From Lima to Canton and Beyond:
An AI-aided Heritage Materials Research Platform for Studying Globalisation through Art
UK Workshop 13 October 2025
Monday 13 October 2025, All-Day Workshop with Lunch, NTU London Confetti Campus, Whitechapel, E1
Traditional Chinese Painting Materials and Techniques
Registration fee £25
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Click Here for Detailed Schedule
This all- day workshop focuses on the evidence of traditional Chinese painting materials and techniques which has been obtained using scientific analysis. It is aimed at all those interested in East Asian painting materials and techniques, and curators who have East Asian paintings in their collections.
There will be a summary of our international Research Project From Lima to Canton and Beyond which studies historical global trade and exchange through the lens of paintings which circulated between the Americas, Asia and Europe ca. 1780-1850.
The workshop will include the analysis of traditional Chinese paintings, paint boxes, contemporary painting treatises and a comparison with Japanese painting materials. The study of these traditional painting materials and techniques serves as a baseline to compare with the “export paintings” from around the world which were analysed in this project.
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Speakers include Dr Blythe McCarthy from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art, US, and Professor Haida Liang, Head of the ISAAC Lab (Imaging and Sensing for Archaeology, Art history and Conservation) at NTU, UK. There will be a demonstration of Chinese painting techniques by Dr Xiangjie Wang from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. The full workshop schedule is published below. ​
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This interdisciplinary project funded by AHRC in the UK and NEH in the US has brought together colleagues from the UK (Nottingham Trent University; The National Archives; Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew; Royal Geographical Society; Royal Horticultural Society), and from the US (Hispanic Society of America; Smithsonian Institution; Library of Congress; Indiana University; Yale; Getty Conservation Institute; Getty Research Institute; Museum of International Folk Art).
The project is led by Professor Haida Liang of Imaging and Sensing for Archaeology, Art history and Conservation (ISAAC) at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, Dr Marcus Burke of the Hispanic Society of America, and Dr Blythe McCarthy of the National Museum of Asian Art in the US. Recently, collections from New York Public Library and Rijksmuseum and Wereldmuseum, Netherlands have been included in the study.
DEtailed schedule
09.30 -10.00
Welcome & Coffee
Time
Event
Presenter
10.15
Registration & Coffee
10.35
Welcome
10.40
Introduction to the Workshop & an overview of the project “From Lima to Canton and Beyond: An AI- aided Heritage Materials Research Platform for Studying Globalisation through Art”
Haida Liang
11.00
Studying Chinese artists’ paintings, one colour at a time
Blythe McCarthy
11.45
Advantages of the AI- aided heritage materials analysis workflow: a case study
Jake Hollis & Danique Grevink
12.05
Pigment use in 18th Century Japanese & Chinese paintings
Danique Grevink & Makiko Tsunoda
12.25
Q&A​
Haida Liang
12.40
Lunch
14.00
From painting treatises to artist materials and pigment use in 18th-19th Century Chinese and Japanese paintings
Haida Liang
14.45
Demonstration of painting techniques for Chinese paintings on silk and paper
Xiangjie Wang
16.00
Q&A, Coffee and Roundtable
Haida Liang