About the Curators
This exhibition is curated by Mark Lush and Kara Kaifang Ma.
Mark Lush is a PhD candidate in modern Chinese history at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto. Interested in the relationship between history and politics, his research focuses on the presence of China’s past as a prominent feature of Mao-era political campaigns. He combines elements of intellectual and social history to explore how people deployed different modes of historical engagement, some new and others familiar, toward pursuing state-sponsored goals or, at times, in the service of their own political interests.
Kara Ma is a PhD candidate in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto, where her research focuses on the Bishop William C. White collection of Chinese antiquities at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). With over a decade of experience at the ROM, she has held several positions, including Curatorial Assistant in Chinese Art, Collection Technician in East Asian Collections, and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation Fellow. Currently, Kara is the Chinese Art Research Specialist at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.