinese garden, painting, and literary history, as well as Japanese garden history. CEAGS also oversees a small collection of Japanese rare books on stone appreciation, bonsai, and the sencha tea ceremony established by the American Viewing Stone Resource Center (AVSRC). The collections are housed in the Brody Botanical Center.
CEAGS staff work with the Huntington Art Museum to exhibit and expand the institution’s collection of East Asian garden-related artworks. Highlights include a remarkable hanging scroll by Qiu Ying (ca. 1494–ca. 1552) and a rare early printing of the Ten Bamboo Studio Collection of Calligraphy and Painting (ca. 1633–1703).
Contact us to learn more.
Exhibitions
Each year the Center for East Asian Garden Studies mounts one or more exhibitions to further appreciation of the East Asian garden arts.
Current
奪天工 Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China
Sep. 14, 2024–Jan. 6, 2025
Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China asks: What is a garden, and what can you do with one? Focusing on the gardens of China’s literati during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912), Growing and Knowing illuminates gardens as transformative spaces—spaces for growing and contemplating plants in order to better understand the world around us as well as our place in it.
Past Exhibitions
Oct. 7, 2023–May 27, 2024
Paintings in Print examined how painting manuals published in the 17th and 18th centuries used innovative printing methods to introduce the techniques, history, and appreciation of painting to widening audiences in early modern China.
Oct. 22, 2022–May 29, 2023
Crafting a Garden shed light on the intricacies of The Huntington’s Chinese Garden through models, photographs, tools, and videos that told the story of its design and construction.
Aug. 28, 2021–May 16, 2022
Celebrating the recent opening of the final phase of its Chinese Garden, The Huntington presented an exhibition of contemporary Chinese calligraphy designed to illuminate this art form’s expressive qualities. The work of 21 contemporary ink artists was featured, including Bai Qianshen, Michael Cherney, Grace Chu, Fu Shen, Lo Ch’ing, Tang Qingnian, Wang Mansheng, Wan-go Weng, Zhu Chengjun, and Terry Yuan.
Events
Throughout the academic year, the Center for East Asian Garden Studies presents both in-person and virtual programs.
Upcoming Events
Visit Videos and Recorded Programs to watch previously recorded lectures, conferences, podcasts, and videos.
Publications
Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China (2024), edited by Phillip E. Bloom, Nicholas K. Menzies, and Michelle Bailey
The Huntington’s Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China exhibition asks: What is a garden, and what can you do with one? This exhibition catalog focuses on the gardens of China’s literati during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912), exploring gardens as spaces for growing and contemplating plants to better understand the world and humans’ place in it. 212 pages; 112 color illustrations.
Gardens, Art, and Commerce in Chinese Woodblock Prints (2016), edited by T. June Li and Suzanne E. Wright
This exhibition catalogue explores the art, craft, and cultural significance of Chinese woodblock prints made during their golden age, from the late 16th through the 19th century. Bringing together 48 of the best examples gathered from the National Library of China, Beijing; the Nanjing Library; the Shanghai Museum; and institutional and private collections in the United States, it features delicate works with painterly textures and subtle colors depicting plants, birds, and other garden elements alongside monumental accounts of sprawling, architecturally elaborate scholar’s gardens.
One Hundred Years in The Huntington's Japanese Garden: Harmony with Nature (2012), edited by T. June Li
For more than one hundred years, the Japanese Garden at The Huntington has served as a bellwether for the West's engagement with Asian culture. This lavishly illustrated volume explores the garden's history, from its development for the Huntington estate as a display of fashionable, cultivated taste, to its quiet deterioration and neglect during World War II, to its resurgence in the 1950s as a showcase for Japanese culture and garden arts, and ultimately to its renovation and expansion during its centennial in 2012.
Another World Lies Beyond: Creating Liu Fang Yuan, The Huntington's Chinese Garden (2008), edited by T. June Li
This beautifully produced book tells the story and pictorially reveals one of the largest formal Chinese gardens in the world outside of China. The contributors to Another World Lies Beyond discuss the challenges of constructing the garden in Southern California, as well as the cultural traditions and aesthetics of Chinese garden design, especially the ways in which the plants and structures engage the imagination of visitors.