Dr. Julia Orell

Biography

Julia Orell is an art historian specializing in Chinese art, particularly landscape painting from the Song and Yuan dynasties. She earned her PhD from the University of Chicago and has taught at the University of Zurich. Orell has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and Academia Sinica in Taipei. In 2021, she became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Her teaching encompasses a broad range of Chinese visual material culture, from ancient tombs to modern contemporary art. Her primary research focus lies in Chinese landscape painting, specifically examining the depictions and constructions of place in painting and other visual media. This research interrogates the role of painting production in the knowledge entanglements of historical geography and cartography. Furthermore, her research encompasses the formation of East Asian art history as an academic discipline in the German-speaking parts of Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Orell also explores the challenges that East Asian art presents to art historical methodologies, providing a historiographical perspective on the debates within global art history. She has published articles in the Journal of Art Historiography and edited volumes such as 'Itineraries of Art: Topographies of Artistic Mobility between Europe and Asia 1500-1900' (Fink, 2015) and 'Memorial Landscapes: World Images East and West' (De Gruyter, 2020). Currently, she is completing a book manuscript titled 'Place, Site, Region, Empire: Landscape Painting and Cartography in Song China.'

Research Interests