Rate My Professor Stanley Abe

Abe has authored key books including Imagining Sculpture (2022), which comprises vignettes exploring the absence of a distinct sculpture category in China; Ordinary Images (2002); and A Freer Stela Reconsidered (2002). His prolific scholarship includes chapters such as “Before Sculpture” (2020), “Introduction: Some Stakes of Comparativism” (2017), “Sculpture: A Comparative History” (2017), “The Modern Moment of Chinese Sculpture” (2011), “General Munthe’s Sculpture Collection” (2012), “Collecting Chinese Sculpture: Paris, New York, Boston” (2009), and “Inside the Wonder House: Buddhist Art and the West” (1995). Notable journal articles feature “Provenance, Patronage, and Desire: Northern Wei Sculpture from Shaanxi Province” (Ars Orientalis, 2001) and contributions to Archives of Asian Art. Abe’s influence extends through extensive public engagement, with keynote lectures like the Bettman Lecture at Columbia University (2020), Percival David Foundation Annual Lecture at the British Museum (2017), Burke Lectures at Indiana University (2017), and What is Chinese Sculpture? at the National Museum of Scotland (2019). He has delivered invited talks at institutions including the Courtauld Institute, University of Chicago, Tate Modern, and College Art Association conferences, and instructed the Mellon Foundation Chinese Object Study Workshop at Harvard Art Museum (2024), shaping discourses on East Asian art, duplication in sculpture, and transcultural collecting.