ABSTRACT
In 2008, Maxwell Hearn, at the time a curator in the department of Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, published a book titled How to Read Chinese Paintings. 1 In it, the author analyzes 36 Chinese paintings on display at the Met, to help museum visitors understand the qualities that marked each of these works as a “masterpiece.” The title of Hearn's book is inspired by the Chinese words du hua 读 画 “to read a painting,” a phrase that can also be translated as “to appreciate a painting.” In choosing this title, Hearn operates from the assumption that Chinese paintings employ specific visual vocabularies that are not legible to all “readers.” In front of these paintings, many American museum goers are, in a sense, illiterate.
