UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Chang Tan, associate professor of art history and Asian studies at Penn State, will discuss her book, "The Minjian Avant-Garde: Art of the Crowd in Contemporary China" (Cornell University Press, 2023), with B. Stephen Carpenter II, Michael J. and Aimee Rusinko Kakos Dean in the College of Arts and Architecture, at 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 23, at the Woskob Family Gallery, located at 146 S. Allen Street in State College.

In the book, Tan explores how experimental artists in China interacted with Minjian, the rapidly transforming and diverse public of the post-Mao era. While most research on contemporary art has centered on art institutions and artist communities, Tan’s work explores how the artists interacted with marginalized communities and others outside of what she called “the very exclusive world of art.” 

Research for the book included travel to the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong and Brooklyn, New York, to examine printed and handwritten materials, as well as visits to museums, artist studios and private collections of art. She also conducted extensive in-person and email interviews with several artists.

Tan has been at Penn State since 2014. Her research and pedagogy focus on modern and contemporary Chinese and East Asian art, as well as ecological art and art of the diaspora.

She was recently awarded a senior fellowship for the 2024-25 academic year with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the National Gallery’s world-renowned research institute, which will support her work on her research project and second monograph, titled “Network Moderns: Vernacular Photography and Image-making in Global Chinas.”