Past Recipients

2003 Recipient
Stanley K. Abe, Associate Professor of Art History at Duke University, has been chosen from a group of 27 international nominees to receive the 2003 Shimada Prize for distinguished scholarship in the history of East Asian art. The prize of $10,000 is awarded biennially by the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies in Kyoto, Japan.

Abe is an expert in the field of early Chinese Buddhist sculpture and received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. Abe will receive this year's prize is awarded for his pioneering study "Ordinary Images," published by University of Chicago Press (2002). It examines the little known world of Chinese Buddhist sculpture created for patrons of modest economic and social standing. While most scholarship to date focuses on sculptures created and tied to wealthier patrons, in contrast, Abe presents four case studies concentrating on more modest provincial examples of Buddhist imagery. His analysis suggests a critical re-reading of mainstream views relating to Buddhist stylistic development. In addition, Abe confronts current scholarly views linking wealth and power with sculpture content and concludes that there is little correlation between a patron's social class and the style and symbolism found in Chinese Buddhist works.

"Abe carries the field of Chinese Buddhist art studies to a new level of richness. He confounds our outdated and untested assumptions about early Chinese Buddhist art in China, and his treatment of the phenomenon of "sinicization" will be essential reading for all scholars of medieval China," says Robert E. Harrist, Jr., the Jane and Leopold Swergold Professor of Chinese Art History at Columbia University.

2001 Recipient
The 2001 Shimada Prize was awarded for the four-volume report of key archaeological discoveries made at Tianma-Qucun in Shanxi Province, China. It was produced by Professor Zou and his team during the period of 1980–89 and published in 2000 as, Tianma-Qucun 1980–89, by Science Press, Beijing. A four-volume report on this site, near the great bend in the Yellow River, it documents work carried out by the Department of Archaeology at Peking University.

Tianma-Qucun is the site of a major cemetery of the Western Zhou period, which is the period dating from ca. 1000 B.C to ca. 771 B.C. The cemetery holds the bodies of the dukes of Jin and their consorts and members of their elite. Remarkable among the finds are the jade and beaded decorations, including jade plaques and pendants used to cover the remains of thedeceased. The site provides the most extensive information to—date on the ascendancy of jade as a funerary material—an innovation of the early 9th century B.C. The Jin State tombs are particularly important in documenting the change as they provide an almost continuous sequence of burials over three hundred years or more.

The renowned archaeologist, Zou Heng, led the group of archaeologists working at Peking University, Beida. Professor Zou has been instrumental in training many of the archaeologists in China over the last forty years. The work for which the prize is awarded is particularly important as it provides full descriptive accounts of the tombs and their contents, with excellent drawings and notes on all aspects of the finds, as well as documenting the influence Professor Zou has had on the field of archaeology.

1999 Recipient
The 1999 Shimada Prize was awarded to Japanese art historian Kihara Toshie, an official of Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs.

Dr. Kihara's two-volume treatise is written on the Japanese painter Kano Tan'yu (1602–1674), regarded as the most significant painter of the early Edo period (1615–1716). "Yubi no tankyu: Kano Tan'yu ron" (The search for profound delicacy: the art of Kano Tan'yu), published by Osaka University Press in 1998, is the first critical scholarly work to interpret Tan'yu's major contributions to the history of art in Japan.

As a specialist serving the Cultural Properties Protection Department in the Fine Arts Division of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Dr. Kihara's current responsibilities include supervising conservation projects for designated cultural properties. She holds a doctorate from Osaka University (1994). Dr. Kihara was a Fulbright Scholar in the Fine Arts Department of Harvard University (1983–1984) and a visiting lecturer in the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University (1993).

In her writings, Kihara successfully demonstrates that Tan'yu used neutral zones of his ink paintings to discover ways to disrupt the expected visual order. He experimented with such methods as filling the untreated spaces with fog-like atmosphere and placing the areas in non-traditional spots throughout the painting, even in the foreground. Tan'yu thus pioneered redefining the painting surface as an opaque, flat plane. His inventive approach to composition deeply influenced the work of his contemporaries and those who followed. Tan'yu's innovations thus became a defining element of Japanese painting in the Edo period (1615–1868).

1997 Recipient
In 1997 The Shimada Prize was shared by two publications providing valuable new information about early Chinese culture: "Zhongguo shikusi yanjiu" (Studies on the cave temples of China), by Professor Su Bai of Peking University, and "Houma taofan yishu" (The art of the Houma Foundry), illustrated by Li Xiating and Liang Ziming with the Chinese archaeological report translated by Robert W. Bagley and Jay Xu.

Professor Su's study of Chinese Buddhist cave temples reassesses the theories of earlier scholars and proposes new interpretations regarding chronology and iconography. Su, a distinguished Chinese archaeologist, has been associated with the Department of Archaeology of Peking University for more than 40 years. His book was published in 1996 by the Cultural Relics Publishing House in Beijing. Sharing the 1997 Shimada Prize is "The Art of the Houma Foundry," a pictorial survey of two centuries of Chinese bronze decoration as recorded in casting debris excavated from the largest-known ancient foundry site in the world. Featuring drawings by Li Xiating and photographs by Liang Ziming of the Institute of Archaeology of Shanxi Province, and translations of the archaeological report by Professor Robert W. Bagley of Princeton University and Jay Xu, associate curator of Chinese art at the Seattle Art Museum, this bilingual (Chinese and English) volume was published by Princeton University Press in 1996. This publication was selected as an admirable example of the benefits of joint East-West publishing projects.

1995 Recipient
The recipient of the 1995 Shimada Prize was Professor Hirata Yutaka for his Japanese-language publication "The Age of the Buddhist Master Painter." Published in 1994 by Chuokoron Bijitsu Press, this two-volume work is the first comprehensive history of Japanese Buddhist painting from the ninth through the 14th century.

Professor Hirata's book was selected as a seminal publication providing a solid, positive basis for understanding Buddhist paintings. This lucidly written book will serve as a standard source for future studies of Buddhist art. The importance of "The Age of the Buddhist Master Painter" will be especially appreciated by scholars and researchers of Buddhist devotional painting (one of the most powerful expressions of the Japanese sense of beauty) who are faced with the arduous task of placing these works into Japan's social and cultural history.

Hirata, a professor at Kyushu University, has devoted his career to documenting Buddhist paintings and interpreting their significance. His publication also imparts information on the careers of artists and patrons whose profiles have never before been outlined in detail.

1993 Recipient
The first Shimada Prize was awarded to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., for "The Century of Tung Ch'i-ch'ang (1555–1636)," a comprehensive examination of the life and work of China's great Ming dynasty painter. Editor for the 1,068-page, two-volume publication was Wai-kam Ho, the Laurence Sickman curator of Chinese art at The Nelson-Atkins Museum. Judith G. Smith was coordinating editor. Essays were written by Wai-kam Ho and Dawn Ho Delbanco, Wen C. Fong, James Cahill, Kohara Hironobu, Xu Bangda, Wang Qingzheng, Celia Carrington Riely, and Wang Shiqing.

Contributions to the catalog were made by Ai Zhigao, Richard M. Barnhart, Joseph Chang, Hui-liang J. Chu, Richard Edwards, Shi-yee Liu Fielder, Marilyn Wong Gleysteen, John Hay, Maxwell K. Hearn, Wai-kam Ho, Jason Kuo, Chu-tsing Li, Pan Shenliang, Celia Carrington Riely, David A. Sensabaugh, Shan Guolin, Richard Vinograd, Roderick Whitfield and Yang Chenbin.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum published the book in 1992, in association with The University of Washington Press, to accompany an exhibition organized by the museum under the auspices of the China Cultural Relics Promotion Center and in collaboration with the Beijing Palace Museum and the Shanghai Museum of Art.