Qian Zhan is a postdoctoral scholar in the Working Group “Common Knowledge and Its Sources in the Sinosphere, 14–20 Centuries” in Department AAK. She received her PhD in Art History from the Freie Universität Berlin in 2025. Her dissertation “Tracing the Orchid: A Study of Orchid Painting in Song and Yuan China (960–1368), with a Special Focus on Zheng Sixiao’s Ink Orchid,” traces the evolution of orchids as a central theme in Chinese painting during the Song and Yuan dynasties, exploring both their artistic transformations and cultural significance. She is currently revising the dissertation into a monograph. From 2024 to 2025, she was a visiting researcher at National Taiwan University. At the MPIWG, her project “Visual Knowledge Reclassified: Painting Manuals in Ming–Qing Household Encyclopedias” examines how visual knowledge was classified, adapted, and circulated for everyday use. By analyzing the shifting selection of painting subjects, she explores how epistemic priorities changed over time, and how artistic knowledge was reorganized for common readers in late imperial China.
No completed projects were found for this scholar.