An historian of Chinese visual culture, Alfreda Murck is currently teaching Chinese art history courses at Columbia University. She lived in Asia as a student and professional for more than two decades. In China from 1997 to 2013, she worked at the Palace Museum and taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and at Peking University. Besides various articles on Chinese painting, she authored a book titled Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent (Harvard University Asia Center, 2000). In the flea markets of Beijing she collected other people’s castoffs including objects related to the Pakistani mangoes that Mao Zedong gave to workers, which led to the exhibition Mao’s Golden Mangoes and the Cultural Revolution (Rietberg Museum Zurich, 2013). Prior to living in Asia, Freda was Associate Curator of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum. She received her PhD from Princeton University in 1995.
