Staff Profile
Alan J. Dworsky Associate Curator of Chinese Art
sarah_laursen@harvard.edu / 617-495-2391
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
M.A., University of Pennsylvania
B.A., New York University
Sarah Laursen oversees the Chinese art collection, as well as Korean paintings and decorative art and South and Southeast Asian Buddhist art. Her research interests include Chinese archaeology, digital humanities, technical art history, collecting history, and contemporary Asian and Asian American art. A specialist in early medieval China, she was previously curator of Asian art at Middlebury College Museum of Art. Exhibitions she organized there include Lost Luxuries: Ancient Chinese Gold (2020), Hong Chun Zhang: Hair Story in Charcoal and Ink (2020), and Perseverance: Japanese Tattoo Tradition in a Modern World (2016).
Recent Publications
“Adorned: Gold of the Nomads.” In Golden Grasslands: The Cultural Crossroads of Inner Mongolia, 4th–7th Centuries CE, ed. Clare Fitzgerald. New York: ISAW. Forthcoming.
“Dressing the Dead in Jin China.” In The Art and Archaeology of Bodily Adornment: Studies from Central and East Asian Mortuary Contexts, ed. Sheri A. Lullo and Leslie V. Wallace. London: Routledge, 2019.
Schoneveld, Erin, and Sarah Laursen. “Representation, Adaptation, and Preservation at the Frontiers in East Asian Art.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 4 (1) (Spring 2018): 44–84.