Feng Schöneweiß, Ph.D.

Feng Schöneweiß is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the interdisciplinary programme 4A Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics (September 2023–June 2025). Feng received his doctorate in East Asian art history and transcultural studies from Heidelberg University. His first book manuscript, based on his dissertation, is titled “Provenance and Monumentality: Chinese Monumental Vases, German Museum Professionals, and the Making of Curatorial Art History in Dresden.” The book focuses on a group of prominent museum exhibits, the so-called Dragoon Vases (Dragonervasen), and four generations of curators at the Dresden Porcelain Collection before 1945. Exploring how provenance research shaped the monumentality of transcultural artifacts, the book reveals the agency of both collections and museum professionals in shaping Chinese ceramic studies into a specialized subject of art history in German-speaking regions. At the 4A_Lab, Feng’s second book project examines an ecological art history of porcelain production through the analytical lens of energy consumption.

Feng studied in Nanjing, Shanghai, Chicago, Taipei, Tokyo, Osaka, and Heidelberg, worked as an assistant curator at Shanghai University Museum, and taught seminars at Heidelberg University. His research has received generous support from the American Ceramic Circle, the Bei Shan Tang Foundation, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Heinz-Götze-Stiftung, the Historians of Eighteenth Century Art and Architecture, The University of Chicago and the Getty Foundation, and multiple institutions at Heidelberg University. He has co-edited museum catalogues, published articles and book chapters in Chinese, English, and German, and contributed to exhibitions at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, among other museums.