Patricia Berger, Professor Emerita of Chinese Art, received her Ph.D. in the History of Art in 1980 from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining the Berkeley faculty in 1997, she served as Curator of Chinese Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and taught at Oberlin College and the University of Southern California.
Continuing her interest in hands-on art history and museum practice, Berger has participated in the development and staging of a number of international exhibitions over the past couple of years, including the London Royal Academy of Art’s Three Emperors (2006) and the Zurich Rietberg Museum’s Luo Ping: Visions of an Eccentric (2009-10). Her book, Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), a study of the heteroglossic eighteenth-century Qing court and its ties to Tibet and Mongolia, was awarded the Shimada Prize for Best Book in Asian Art in 2008.