Jessica Rawson

{{Short description|British art historian and sinologist (born 1943)}}

{{Infobox officeholder

| honorific_prefix =

| name = Dame Jessica Rawson

| honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|DBE|FBA}}

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| office = Warden of Merton College, Oxford

| term_start = 1994

| term_end = 2010

| predecessor = J. M. Roberts

| successor = Sir Martin Taylor

| birth_name = Jessica Mary Quirk

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|df=y|20 January 1943}}

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| nationality = English

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{{Infobox academic | child=yes

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| alma_mater = New Hall, Cambridge
University of London

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| discipline = Art history and Sinology

| sub_discipline = {{hlist|Chinese art|archaeology of China|Inner Asia|early Chinese material culture|cultural ecology|ornament}}

| workplaces = {{plain list|

}}

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Dame Jessica Mary Rawson, {{post-nominals|country=GBR|sep=,|size=100%|DBE|FBA}} (born 20 January 1943) is an English art historian, curator and sinologist, specialising in Chinese art. She is also an academic administrator.

After many years at the British Museum, she was Warden (head) of Merton College, Oxford, from 1994 until her retirement in 2010.[http://www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2008-9/weekly/120209/appts/entry_7.htm Profile] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180410071851/http://www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2008-9/weekly/120209/appts/entry_7.htm |date=10 April 2018 }}, Oxford University Gazette, 12 February 2009; retrieved October 2010. She served as pro-vice-chancellor at University of Oxford from 2006 for a term of five years.{{cite web |url=https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=137704 |title=Dame Jessica Rawson (Biographical details) |publisher=British Museum|access-date=13 July 2016}}

Biography

Rawson's academic background is in Sinology with a particular research focus on the cosmology of the Han period (206 BC-AD 220) and its relation to tombs and their decoration. Educated at St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, West London, New Hall, Cambridge and the University of London, Rawson began her career in the civil service.

Between 1976 and 1994, she served as Deputy Keeper and then Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum. From 1994 to 2010 she was Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and from 2006 to 2011 she served as pro-vice-chancellor of Oxford University. She has been involved in a number of high-profile exhibitions such as the Mysteries of Ancient China.Jessica Rawson, Mysteries of Ancient China: New Discoveries from the Early Dynasties (London, 1996).

Rawson contributed with Evelyn S. Rawski and other scholars to the catalogue of China: The Three Emperors by Frances Wood.Frances Wood, China: the Three Emperors, 1662-1795 (London, 2005); {{ISBN|978-1-903973-69-1}} The exhibition ran at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2005–06.[http://www.threeemperors.org.uk Scholarly reviews of the exhibition's intellectual legacy are awaited], threeemperors.org.uk; accessed 29 February 2016.

From 2011 to 2016, Rawson headed a project at the University of Oxford on China and Inner Asia: Interactions Which Changed China (1000-200 BC) funded by the Leverhulme Trust, with Jianjun Mei as collaborator. This project explored relations between Ancient China and peoples of the Eurasian Steppes, particularly to the north and north-west.{{cite web |url=http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/china-inner-asia.html |title=China and Inner Asia Project |publisher=OCAAAC |access-date=13 July 2016 |archive-date=22 November 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181122152557/http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/china-inner-asia.html |url-status=dead }} As of 2015, Rawson was also listed as a project partner on the RLAHA project FLow of Ancient Metals across Eurasia (FLAME) funded by the European Research Council.{{cite web |url=http://flame.arch.ox.ac.uk/#team-flame |title=Project partners |publisher=FLAME |access-date=13 July 2016}}

Honours

Rawson is a Fellow of the British Academy, a member of the Scholars' Council of the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and a member of the Art Fund's Advisory Council. She was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1994 Birthday Honours and advanced Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2002 New Year Honours for services to oriental studies.{{cite web|title=Honours for England: London and the South|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2002/new_year_honours/1734715.stm|date=31 December 2001|access-date=19 January 2017|publisher=BBC}}

In 2012, Rawson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a Foreign Honorary Member.{{Cite web|title=Professor Dame Jessica Rawson elected to American Academy |url=http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2012/120418.html |date=18 April 2012 |publisher=Oxford University |access-date=2 September 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120421092629/http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2012/120418.html |archive-date=21 April 2012 }}

In May 2017 she was awarded the Charles Lang Freer Medal in recognition of her lifetime's contribution to the study of Chinese art and archaeology.{{Cite web | title=Dame Professor Jessica Rawson To Be Awarded the Charles Lang Freer Medal | url=http://www.asia.si.edu/press/2017/freer-medal.asp | date=19 May 2017 | access-date=5 June 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170615033249/http://www.asia.si.edu/press/2017/freer-medal.asp | archive-date=15 June 2017 | url-status=dead }} In 2022 she received the Tang Prize in Sinology.[https://www.tang-prize.org/en/media_detail.php?id=1711 Tang Prize 2022]

Personal life

Rawson does not allow students to call her by first name, but instead instructs them to call her "President" or "Professor Rawson."{{Citation needed|reason=Is there any source for this?|date=February 2025}}

Rawson is married with one daughter.{{cite web |date=15 December 1995 |title=Object lesson |url=https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/object-lesson/96402.article |access-date=27 January 2017 |publisher=Times Higher Education}}

Bibliography

Chinese pots 7th-13th century AD (1977) London: British Museum Publications.
Ancient China, art and archaeology (1980) London: British Museum Publications.
The Chinese Bronzes of Yunnan (1983) London and Beijing: Sidgwick and Jackson.
Chinese ornament: The lotus and the dragon (1984) London: British Museum Publications
Chinese bronzes: Art and ritual (1987) London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum in association with the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia.
Chinese jade from the Neolithic to the Qing (1995) London: British Museum Press.
Mysteries of Ancient China (1996) London: British Museum Press.
China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795 (2005) London: Royal Academy of Arts.
{{cite book | title=The British Museum Book of Chinese Art |date=2007 |edition=2 |publisher=British Museum Press}}
{{cite book | chapter=Miniature Bronzes from Western Zhou tombs at Baoji in Shaanxi Province | title=Radiance between Bronzes and Jades—Archaeology, Art and Culture of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties | location=Taipei |publisher=Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica |date=2013 |pages=23–66}}
{{cite journal| date=2013 |title=Ordering the exotic: ritual practices in the Late Western and Early Eastern Zhou |journal=Artibus Asiae |volume=73 |issue=1 |pages=5–76}}
{{cite journal | date=2017 |title=Shimao and Erlitou: new perspectives on the origins of the bronze industry in central China | journal=Antiquity |volume=91 |issue=355 | doi=10.15184/aqy.2016.234|doi-access=free |last1=Rawson |first1=J. }}