Craig Clunas

Craig Clunas (born 1 December 1954 in Aberdeen, Scotland) is Professor of History of Art at the University of Oxford. As a historian of the art and history of China, Professor Clunas has focussed particularly on the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).

Professor Clunas finished undergraduate study in Chinese Studies from the University of Cambridge, and moved to the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London for his PhD. Professor Clunas began his scholarly career at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where for 15 years he was on the curatorial staff and was responsible for the installation of new Chinese galleries. In 1994, he moved to the University of Sussex, where he became Professor of History of Art in 1997. In 2003, he returned to SOAS where he was the Percival David Professor of Chinese and East Asian Art from 2004.

He took up his current position at the University of Oxford in 2007. He is the first holder of the Chair in the History of Art to specialise in art from Asia.

He has contributed to radio programmes including In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg and A History of the World in 100 Objects with Neil MacGregor.

Professor Clunas has published extensively on early modern China, his books include:

• Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (1991)
• Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (1996)
• Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China (1997)
• Art in China (1997; 2009)
• Elegant Debts: The Social Art of Wen Zhengming, 1470–1559 (2004)
• Empire of Great Brightness: Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368–1644 (2007), based on his lectures as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford in 2004.
• (ed., with Harrison-Hall, Jessica), Ming: 50 years that changed China, 2014 (exhibition catalogue), British Museum Press, ISBN 9780714124841