Faculty:

Dr. Ingrid Furniss

ART HISTORY
Assistant Professor
(Ph.D. Princeton University)

office: FA-297
phone: 817-272-2799
email: ifurniss@uta.edu

Biography

Dr. Furniss is currently completing her first book, The History of Musical Instruments in Early China: An Archaeological Study of the Eastern Zhou (770-221 BCE) and Han (206 BCE-220 AD). Under contract with the academic publisher, Cambria Press (New York), the book will be published in the summer or fall of 2007. The book will examine the numerous types of musical instruments that were found in early Chinese elite tombs, as well as the history of their development and usage in ancient musical practice. Wooden instruments (zithers, winds, and drums) that formed the basis for many early Chinese musical ensembles are the focus of the book. While bronze bells have been a topic of extensive research over the years, this book will be the first to examine the archaeology and history of wooden musical instruments and their role in ancient musical life in both ritual and entertainment capacities.

Dr. Furniss has worked on a number of research and exhibition-related projects at museums in the U.S., including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, St. Louis Art Museum, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at University of Washington (Seattle), and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has written articles on Asian art for museum journals and exhibition catalogues, including Princeton University Art Museum’s Recarving China’s Past: The Art, Archaeology, and Architecture of the Wu Family Shrines (2005).

Dr. Furniss will present a conference paper, “The Prominence of the Se-Zither in Early Chinese Musical Practice: A Reanalysis of Zhou and Han Archaeological and Historical Evidence,” at the upcoming Association for Asian Studies meeting in Boston, March 21-25, 2007. She is also continuing to do research on the representation of music and musical instruments in non-western art, including that of China, Japan, India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Pre-Columbian world.

Dr. Furniss graduated in 2005 with her Ph.D. in Chinese art and archaeology from Princeton.