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Podcast: New Books in Art
Episode: Craig Clunas, âScreen of Kings: Royal Art and Power in Ming Chinaâ (University of Hawaii Press, 2013)
Description: Craig Clunasâs new book explores the significance of members of the imperial clan, or âkingsâ in Ming China. A king was established in a âstateâ (guo), and mapping the Ming in terms of guoâs is a way of mapping Ming space in units that had centers, but not boundaries. (In having many guoâs, the Ming thus had many centers.) A wonderfully and productively revisionist account of Ming history and its artifacts, Screen of Kings: Royal Art and Power in Ming China (University of Hawaii Press and Reaktion Books, 2013) explores this poly-centric kingly landscape as evidenced by documentary and arc...